Fiberewetopia

Dear Valentine

2012-02-13T18:36:00.001-05:00

I made some Valentine's slippers for a couple of special people:

This cookie is for my longtime Valentine:

It's a BIG ~~kiss~~ cookie.

And it just so happens that the current weaving project looks best with a red weft:

Summer and Winter, treadling one.

Summer and Winter, treadling two.

There's a lot more warp on the loom, so it may be a little while before you get the finished product photo's.

I have to "evict" a certain little furry Valentine from my loom bench every time I get up from the loom for a cuppa tea or whatever. I'd like to think she's keeping it warm for me.

I suspect, it's really the other way 'round.

Happy Valentine's Day to you and yours.

Busy...

2012-02-10T14:39:00.000-05:00

been busy with stuff. Some of it is in the new banner photo. Will write more next week.

It's the end of the warp as we know it...

2012-01-22T17:51:00.000-05:00

(with apologies to REM)

That's as close to the end of the warp as I can get. Therefore, the award ribbon warp is done! I still have to cut off, wash, press, and trim the fringe....but the weaving is done.

And the afghan is done too:

I was going to do another I-cord border in black around the outside edge, but I don't think it will add anything to the finished piece and may even increase that slight tendency to curl at the corners. So, I'm calling it done.

High Roller...

2012-01-19T18:14:00.001-05:00

Just finished a new pair of slippers, just in time for our first real cold snap:

The pattern is Duffers. The yarn is Brown Sheep Lambspride from the stash. The buttons are cute:

And the bottoms are also dicey:

I thought the dice buttons were particularly appropriate because felting to size can be a roll of the dice. But these came out just fine after going through the wash cycle with a load of jeans and part of a dryer cycle.

I'm still doing the applied I-cord borders on the afghan (I'm kind of sick of knitting with black yarn). And after repairing 3 broken warp threads today, I'm still weaving the award ribbons. Would like to get those finished so I can try to weave something to submit to the show and have a chance at winning one of those ribbons.

You know, it seems like 2012, might be rather productive.

Progress Report...

2012-01-16T15:17:00.000-05:00

First it was going to be a Christmas present. Then it was ripped out twice, first time because it was way too big. The second time because I couldn't make the red/black pieces fit within the gray/black pieces. Finally, it is knitted and seamed together:

Ds's birthday was last Thursday so it became a birthday present.....a late birthday present. I still want to do a double I-cord border, red then black. Then I will call it finished and hand it over to ds. The pattern used is here. I wouldn't recommend doing it striped like this one, unless you are a masochist and it's not important that the piece be reversible.

Next on the progress list are the award ribbons. Here's the pattern I'm using for the honorable mentions:

Sorry about the shadows on the above two photo's. It's a dark, dreary day in Michigan.

And here is the pattern for best of show ribbons:

The dimples on the lower end of the sample were where I had mounted the sample with a straight pin.

And below is a sample that I decided didn't fit into the scheme of award ribbons:

The weft is a hand dyed silk chainette yarn. It feels pretty cool...but the look leaves a bit to be desired.

There is some spinning too, but I'll save that for another post.

Over the moon!!

2012-01-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

If you follow Wanda Jenkins' blog, you know that she had a drawing for some of the wonderful fiber tools that Ed creates at Jenkins Woodworking as a way to celebrate her birthday on Dec. 26. Well, my name was drawn for the bonus Aegean spindle which Ed generously added because of the popularity of that drawing. Here it is:

It is beautiful, made of Big Leaf Maple, weighing in at 18 gr. and she spins like a perpetual motion machine! Add to that the silver merino tencel top that Wanda packed along with the spindle...you know, just to get the spindle broken in...I am over the moon! I'm not sure how one "dye's" silver top, you would have to contact Abstract Fiber to learn that. But its appearance is really silvery metallic, not just gray.

This is my second Jenkins Turkish spindle. Here the Aegean is with her sister, Turkish Delight in red heartwood:

The red heart spindle on the left is 25 gr. You can see that the arms on the red heart spindle have a little bit more mass, and a different distribution of mass. If you look in the picture below, you can also see that the arms rest in different places on the spindle.

These differences in configuration, along with the 7 gr. weight difference really feel different in creating the yarn. Both are amazing spindles, but you have to spin with them to understand what I'm trying to say. Let's say the Turkish Delight is like driving a Mustang V8, and the Aegean is like driving a Porsche Carrera GT.

I've been using my Turkish Delight (despite her current nakedness!) to spin fine merino yarns that I plan to use as warp when plied as two ply. When I flick the Aegean, I'm envisioning a fine two ply yarn for knitting lace. Something close to gossamer weight that will hold the eyelets open in a lace pattern.

I am totally delighted! Thank you, Wanda and Ed!!

The cold virus is still with me, though somewhat less so. I'm still working on weaving the award ribbons. Third place in green is shown below:

Bleh...

2012-01-06T09:12:00.000-05:00

After the previous post I came down with a cold....a nasty, nasty virus. This is one "start that I do not mean to go on" in the coming year!

The whites of my eyes and the end of my nose look something like this:

Well, not the gold part, but the red spidery lines.

These are the second place ribbons for the show. The previous ones were for first place....the weft in those photos is orient blue, even though it looks black in the photo.

The next weft will be green for third place ribbons. And I will probably switch the tie up to do just a straight plaited twill. I haven't yet decided what weft and weave structure to use for the best of show ribbon.

The threading of this warp is an 8 harness double two tie unit weave which is pretty fascinating and versatile. I put enough warp on the loom to allow me to weave some samples as Summer & Winter, Lace, and whatever other structures can be squeezed out of the threading. That means I'll be under the loom changing tie-ups a few times.

Here's the long view. I love weaving stuff like this. Yet both my son and husband look over my shoulder and say "doesn't that hurt your eyes?" Nope...it doesn't. Just don't sit me down in front of a video game that simulates driving...that makes me sick. But static lines that move...I love 'em!

Oh...and here's one of my birthday presents that some of you might be interested in:

It's a support spindle bowl from Heidi's Pottery, with a cute little dimple in the bottom for the spindle to settle into:

see the dimple?

I love it, the spindle spins forever in it. And I'm happy the ds looked around on Etsy for the just the right gift.

And that is all of the steam I have for now. Back to crashing on the couch.

Start as you mean to go on....

2012-01-02T15:13:00.001-05:00

Like many people, I ended the old year and began the new one by tying one on:

(A narrow warp of 20/2's rayon sett at 40 epi in a two tie unit weave.

These are for award ribbons for an upcoming fiber show.)

But as many people find in the process if "tying one on", the room began to spin:

(In this case the spinning fiber is Persian cashmere top, 25 gr. of which has been hanging around in my stash for too long.)

Alas, the revelry can continue for only so long, then one must cross the bridge into the New Year:

Happy New Year!!

And may all your warps be golden.

Onward in 2012!

Happy, Happy

2011-12-31T09:50:00.001-05:00

Well, here it is, the last blog post of the year. Here's a link to Robyn Spady's very appropriate end of year blog post. I can't top that....so go enjoy.

Happy New Year to you!

Happy Birthday to me!

See you next year.

2011-12-23T11:08:00.000-05:00

So I changed to the new blogger format and lost a couple of comments along the way.

Sue...not to worry, the yarn was only around the candle for the photo shoot. I don't leave candles burning at all unless I am right there...too dangerous with a kitty in the house.
And thank you for the comment, Cyndy.

One of my daily clicks is Seth Godin's blog. Can't help but think of the people on Capitol Hill when I read this one.

May your day be merry and bright. We finally have sunshine in southeast Michigan....even a little birdsong to go with it!

Lit from within....

2011-12-22T11:00:00.000-05:00

I've been a-plying myself to clearing off some storage bobbins (that's a pun I've wanted to use for a long time):

The fiber is baby camel down and silk, 2 ply, 150 yds. for 14 grams of fiber.
Spun on my Jenkins Turkish Delight spindle and plied on the wheel. Plans are to use the fiber in a future warp of mixed handspun exotic fibers.

Solstice...

2011-12-21T11:29:00.000-05:00

The view down our drive at 8:00 AM today:

The 2011 December solstice takes place on Thursday, December 22 at 5:30 Universal Time. That’s Thursday, December 22 at 12:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

From here, the days get longer:

Doesn't that make your day a little brighter?

Happy solstice!

(Especially if you live in the northern hemisphere.)

Success and failure....

2011-12-07T15:51:00.000-05:00

Success:

I love this fabric!! This sample is off the loom, washed, pressed and making me happy that there is more on the loom to be woven. The warp is the yarn in the last photo of this post. The warp yarn was spun worsted from 4 oz. of 75% BFL/25% silk top dyed by Black Bunny Fibers, purchased from The Spinning Loft. The two ply yarn was about 26 wpi., so I decided on a sett of about 18 epi for a plain weave fabric.
The weft is a commercial 2 ply raw silk in a dark teal. It was a mill end, so once it's gone there is no more.

It is the first time I've used handspun yarn in a warp, but it certainly won't be the last. I took the unwashed bobbin of yarn to the warping board and wound all of it into 4 different warp chains. I shuffled the warp chains going onto the back beam so if there was variation in the yarns from the start to the end of the bobbin it wouldn't show as a progression across the warp.

The sample shrunk 10% in width and about 1% in length with wet finishing. It would make a wonderful vest.

To refresh your memory, here are the warp chains:

I do love the way the color variations make a random vertical stripe in the cloth. And the silk content gives it a little glow from within the fabric. Color me happy.

And for the failure......
Remember the afghan in the last post? Due to a failure to do the math at the outset of the project, I am starting over. I checked the finished size by laying it all out at the half way point and the thing was HUGE. Way too huge to be manageable as an afghan. Since there is plenty of yarn here, I'm not ripping yet, just starting over. Am not sure if this will be a Christmas present or birthday present for ds (his birthday is in January...so it gives me some grace time.)

Parting thought....am I the only one that clicks when "Romney" shows up in my feed reader, expecting to find a sheep or some fleece, only to be disappointed to find a politician at the end of the click?

And miles to go....

2011-11-29T13:33:00.002-05:00

Here's Christmas gift I'm working on:

It's an afghan for ds's family room. The pattern is Elizabeth Zimmerman's Garter Stitch Blanket (Ravelry link). I have a lot more knitting to do in the black and gray. Here's another view:

Because I'm using a worsted weight yarn, I increased the number of stitches to 48 for the garter strips. Turns out that EZ named this appropriately. It really will be more of a blanket than an afghan. But I think it will look nice with his black leather furniture. And I'm hoping it will be cozy for reading, tv, and video gaming this winter.

In addition to increasing the number of stitches, I've added an I-cord border. That means I'll be doing miles of black I-cord once the two larger gray and black pieces are complete and the 4 pieces are sewn together. Do you think I can make a Christmas deadline?

Also, the handspun warp is wound onto the back beam and ready for heddle threading:

So far, this handspun warp has gone more smoothly than I thought possible. Just wound the warp straight from the plying bobbin. Let's hope the threading, tie-on and weaving go as easily. At this point I think it will just be woven in plain weave in order to show off the handspun. Weft will be a 2 ply raw silk mill end in a peacock/teal sort of color.

Plenty of stuff for me to work on here.

More spinning....

2011-11-26T18:24:00.001-05:00

Freshly plied handspun, hand-dyed, pumpkin orange merino from the turkish spindle:

This is about .8 oz or 22 gr. of 2 ply yarn. I haven't wet finished it yet. There's about 210 yds. there and I'm spinning more on the spindle.

I'm thinking the the orange and the quiviut are looking pretty happy together. For now they are stored side by side while the rest of the orange is being spun up.

It just started raining outside. Of course it is, I just spent the last two days washing windows. Just finished up and came in about an hour ago.

The thing I lke best...

2011-11-25T10:35:00.002-05:00

about the day after Thanksgiving is that no one around here will ask, "What's for dinner?"

Finish or start...whatever...

2011-11-22T14:01:00.003-05:00

This is ~ 2 oz. of freshly washed handspun quiviut that I finished plying last night:

It's about 250 yds. of two ply spun with a woolen draft from the batt. While I was spinning it, I flipped back and forth in my plans. Maybe it would be knit into a nice lace scarf, then again maybe it would be weft in a handwoven scarf. I still don't know. If I knit it, I will probably dye it, perhaps a blue over-dye. If I weave with it then it should probably stay natural and be the weft on a warp made of handspun natural colored BFL/Silk (which has yet to be spun.). Here they are together:

Whoops..that picture clinched it. Woven it will be. Must spin the BFL/silk!

Also this fresh off the warping board:

This is also a BFL/silk blend spun from hand dyed top from Black Bunny Fibers. It is also a two ply, spun worsted at about 26 wpi. The warp was wound right off the bobbin without wet finishing. I'm not sure what the weft will be yet, but you can see there's still quite a bit of yarn on the bobbin, so it might be that. This will also be (what else?) a scarf.

And so the plight of the handspinner. Finishing a spinning project does not mean you are finished. It means the start of something else....knitting, weaving....or whatever else one does to transform yarn into fabric.

I have my work cut out for me. Hmmph, that's a sewing term. (There's some sewing waiting in the wings around here too. That will be another post....some day.)

A fiberist's work is never done.

Wishing all you readers a peace filled day on Thursday, whether you are in a place which celebrates Thanksgiving or not. Namaste!

More Painted Warps....

2011-11-17T16:52:00.000-05:00

This is finally off the loom and finish work done:

The warp is bamboo, Aunt Lydia's Bamboo Crochet Thread. Which by the way, takes fiber reactive dye very well. The weft is a Web's 20/2's silk in Orient Blue (purchase on sale). The sett was 18 epi. The weave structure is two block 8 shaft false damask (or twill damask).

Here's the obligatory "on my back fence" shot:

On loom the width of the web was 14.25" and the length was 72" (excluding fringe).

Off loom width was 13 7/8" and 70" length. Finished dimensions: 11 3/8" x 68".

There are 5 warp chains in the piece: 3 painted warps and 2 narrower chains vat dyed in apple green. I wanted something that was plaid-like, but not so structured. So I "unvented" this little design tool to give me a rhythmic sort of plaid look:

Knowing the value of using the fibonacci sequence in designing stripes, why not use that concept for weaving blocks? So I took a dollar store 6 sided die and wrote an 8 on the 4 side and a 13 on the 6 side. That way the six sided die had the first 6 fibonacci numbers on it: 1,2,3,5,8,13. I decided on the size of the 1's unit based on a threading unit of the draft (16 threads = 16 picks), then I would roll the die and weave the number of units in block A. The next roll of the die would be woven for that number of units in block B. I'm really happy with the results.

And it looks good with my new jacket:

What would I do differently? Well, maybe I should have used some of the blue weft threads in the fringe to tone them down a little bit and help them coordinate with the fabric.

Since the Sara Lamb workshop, I'm on a roll. Here's the next painted warp and accompanying threads:

The painted warp is a silk/cotton mill end. The accompanying yarns are rayon. I'm going to tackle designing this in the reed and threading front to back. So it may be awhile before you see this actually on the loom.

Well that, and I have another deadline project to weave in the next few weeks.

Off Topic...

2011-11-12T18:12:00.004-05:00

I read this headline:

Cain: God persuaded him to run for president.

Then I remembered the last time God spoke to Cain.....go take a look at Chapter 4 in Genesis.

Just sayin'.....

'Nother One Done

2011-11-09T16:15:00.000-05:00

Here's the latest prayer shawl, hot off the needles:

Ravelry project details here.

Finishing lessons and retail therapy....

2011-10-31T14:25:00.001-04:00

IMO a project isn't finished until I sit down and write myself a note about the lessons learned from the project. I do it for just about everything that I do. In cooking, I write and date notes in the cookbook or on the recipe. In entertaining, I keep my menu and write notes about what worked and what didn't. At this stage of life, I'd prefer not to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Any chances at "do overs" should have successful outcomes.

Perhaps you might be interested in a peek at my lessons learned from this latest weaving project:

I'm still not wild about warping front to back, but it does offer the distinct advantage of designing in the reed especially with painted warps. When I do it again, there will definitely be a thread by thread cross in the warp chain and a choke tie firmly tied behind the cross. I still like having the reed horizontal when sleying...maybe it's because of my progressive lenses?
I'm pretty happy with the beat on this project. It's firm and even (the Mountain Loom is pretty incredible for that as a table loom.). There was one spot where the beat was a little light in the middle of the web when I took it off the loom. I can't find it now that the fabric is washed and pressed.
However, there still is a little bit of a ripple in the fabric when it's laid flat. An ongoing problem of mine. Waddup with that? (any body have some suggestions?)
Selvedges: aren't the best on this project. The one that looked the best on the loom looks the worst in the finished fabric. I think I'm going to try sleying the 4 end warps on each side a little closer on my next cotton fabric.
Maybe a temple would help with the above two problems? Maybe I'll put a temple on my Christmas wishlist.
Color: I'm pretty happy with the color choices in this piece. Sara was a help in picking out the pearl cotton contrast stripes and I like them.
I do wish that the yellow hadn't come up in the dead center of the piece....so I guess that's something to pay attention to in future painted warps.

It's surprising to me how much the yellow and turquoise together read as green in the fabric. It probably has something to do with the fact that I used a dark turquoise 10/2 cotton as weft in this warp dominant fabric. It would have been interesting to see how another color weft might have pushed the colors through that section of the warp. Must remind myself to pay attention to that and sample with it in the future.
The width of the fabric on the loom was 14". Off the loom it was 13.13", and after washing the width is 12.33". That's almost 12% shrinkage in width.
I didn't measure the length of the cloth while I was weaving. The length of the of the cloth off the loom was 42", not counting fringe. After washing it is 39.5". That's only 6% loss in length.

Am I missing anything?

I would be remiss if I didn't admit to a little retail therapy after wrestling with this warp in the workshop:

A Japanese stitch pattern knitting book and a Houndesign support spindle.

The stitch patterns in this book are so unusual. My fingers are twitching to just cast on and start sampling. Lovely stuff. And a little closer look at the spindle:

It's a little 24gr. sweetie made of purple heart and birch. That's cashmere I've been spinning on it. Doesn't it make your fingers just twitch to give it a spin?

There was a little more retail therapy at Beth's that weekend, but this is all I'm fessing up to right now.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-10-26T13:48:00.002-04:00

Woven:

Thanks for all of your kind comments on my previous post. We seem to be getting along well, now that the throwing of the shuttle is in progress.

There's always one....

2011-10-24T15:51:00.001-04:00

If you've attended many weaving workshops or if you're a workshop teacher, you know from experience that: "there's always one." One person in the workshop who either: shows up late, doesn't have their loom ready, didn't follow the preparation instructions, didn't read or understand the course description and is not mentally prepared, or any combination of the above. They are often a distraction and a challenge to the teacher and the rest of the workshop participants. We can only take a deep breath and hope that there is some cosmic lesson in it for us as well as "the one" (and that we will all get the lesson before we are driven to mayhem, murder or lose our minds entirely). The workshop must forge ahead.

Well, dear readers, this past weekend I had the privilege of attending a weaving workshop with Sara Lamb at the Spinning Loft in Howell, Mi. and I was "the one".

Saturday morning started out with one obstacle after another, from clothing that didn't work to a torn fingernail that needed attention, to more catbox chaos than I meet with most mornings, to construction delays on the road. But I did arrive for the workshop just in time with everything that I needed.

Being a weaving workshop veteran (junkie?) of over 30 years, I have a cache of workshop supplies and a system for getting myself set-up when weaving away from home. As I lugged this stuff into the workshop space, some of other workshop participants expressed interest and appreciation. That was when I made my first mistake of the workshop...the one that challenged all the weaving fates. I said, "This ain't my first rodeo."

If I hadn't been so pleased with myself at that comment, I would have heard the snorts, pawing and banging against the stanchions of the bull warp chains that were waiting in the pen...er I mean on the table to my left.

They look pretty innocuous lying there, don't they? Well they had my number. I may have been to rodeos before, but apparently I've only been doing the weaving equivalent of tie down roping, barrel racing, chuck wagon racing, and perhaps a clown act or two. It seems my smug little comment signed me right up for the bull riding event.

Sara started out with talking about how she works and the kind of fabrics that she weaves for clothing. We learned about fabric design for clothing including setts, drape, structure (and the advantages of simple weaves), and color arrangement. Her talk gave us a glimpse of how she approaches the creation of the wonderful, colorful textiles and garments that she makes.

Then we set about designing our warps from the warp chains that were provided (thanks Chelsea and Beth!) and the coordinating cones of yarn. Oh...and by the way, Sara designs in the reed which means warping from front to back. I'm a back to front warper....I've warped front to back before and it ain't pretty.

The bull warp started warming up in the pen as I approached the dyed warp chains to make my selection.

I chose three warp chains because....well, you know, three is a good number in design and these seemed like kind of skinny chains. I was thinking of a warp maybe 8 inches, 10 inches max., for a sampler. I went over to the front of my loom, set up the lease sticks and.... whoops!! lost the cross in part of one of the chains. The bull warp was loose and I was on his back for the ride!!

Through the day this warp threw me the challenges of skipped dents, tangled threads, lost threading crosses, and more tangled threads. Not to mention the bucking, jumping, and twisting of color and design theory. My classmates were merrily getting their looms warped, tied on and starting to weave while I was sitting there staring at a field of white texsolve heddles.

At the end of Saturday, I had just finished sleying the reed and I hoped that the bull ride was over. Not so...Sunday morning the bull had rested up and was ready for my ride through threading the heddles. Again there were missed dents in the reed, miscounting, and a group of warp ends that had snaked their way back out of the reed. There were not enough heddles on some of the shafts and even a repair heddle had to be put in place.

All the while, Sara, was patient and supportive. She answered questions with aplomb. And gave some some suggestions and advice when I'm sure she couldn't stand to watch me wrestle with that bull...er warp...any more. And sometimes I took the advice...sometimes later than sooner (because I have my share of bull headed-ness).

She talked us through designing and painting warps, set up a dye table, painted some warps and several of the more proficient students painted some to take home with them. Since I was "the one" in this workshop and since we have a guild dye day coming up in January, I just stayed on the bull and finished threading the heddles. Finally it was time to wind on the back beam. Sara dealt with the tangles and snags in front of the reed, for which I am eternally grateful. I cranked the warp beam and inserted the paper.

By this time it was 4 PM and the workshop was over at 5 PM. I was getting ready to lash on to the front apron rod, when the weaver beside me, Wayne, was (ahem) cutting off his warp:

Isn't it gorgeous?! Wayne has been weaving since Christmas of 2010! Clearly the man was born to weave.

Denny was also ready to cut off her warp:

So pretty...and look it matches her shirt.

Mary Beth had resolved the color challenge her warp initially presented:

Doesn't that look like sunshine peeking through a waterfall?

And me....

I discovered that my lashing cord was too short for a 14" wide warp. (Remember that 8 to 10" wide plan? ...the bull had its own plan.) So I attended the weaving workshop and never threw the shuttle once.

Despite that it was a great workshop and I did learn a lot. Thanks so much to Sara and Beth! My apologies to you and all of the workshop participants for being "the one." I hope I wasn't a disruption or an impediment to your progress in weaving.

While I loaded my loom into the car I was able to see both the front (photo above) and the back of the loom:

As I gazed at those colors in the parking lot I heard a little whisper of a voice: "psst...hey, Valerie".
Oh my gosh, the bull warp was talking to me!
It said, "Just so you know, I do have a name: It's L'Oreal.
You know....
Because 'I'm worth it'...."

Gotta go...the warp beckons. But from here on I resolve to attend every workshop as though it were "my first rodeo."

Forecast...

2011-10-17T14:25:00.000-04:00

This little guy forecasts that we will have a moderate winter:

Perhaps not as mild as the all brown wooly worm I came across a week or two ago. And not quite as mild as Cyndy's forecaster.

And this year's harvest from the compost bin:

is a promise which encourages me to clean up these:

And this view:

is a forecast that if I just sit down at the loom, the warp will be done in just a short 24 inches.

Well...the last two won't happen all by themselves.

Either or both of me....

2011-10-15T09:55:00.004-04:00

Back here I posted a link to Phoebe Snow's song "Either or Both of Me".

Every morning I have two favorite places to click:

Catherine Kerr's Beyond the Fields We Know

and

Passive Aggressive Notes dot com

I usually go straight from Cate to passive aggressive, unless Cate hasn't posted yet.

That pretty much sums up the either or both of me. And I won't ask the question of the song.....it's just who I am.
Weaving progresses....perhaps and FO to before the weekend is out.

Autumn in Michigan....

2011-10-10T16:18:00.001-04:00

Leaf peeping:

And weaving:

Life is good!

pondering...

2011-10-02T16:05:00.002-04:00

This week is the autumn church rummage sale. I just finished the first pass through the closet and harvested a few items. I tried a few other things on and with ambivalence, folded them and put them back on the shelf. However it occurs to me that the only time I have worn most of those things in the past __ years was to try them on and take them off in favor of some other more favored garment.

So here's the question, dear readers....how long do you hang onto such items before you are able to free them for someone else's use?

And in the spirit of the 60's (and no, none of those garments go all the way back to the 60's), I love Jerry Brown's message to the California State Senate here. You can see the memo here.

Scotland...

2011-09-29T13:33:00.002-04:00

Theresa and Sara had it right. The trip was designed around a variety of shared interests of 8 people (4 couples) and we packed more into 11 days than I would have thought possible. In addition to the churches, cathedrals, museums, and cemeteries, we packed in textiles, golf, scuba diving, textiles, whiskey distilleries, archeology, more textiles, and food.

Since this is a textile blog, let's stick to the textiles:
We didn't do a lot of textile stuff while in Edinburgh. I did see some of the personal textiles that belonged to Mary Queen of Scots in Holyrood Palace and there were some very old tapestries in the palace as well, but alas no pictures allowed. Somehow cathedrals, food, cemeteries, and museums took over the rest of our time in Edinburgh.

There was some good natured heckling among us about our varying interests. This was particularly so as we were taking the golfers to Carnoustie to drop them off while the rest of us were headed to Stirling Castle, especially to see the recreation of the Unicorn Tapestries. When we pulled up to the brand new clubhouse at Carnoustie I followed the rule "never pass up a chance to use the 'necessaries'" and dashed into the women's locker room. HA! Directly facing the entry was this story board of the textiles used in the clubhouse.

Rule number two is never pass up the chance to be one up on your hecklers.

If you're interested, here's the text from the story board (as always, click to biggen):

And off to Stirling Castle and the tapestries:

These are some of the completed tapestries hanging in the Queen's Chambers in Stirling Castle. (Click on the link to learn more about the tapestries and the West Dean College connection.) The tapestry workshop was open, where a recently completed tapestry was displayed and two weavers were working on sample looms to get themselves ready to start a new one. We were fortunate to be there for the weaver's talk at 1 PM. From that talk, we learned that:

the wool weft yarn was spun from British Wensleydale wool to specification for the project.
Pantone colors were used to select the dyes for the fiber and the dyes used were from Pro Chemical & Dye.
the warp sett for the reproductions was decreased to 8 epi which is a more open sett than the original tapestries which hang in The Cloisters in New York.

The pieces are vibrant with amazing detail.

As we headed into the Highlands there were the ubiquitous sheep. When we stopped in the village of Dornoch, I found these in a small independent book store for 3.99 each. They are not Deb Robson's book, but they are the perfect size to travel. And the Know More Sheep edition rates the breeds according the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.

Ah..so many sheep...so much fleece...so little time.

From the Highlands we took a ferry over to Orkney where we managed to squeeze some textiles in amongst the archeological sites, the scuba divers Scapa Flow adventure, and the Highland Park Distillery Tour (highly recommended!)

I was able to score some roving from North Ronaldsay sheep:

Wonderful Stuff!!

And we were able to visit the Hoxa Tapestry Gallery on South Ronaldsay on a Sunday afternoon. Beautiful work was on display. Click around at the link to see Leila's work.

Back down through the Highlands and to Glasgow via Inverness. Dh and I had been in Glasgow years ago and I wasn't able to go to Paisley, so that was high on the list for this trip.

Photo's from the loom loft at The Paisley Museum. They are kind of cramped right now as they await being moved to a more open studio space. The good news is that weaving classes are being taught there every Friday. The shawl display was fascinating, but sadly no photo's allowed. However they do have a fascinating book published:

Nope...I didn't buy a shawl. That's a scarf I purchased in Edinburgh.

And the rest of Glasgow was cathedrals, museums, more cemeteries (I've never spent so much vacation time in cemeteries in my life...and that wasn't on the interest list when we put this trip together!). I guess coming across the stone of the author of Wee Willie Winkie was worth it.
Of course I got my Rennie Mackintosh fix at the house as well as the tea room (see previous post)

And that is the textile version of the story.

Must go...the looms beckon.

Away and back...

2011-09-27T07:55:00.000-04:00

Anyone want to guess where I've been?

What a great trip. Everything went exactly as planned.

Walk with me....

2011-09-02T09:55:00.002-04:00

These photo's were taken on my Monday walk.

The day was cool, clear, and calm:

It's very unusual to not have at least a breeze in Michigan.

The shadows are getting longer:

This was taken at 10:00 AM. Love those greens and blues, but they are about to give way to reds and golds:

before hitting the ground:

Cottonwood leaf.

On Tuesday the kiddo's will be headed back to school and these guys will surely be lonely:

It's the season for ripening:

Black walnuts.

Wild grapes

Wild chicory: still my favorite color.

These summer days have been glorious:

Cleome

But I think they are almost over.

I think my new camera and I are going to get along just fine. But the old one is still better for close up fiber photo's.

Have a safe, happy Labor Day holiday!!

Prayer Shawls....

2011-09-01T11:33:00.000-04:00

One done:

(Same pattern and yarn as this one, just a different color)

Another begun:

(Same yarn as previous shawls..yes, there was a sale. I bought 4 colors, enough to do 5 shawls. The pattern is Dunes from the latest issue of Knitty )

That is all. Carry on......

Well...don't carry on too much, it coming up on a holiday weekend and all.

You know what I mean. Use your good judgment.

Weave Tease

2011-08-26T18:25:00.001-04:00

Playing with my camera and the sampler from the Crackle class:

From the top:

Classic Crackle 1
Classic Crackle 2
Crackle woven as twill
Crackle woven as overshot
Crackle woven as summer and winter - single
Crackle woven as summer and winter - double

Classic Crackle straight block treadling.

2 tie down shuttles and one pattern shuttle.

Warp, tie downs, and pattern threads were all different making for interaction of 4 thread colors.

Classic Crackle block design

2 tied down threads, one pattern thread.

Again, 4 thread colors were used.

Crackle treadled as summer and winter singles

Tie down same as warp. Contrast pattern thread for a total of two colors..

Crackle woven as overshot.

Tabby same as warp with variegated pattern thread.

As you can see, this weave structure presents a lot of opportunities to play with color interaction in the threads. I've used a heavier pattern thread in all of these samples. But it's possible for warp, pattern, and tied-down threads to be the same weight which allows for rotating the colors to play with the design among the blocks. I admit that weaving with three shuttles is a challenge, especially when rotating the two tie down wefts with one pattern weft.

I've retied and still have the rest of the samples to weave. And I have pre-ordered Susan Wilson's book

Weave Classic Crackle and Beyond.

This was our Cross Border's exhibit at MLH. The lighting was less than ideal for photography, especially the darker pieces.

Kind of a crazy week here. Just finished up with a catch up on medical screenings and tests the past couple days. Just the routine stuff, but I do not take well be being poked, prodded, squeezed, and looked at from the inside out. Glad that's over and can now schedule my days with more pleasurable pursuits.

Am currently reading:

I have it out on inter-library loan. Reviews are here.

Have a good weekend. And sending good wishes to those who are being threatened by Hurricane Irene.

Poison Ivy as a tree?!

2011-08-22T13:30:00.000-04:00

We live on a wooded lot. I spend a lot of my summer watching close to the ground and when I spot a patch of poison ivy, it gets a squirt of Round-Up. So imagine my surprise when I was walking up to get the mail and noticed these "leaves of three" at eye level.

At first I thought is was a vine that had traveled up a tree trunk. Upon closer (hands free) inspection, it has a woody "trunk" all its own.

If this is what lies ahead the prospect of raking leaves in the fall is a bit scary...especially for those of us who are sensitive to this wicked plant.

What's a word worth?

2011-08-19T16:35:00.001-04:00

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

William Wordsworth c.1802

Feeling a bit frazzled and overwhelmed these days. The world is too much with me and for everything I am out of tune. Amazing how these words from two centuries ago speak to me.

As Wordsworth said. "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers."

In the getting and spending category, I got a new camera. It does quite nicely with reds, don't you think?

It also does a pretty good job of capturing "She who does not remain still." My days are haunted by that look....it says, "Is it time to eat yet?"

And here's a promise:

A future post will contain weaving. This is from the Crackle Workshop at MLH. I'm going to cut off the sample and retie it (Notice how wonky it is on the cloth beam?) We unwound our samples at the end of class so we could do a walk through critique. Then I folded up the loom with the warp on it to transport home. Now the tension is all wonky and I have about 5 more treadling sequences to finish the sample.

So sometime, I'm not promising when, you will see more weaving. Till then, just enjoy the poem.

Pure Michigan....on the south shore of Superior

2011-08-08T10:48:00.000-04:00

Munising Falls: (don't bother to "biggen" the videos, they were taken w/ my cell phone.)

Lake Superior Shoreline:

Drove through Hiawatha National Forest on Saturday and had lunch at the West Bay Diner in Grand Marais, Mi. (there's more than one Grand Marais on Lake Superior's shoreline.) which is home to the author of South of Superior which I am currently reading.

Notable quotes...

2011-07-31T11:38:00.001-04:00

Saw this on a bumper sticker in the parking lot after yoga on Wed.

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

I looked it up....it's attributed to Jimi Hendrix. Love it!! Yet another reason I love yoga....great parking lot reading.
In another bit of irony, this morning's gospel in the lectionary was Matthew's Loaves and Fishes account.
Peace....(Hear that ye naysayers on Capitol Hill?)

Anyway...I'm busy getting ready for Michigan League of Handweaver's Conference. (My chance to get away and leave everyone else here to hold down the fort and sling the hash..woohoo!) I'm taking the Crackle workshop with with Susan Wilson which means a new warp on the Mountain loom. Then the weekend brings Jennifer Moore's Tessellations one day workshop (I don't see it listed under her workshops tab) and two more half day workshops. There's a lot of art supplies and scraps of yarn to assemble for those.

But there's plenty of time and I'll be posting more before then.

While I'm making lists...

2011-07-28T17:16:00.000-04:00

I suspect that most of you are like me and are trying to avoid/ignore the political drama being carried out on Capitol Hill. It really makes me angry that these people are sitting there on the hill, collecting salaries paid to represent us, with the promise of a fat, happy pension including health care benefits while they are only sitting there playing partisan politics rather than actually representing the needs of the people.

So, I've decided to compile a list of famous people and groups with ideologies which refused compromise:

the Taliban
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge
Augusto Pinochet
Stalin
Hitler

Do we see a trend here? What names/groups would you add to the list of the uncompromising?

Making lists...

2011-07-28T13:36:00.002-04:00

The Man Booker long list was published this week and there's been some talk about it on Library Thing. I like discussing books that I've read with others who have read them, so I took the bait and joined the Booker Prize Group on LT

Then I proceeded to list the number of books I've read that have received the prize or have been listed for it. I'm surprised there are this many:

Booker:
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002)
The Sea by John Banville (2005)
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (2006) (still on my shelf..unread)
The White Tiger: A Novel (Man Booker Prize) by Aravind Adiga (2008)
Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2000)
Disgrace by J. M. Cotzee
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (1998)
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (1987)

The Longlist:
The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer (2001)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2003)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke 92004)
The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson (2006)
The Gift of Rain: A Novel by Tan Twan Eng (2007)
Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Toibin (2009)
The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt (2009)
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (2009)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel by David Mitchell (2010)

The Shortlist
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1993)
Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)
Unless by Carol Shields (2002)
Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell (2004)
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes (2005)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (2007)
The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt (2009)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009)
Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue (2010)

In general, books nominated for the Booker are not happy stories. But they are usually well written and show beautiful use of language and have an atmosphere about them. Most are great at character development and theme. I would say that they are not generally plot driven novels.....but I guess that's my opinion.

So....what have you been reading that you would recommend to me?

Make mine cherry, topped with orange....

2011-07-20T13:21:00.000-04:00

My newest acquisition:

A cherry Turkish 24gr. spindle by Jeri Brock purchased from The Spinning Loft. The fiber is some merino top that I dyed a couple years ago. This is such a sweet little spindle and a perfect companion to my Jenkins Turkish Spindle. I love them both!

Just noticed that this is the first proper blog post for July. There have been fiber happenings, but like most of the central U.S. it has been unbearably hot.

There is a beamed warp....

patiently waiting for me to thread it through the heddles and reed:

This is handpainted bamboo warp from this year's guild dye day. In fact this is the warp I'm painting in the photo. It will be a scarf woven in an 8 harness false damask twill.

Last Thursday our Cross Borders Weavers group met to get ready for the Michigan League of Handweaver's conference coming up in a couple of weeks. Our hostess, Marilyn graciously supplied a synthetic indigo dye vat for us. I over dyed some slub cotton warp chains and skeins, but the pictures aren't coming out right now. Perhaps once they start moving onto the loom they will be more photogenic.

And I am still knitting on Devonshire. I've decided to ignore the color variations for now and decide what to do once the garment is finished. Maybe washing will make a difference....maybe not. Maybe it will just be a casual jeans sweater. Time will tell.

I've also been doing a lot of reading, but you can check in on that at my LibraryThing link.

The next few weeks promise to be quite busy...and hot. Hopefully the activity will create blog fodder.

Any dream interpreters out there? Yesterday morning I woke up dreaming that our garage was almost empty (yep, that was a dream alright!) and in it was a huge kangaroo hopping around and throwing a snow shovel around like a javelin. I was clearly stumped on what to do about that kangaroo, so I woke up.
Any clues on what my subconscious was trying to tell me? Or maybe it's just the heat.....

Enjoying a summer day....

2011-07-07T13:23:00.000-04:00

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one, wild precious life?" Mary Oliver

Done

2011-06-30T11:16:00.001-04:00

The "two faced" project is finished:

The warp is 20/2 space dyed tencel. The pattern weft is 8/2 tencel in burgundy and medium blue. And the tabby weft is 60/2's silk in black-navy. I cannot get the camera to give the true colors, the reds seem to push the blue toward purple in the photo's.

The sett is 37.5 EPI in a 15 dent reed. The summer & winter pattern is woven at about 45 PPI, includes pattern and tabby. The finished scarf is 69" long, not including fringe and the width is 9".

The purpose of the study was to create a reversible fabric with two distinct faces. This fabric does that by giving a positive and negative image as seen above.

I chose to use Summer and Winter because it's a very traditional weave structure that brings to mind coverlets and such, much in the way weavers view Overshot patterns. I like to take these very old fashioned "traditional" structures and play with the blocks and color ways to make them look more contemporary. Lisa commented on an earlier post that the sample from this project looks like old 8 bit video game graphics. So I guess this project is a continuation of a theme.

I'm in the process of assembling the swatch pages for the rest of the study group, then I will consider this project done. The exhibit is in August at MLH conference, then in September we begin a new two year study of tied weaves.

Impressed...

2011-06-26T17:58:00.000-04:00

We had a guest musician from the Detroit Handbell Ensemble do a handbell solo during the offertory this morning. Personally, I think she was better than the artist in this video, but this one is still pretty good. Take a deep breath, adjust the volume, sit back and enjoy:

Ennui has lifted. The woven piece is off the loom and being made ready for wet finishing. And I finished The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zeut. I will definitely be reading more David Mitchell.

Ennui

2011-06-24T12:38:00.000-04:00

def.: a feeling of listlessness and general dissatisfaction resulting from lack of activity or excitement

That's where I am right now. Just floating along in a state of ennui. We've had humid rainy weather for several days. Despite 4-5 days in the 90's and the passing of the solstice this month, it seems we've never truly found summer.

I have things to do:

Just this much more to weave on my project for the exhibit at MLH conference in August. For whatever reason, I cannot get my butt to sit down on the loom bench and stay there to finish it. It's like my butt and the bench have the same magnetic pole and when I try to put them together, my butt ends up somewhere else altogether.

This has happened to me before, and I'm sure I've ~~whined~~ blogged about it before, but am too lazy to search the archives for evidence. One of the symptoms that ennui is about to set in is this:

I start queuing up reading material. Anything and everything that strikes my fancy lands on the "too read" pile. I buy it (as though I am personally trying to save Borders from going under), I check it out of the library, I put it on hold if it's not in the library, I request it on inter-library loan if it's not in the library's collection, and then I go to the Midwest Collaborative and go through the whole process with electronic media. It's obsessive, compulsive, and more than a little crazy. What is it with me and books? I've had this "thing" my whole life and have passed it on to my son. And judging by the stacks of books over, under, around, and through dh's night stand (see below) he has caught this contagion as well:

I'm not sure why his books all come with their own little ribbons in them. At least one of them has been swallowed by the vacuum cleaner...but that's a story for another post.

But the real evidence of ennui is this:

See that bookmark on the top book? I am that close to finishing One Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and I'm sitting here blogging instead of reading. I love the book, the writing is delicious, and the story is interesting, but I just don't it want to end....yet.

And now I find myself with a few more pictures to post and a bunch of other things I thought I might say...but I just don't feel like it. I'm done with this post for now. Guess I'll go wallow....

What to do....

2011-06-22T11:49:00.001-04:00

I've been working on Devonshire, the first sweater I've knitted for myself in a long time.

See the "lines of demarcation" in the fabric? The first one at the lower part of the garment occurred mid-ball of yarn where there was a knot in the skein. There's another, less drastic color change up at the beginning of the lace change which was a change in skein. Everything is from the same dyelot and the same bag of yarn.

The yarn is Cathay by Debbie Bliss. Just checked her website and it appears this yarn is discontinued. Not cheap yarn, but I bought it about a year ago. I'm disappointed. Any suggestions on what to do about the color variations?

Random....

2011-06-08T12:35:00.000-04:00

Random is what you get when life gets busy and blog time is at a premium. Last week was a blur, so I'll try to do a quick re-cap.

Was called for jury duty and served. First time I've ever been called. Much to my dismay, my name was first out of the jury selection lottery box making me "Juror Number 1" for the day. It was an interesting experience and closer to current tv courtroom scenes than I expected. The case involved "the malicious use of a telecommunications device". The device was a phone. My generational naivete kicked in as I flashed back to junior high and the "Do you have Prince Albert in a can" prank phone calls. Uhm...no. Much more malicious and explicit than that...and done repeatedly. The calls were recorded and played for the jury....twice. The unanimous verdict was guilty with less than 20 minutes of deliberation.
Saturday I moved 2 wheelbarrows of compost out of the compost bins, dug them into the flower beds, then planted 5 flats of flowers. All the while I couldn't believe how taxing the activity was, considering that I have a pretty good work out schedule. At the end, I needed 12 more impatiens plants to fill in the last area. So I cleaned up, made and served lunch, then decided to run a couple errands and get those last 12 plants. When I got in the car I noticed that the outside temperature on the dashboard was 93 degrees. Uhm....no wonder I was feeling so wiped out. I had no idea that it was that hot, thought it was just me getting decrepit.
My very first loom (LeClerc Artistat) was sold and went on to it's new home. I was surprised at the volume of local inquiries from the online listings. It was a good loom for beginners and most of the local inquiries were new or soon to be weavers. The new owner picked it up on Saturday and was so thrilled to be taking "my baby" home with her. What a pleasure it was to contribute to the creation of a new weaver!
Put a warp on the new Macomber loom: 20/2 tencel from Just Our Yarns sett at 38 EPI:

Here's a quick look, though the red is much more burgundy.

Sharon asked me to post more about the Macomber loom, so I took some photo's during the warping process.

One of the neat things about a Macomber is that it's possible to just lay down the front beam and beater to pull your chair right up to the heddles for threading. This is a boon for back to front warping, which is my usual technique. If you "click for big", you'll notice that I took off the cloth beam and laid it over to the side...you can see it on the other side of my chair.

The loom is also higher than most jack looms so the heddles are at eye level without the need to raise the shafts during threading.

To sley the reed, I just put the cloth beam back in place, put the reed in the cap that goes on the beater, then propped the reed on the cloth beam and the loom frame to sley the reed. Easy peasy! Here's another shot of the same thing:

It also gives you a nice view of all 14 treadles.....yikes...kind of looks like an organ doesn't it? Actually, with the back hinged treadles, it's a breeze to weave on this loom. I love it.

So after the reed was sleyed, I changed the beater cap around, flipped up the reed, brought up the beater and put the reed in place. Then I put the front beam back in place and was ready to tie on.

There has also been some project knitting which will be blog fodder another time. And I've been drooling over reading through The Fleece and Fiber Source Book.. I still can't believe they are able to offer this book for such a low price. Deb Robson blogged about the gestation and incubation of this book, creating a lot of anticipation among us fiber folk. The end result does not disappoint. Put this one on your list.

Okay...must go weave and do some other random stuff. Whatever can be done in today's 95 degree temps.

Blessings....

2011-05-28T13:00:00.000-04:00

I believe that babies should be blessed with the work of our hands. And since mothers often have their hands full of the responsibilities of the day to day care for those babies, that hand work naturally falls to the grannies, aunts, great aunts....and uncles too. There are some interesting thoughts about handwork, and the future of handwork in yesterday's entry on The Textile Blog.

This month our family has been blessed with a new little great niece, Mia:

Some day she will get back at her parents for that obligatory photo in the bath.

So little Mia has a hat and sweater on the way:

The sweater pattern is from Clara Parke's The Knitter's Book of Wool which I have knit of 100% cotton in 6-9 months size. It really is a quick and easy knit if you're looking for such a pattern. I always include a ball band wound around some extra yarn and one of my Moo Cards with care and size information on it. That's what you see tucked into the neck opening. Next I will tuck the sweater and hat in a mailing pouch and send it off to the little one.

May she and her parents have many restful moments like the one below:

Natural Dyes...

2011-05-26T13:10:00.000-04:00

One more thing: If you are interested in natural dyes, you might be interested in this post on MAIWA

Two Faced....

2011-05-26T13:04:00.001-04:00

Oi...I remember that term from middle school and the crazy antics that early adolescent girls go through:

"Are you my friend or hers?"

"If you tell me, I promise I won't tell anyone."

Then you learn that everyone in the building has learned your most painful secret.

Happily I'm at another stage of life and the "two-faced" that I'm referring to are woven fabrics. Cyndy commented in the previous post that it sounded tricky. Actually it's not as tricky as one might think and I thought it deserved a blog post over view.

This is a topic that our weaving group, Cross Borders Weavers, has been studying for the past two years. The deadline for our finished projects is two weeks from today, so we can start preparing for our exhibit at Michigan League of Handweavers Conference in August.

What I have learned in these past two years is that a surprising number of weave structures produce fabrics that appear distinctly different on the two sides of the fabric. We started out with Robyn Spady's workshop There's Two Sides to Every Cloth. I blogged about that here. Later we had Jennifer Moore come and teach us about double weave.

To get back to Cyndy's question, there are many ways to make such a fabric. A double faced fabric can be made with:

One warp and one weft as in 3-1, 1-3 twill fabric (but not limited to this structure...there are others). This is the kind of weave structure used in jeans fabric. Think about how the fabric is light on the inside (warp dominant) and dark on the outside (weft dominant). It's the structure I used in this fabric. The 2 colors in the warp and weft are used for the visual pattern, not for the structure:

One warp and two wefts. There are quite few weave structures that will do this. Overshot has two distinct sides:

As does the Summer & Winter fabric in my previous post.

Two warps and one weft. The following sample is from Robyn's workshop. It's called Four-Shaft Double Faced Warp Mock Twill. Lestra Hazel has done some fabulous scarves with this weave structure which can be found in the March/April 2011 Handwoven

Two warps and two wefts. This can be done as two fabrics that interchange surfaces as in these double weave samples from Jennifer Moore's workshop:

or this 4 block-4 shaft double weave based on an overshot pattern:

Or it is possible to weave two distinctly different fabrics that have either warp or weft "stitchers" that hold the two layers together as in this fabric which is based on the cover fabric of March/April 2010 Handwoven

This is just an overview in response to Cyndy's question. There are many, many weave structures that will produce fabrics with two distinct sides. It was the topic for Robyn's COE study. All you need are at least 3 shafts.......then a lot of imagining: "What would happen if....."

If you want to post more in the comments, please do.

Now....I must get back to the loom. There's a deadline looming (bad pun)!

A Chip Off the Old Block

2011-05-24T17:20:00.000-04:00

I've been playing around with block design in weaving on the warp from this post. The warp is a sample warp in preparation for a larger piece. The one requirement is that the fabric be double faced. I've decided to use a Summer & Winter threading and various Summer and Winter treadlings for my double faced project.
Here's the front of a finished sample from this warp:

And here is the back:

And here are some other treadlings still on the loom:

Obviously, I can't show you the back side since these ones are still on the loom. There are even more treadlings wound up on the cloth beam.

These aren't the yarns I will be using. This is just play. But I hope to have the project warp on the loom by the end of day tomorrow.

Malapropisms or ....

2011-05-21T11:06:00.001-04:00

....the best quote I've heard all day:
Stopped at the gas station this morning and picked up a newspaper. The woman running the computer/cash register was having difficulty getting it to accept her password. In frustration she looked at me and said:

"You know computers, they're like men. Ya can't live with them and you can't shoot them."

More about weaving later.

Puny

2011-05-11T10:48:00.001-04:00

def. 1.small and weak 2. poor in quality, amount, and size. The New Oxford American Dictionary

That is my word for the day...no, for the week. Still not up to par after the siege of the virus. But I am more mobile than I was a few days ago, as long as I don't stray too far from the cough suppressant and the tissue box.

Another puny thing:

Late last summer, I decided to divide my robust bleeding heart plant in order to have two of them. Alas, the original plant seems to be gone and this is the transplant. Kind of puny compared to this display of past years:

But maybe she'll take hold and flourish. I hope so since I have had this plant for more years than I care to count. Am trying to decide whether to purchase another bleeding heart plant for the original location or go with something that will bloom through the summer. Maybe a red beard tongue to entice the humming birds?

I have been weaving a little as the energy permits. And reading a lot...currently reading The Forgotten Garden which is a good read when you're under the weather.

Well, that's my story and I'm stuck with it. Cover your coughs, and wash your hands, please.

Bleh....

2011-05-06T13:08:00.000-04:00

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I thought it was the pollen

But I guess I have flu.

At Last....

2011-05-04T18:33:00.001-04:00

The new loom arrived in the middle of the kitchen painting and my mother-in-law's passing and so on....

The kitchen isn't all put back together yet but there is a warp on the loom. Here's the loom:

It's a 12 harness/14 treadle Macomber with a double warp beam. I was looking for a heavier loom that could hold high tension on the warp. I think at 200 lbs. it will do that. So far I am very happy.

This loom is so easy to put a warp on for a variety of reasons. I'll do a post on that in a future post. It wasn't possible during this warp since the vertical blinds from the kitchen are on the floor just to the left of the loom along with a lot of other detritus that needs to be put back into the kitchen.

See that wallpaper just to the right of the loom? That's the next home project....but not for awhile yet. I'm not too anxious to start stripping wallpaper again.

Here's the current pattern on the loom:

It's an 8 harness Summer and Winter pattern, number 533 from Carol Strickler's 8 harness book. The yarn is 8/2 tencel for warp, tabby, and used double for the pattern weft. Notice that the pattern is...uhm....geometric.

Meanwhile, my 4 harness Leclerc Artistat loom is for sale. I need to put an ad up on Weavolution. Know anyone in SE Michigan who needs a loom?

Eight years later....

2011-05-04T08:57:00.000-04:00

Mission Accomplished

I just had to point that out because I haven't noticed it pointed out in the press. It's both amazing and frightening to me the amount of strategy that went into the event that is dominating U.S. news this week. From the date, to the disposal of remains to prevent there being a martyr's shrine.

The blessing and curse of "living in interesting times."

Weaving post to come.....

Reflections on communication and marriage

2011-04-30T13:26:00.002-04:00

Like many of you, I watched the Royal Wedding yesterday. In fact I watched certain clips several times. I'm not sure why, since royalty doesn't mean anything in particular to me. But it was just one of those things I had to do to quell my curiosity. Of course I wanted to see "the dress". But I also wanted to see the faces and see what might be seen there.....love, arrogance, humility, grace, commitment, determination.....and of course, youth and beauty.
However all of the time that I was looking at this:

I was seeing this:

I wish them well. I truly do, but boy I wouldn't trade places with either of them for all the world. IMO a successful marriage requires a lot of privacy and patience.

That said, I will proceed to breach some marital privacy and exhibit my lack of patience:

The kitchen is pretty much painted but is not yet reassembled. One of the things I want to do is put upholstered cornices over the windows out there. To that end I brought home a selection of fabrics to view "in situ" and to get the hubster's opinion.

Here are the fabric swatches, in no particular order:

(Disclaimer.... all of them really do coordinate well with the new paint color, despite how the colors reproduced in the photo's. Notice that the ginger peach paint looks like 6 different colors in the photos!)

So, I hung the fabric swatches in various places in the kitchen and when dh came home from work I asked him which ones he would choose.

His answer: "The geometric one."

?!*?!?*!!?!?! It was clear from the look on his face that there was a particular one he preferred, but I ask you: Other than the linear stripes, which of these samples is not geometric?

When I pressed him further he said, "Well, I don't want fish eyes all over the kitchen."

Okay, that ruled out one of the geometric patterns that I kind of liked for the variety of potential accessory colors, but thought might be a little "too 2011" for someone who doesn't re-decorate every 2-3 years.

So I pressed a little further: to him the "geometrics" were the plaids. Uhm...well...those are probably the ones that are least likely to be called geometric. They are also the ones that I brought home only because I thought he might like them....but me? Not so much.

So, I think we're going to go with the last fabric. It is, after all...geometric...right?

Did I mention that a sense of humor and compromise are also required in a successful marriage?

Wills and Kate, good luck with all of that!

Sad end to poetry month...

2011-04-26T14:15:00.000-04:00

This was one of my favorite songs in 1975. In fact I still own it on vinyl.

Such a sad ending to a woman who was dealt a really tough hand in a too short life.

This too was on that album:

Is there a woman alive who hasn't felt this way?

Thank you, Pheobe. Peace to you.

Happy Easter...

2011-04-24T12:02:00.000-04:00

Nothing much to see here. But you simply must go watch the triplets lambs gamboling about over at Cady May's

If that doesn't make you smile, then nothing will.

Some things are just wrong...

2011-04-18T13:24:00.001-04:00

Like this:

Pansies under 2" of snow on April 18th.

The pansies in the flower bed are completely covered.

The kitchen project continues. Below are the paint samples on the wall:

I used my Itten's Color Star to determine that the base color for the stain on the oak kitchen cabinets is indeed a brown based on yellow-orange. So I worked with paint chips that were in the yellow orange spectrum and got little pots of paint to sample on the walls. It appears that the final color will be Ginger Peach which is the 3rd color from the right....the long swatch. I guess if you look really closely, it's the 4th color.

All of the paper is off the walls. I am washing off glue, patching and sanding in preparation for primer.

We lost a week of work last week when my mother-in-law passed away unexpectedly Sunday morning a week ago. Spent most of last week in Pa. with dh's family for funeral activities.

Not much fiber to report. Am not sure when there will be. Thanks for your patience.

Still strippin'....

2011-03-30T14:08:00.000-04:00

Clearing the walls of wallpaper, glue, etc......

It's going to be awhile...

If anyone asks.....

2011-03-23T14:07:00.001-04:00

what I gave up for Lent, just tell them my sanity.

I am in the process of scraping wallpaper from the kitchen walls in preparation for patching, priming, then painting:

This is two days worth of work. It's going to take awhile.

While swabbing and scraping I am listening to A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitx. I like this review. We covered Mexico, Central and South America in 6th grade social studies with Mrs. Keough. That woman made the Spanish entrance into the New World a fascinating story and there are very few characters in Horwitz's account that we didn't cover in her class. The fact that I recall them this many years later (about 35 years ago) really says something about the passion that she had for her subject. Hats off to you, Mrs. Keough, where ever you may be. Much of the Viking information Horwitz covers was new to me, though.

In a curious intersection of narratives, I started listening to this book while finishing Barbara Kingsolver's
The Lacuna (I've saved you a click and linked you to my favorite review). So Cortez was invading Mexico both in fiction and history in my literary life. I recommend both books.

Meanwhile...trash has continued to litter my day. On my way out to the car this AM, I just missed stepping in a "fur ball" deposited by my car by one of the neighbors' indoor/outdoor cats (those pesky neighbors again!). Upon returning from picking up the trash at the end of our lane, I stepped in a second deposit of dismembered vole that I didn't see until it was tracked into the house. It was pretty "fresh", so that little foray must have happened while I was out.

Not much fiber happening around here just now.

I need your opinion...

2011-03-23T11:21:00.001-04:00

What do you think....too passive aggressive?

To: All of our neighbors on the lane

Greetings,

This morning I found myself reflecting on my (misspent?) youth while humming the tune of Alice’s Restaurant. Now normally in our household Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” (if you’re too young, or just happened to lose that decade, search it on You Tube) is reserved for noon on Thanksgiving Day. But it’s come up several times in the past weeks especially on Wednesdays, as I have donned disposable gloves to pick up scattered trash at the end of our lane.

You see, the refuse collectors do not pick up scattered trash. And when the trash is taken up the evening before collection, animals get into the bags during the night and scatter it around while they rummage for food. When it’s windy, it’s scattered even more by the wind and passing traffic.

If your schedule requires that the trash goes out on Tuesday evening, one way to deter the animals is to make up a spray bottle of household ammonia and water and thoroughly spray the outside of your trash bags when you deposit them at the end of the lane. Of course, this doesn’t help with the windy part.

Please do this to help keep me from rummaging around in my distant (and your recently discarded) past. Thanks!

Regards,

Grrr....

2011-03-17T17:08:00.003-04:00

This just in. FWIW...I wrote to my congressman, several times. Even though this is what it says on his wiki page:

"Media appearances

Rep. McCotter is a frequent guest on the late-night Fox News Channel television show Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld. McCotter's appearances on the show come in the capacity of a panelist on the round-robin style talk show, which brings together a few guests (usually some combination of a comedian, a political commentator or analyst, a Fox News on-air personality, and/or a political figure like McCotter), along with host Greg Gutfeld and regulars Bill Schulz (a comedian) and Andy Levy (a commentator), to discuss and joke about topics in news, entertainment, politics, sports and gossip. Host Gutfeld was the former editor-in-chief of men's magazines Stuff and Maxim in the U.K."

Wonder if he gets paid for those appearances?

Yep, I wrote to him....like spittin' in the wind.

PS: But it's okay to use public funding to "inform the public" like this. Again I say: Grrrrr....

More stuff...

2011-03-17T17:00:00.000-04:00

Some things that are coming to completion...

The third prayer shawl. I'm not lovin' this lace pattern. There is more of this yarn in the stash for shawls but they won't be Atwater Bronson Lace.

If you get Spin-Off Magazine, there's a gallery of helix scarves in this issue. If you read carefully, there are more online....many more. Mine is one of them. You can see this one and the pattern for it at Spinning Daily
This is the alpaca that came from Liz at Sundown Alpaca Ranch.

And this is the quilt top for the high school senior(s). It will get turned in to church and the Leisure Timer's group will do fabric paint handprints in all of the white squares. We'll meet in April and put the backings and bindings on, then they will be distributed to be tied. So, it's not really done yet.

And despite all of this, I still feel like I'm not getting anything done this week. Stupid lost hour to DST.

Update....

2011-03-16T16:11:00.000-04:00

Last night I had the privelege of attending a "Hands-on Cooking and Baking Seminar" at Schoolcraft's Culinary Arts program:

We did this once before a couple years ago, but I guess it wasn't blog fodder. Last night there were about 26 of us. We broke into two teams. One group went to the baking/pastry area and the other group went to the cooking area. My friend, Mary, went to the baking area and I went to the "hot kitchen".

No hats for us as you see in the video, but we did get aprons. The cooking team made three soups. The one you see below was my area of responsibility:

Veloute of Mushroom Soup

I've looked online but haven't seen any recipes quite like the one we used. This stuff is to die for!! Of course it has real butter and cream in it, along with a ton of button and shitake mushrooms. The online recipes are lacking leeks, celery, and the technique of sweating the mushrooms to enhance the flavor.

The fun things about these opportunities are the little things you learn from the chef instructors.....like sweating mushrooms, how to clean leeks to get rid of all the sand, and ways to tailor the roux to the recipe at hand.

We made two other soups: Vegetarian Red Lentil and Louisianna Chicken and Shrimp Gumbo.

The bakers finished the bread you see in the above photo along with baguettes, two types of scones, cookies, and stromboli.

At the end of the class we did a tasting meal, then we loaded up shopping bags and soup containers to bring the rest home. I polished off the mushroom soup for lunch. Dinner will be the red lentil soup. Did I mention I love home made soup?

Fiber update: The third prayer shawl is finished and awaiting a bit more fringe twisting before wet finishing. Am also in the middle of piecing a High School Senior Graduation Quilt. I do at least one every year, but that's the only visual reference to it that I can find in the archives.

And I am still waiting for my new loom (Christmas present !?) to arrive.

Some of the reasons I haven't purchased an e-reader

2011-03-10T08:20:00.000-05:00

Insecurity I like my things, electronic and otherwise, to have a reasonable level of security.

Irrationality What is magical about the number 26? What if print books self-immolated on the 27th checkout from the library?

Proprietary Electronic items of a proprietary nature have a shorter functional life than open ended electronic items...which are transitory enough IMO.

Just my personal opinion....but am glad to see I'm not alone.

Today I lit a candle

2011-03-05T16:46:00.000-05:00

and threw the shuttle

and remembered.

Comfort, Comfort My People......

2011-03-03T15:05:00.001-05:00

Two new prayer shawls ready for delivery:

Both are easy care fibers. The darker one is acrylic and knitted. The pink one is bamboo, Aunt Lydias number 10 crochet bamboo to be exact.

This one will be delivered to the church prayer shawl ministry tonight and will go to whomever can be ministered to by a warm shawl over their shoulders in a time of distress. The pattern is The Mystery of the Trinity (Ravelry Link) from The Prayer Shawl Companion.

It took awhile for me to get along with this pattern. In the beginning I ripped it out several times, mostly because it is very difficult to "read the knitting" as you are working it. Finally, I charted out the stitch pattern and it was smooth sailing from there. In fact, I will cast on for another of the same pattern tonight. The yarn is a Bernat worsted acrylic.

This one will be delivered to a friend at brunch on Saturday. She's had a really rough year. I'm hoping that the feminine pink will remind her that spring is on the way and brighter days are ahead. Hoping that this light weight shawl will feel cozy over the shoulders as she settles in with a good book. (I'm also hoping that she doesn't read this....I don't think she has the time.)

There's a third prayer shawl on the loom. This one for a first time mom-to-be with a difficult pregnancy. She's been on bedrest and baby girl isn't due for another 8-9 weeks. I've been on bedrest during pregnancy and it isn't fun. (Remember how your back aches when you try to sleep in the last trimester? Translate that to "stay in bed except to go to the bathroom".)

Hoping to get this one woven off and sent out this weekend. Maybe it will be a comfort during these remaining weeks of pregnancy and perhaps it can even serve as a nursing shawl.

More about this bamboo crochet thread: I dyed some of this at our guild dye day (actually, it's the bamboo I'm painting in the pictures). This stuff dyes beautifully with fiber reactive dyes. I'm looking forward to getting that warp on the loom.

Speaking of looms: I got a call earlier in the week and my new loom will be shipped at the end of next week. As Carly Simon sang: .Anticipation.....

Worst, best and some in between. No fiber content., except maybe moral fiber

2011-02-25T14:45:00.004-05:00

Worst quote I've heard all day:
This post is inspired by the woman who came into yoga celebrating the vote in Wisconsin this AM. When I said that's not a good thing, her reply was: "Whadya mean? Unions are ruining this country!"

Best Quote I remember from graduate school: "Organizations which have labor unions have usually earned them."

For a list of possible ways this can happen take a look at An Eclectic List of Events in U.S. Labor History
Or review the events of the Italian Hall Disaster in Calumet, Michigan in 19 13.

Or the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911. And if you don't feel like reading about it, tune into PBS on Monday night to watch The Triangle Fire.

Most important quote to remember: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana

Oh and there's that other quote to remember: "Money talks". You can listen and read the transcript of money talking here.

Think it through....

More....

2011-02-24T18:13:00.000-05:00

Winter Storm Warning

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DETROIT/PONTIAC MI
424 PM EST THU FEB 24 2011

...QUICK HITTING SNOWSTORM LATE TONIGHT INTO TOMORROW MORNING...

.A QUICK HITTING...RAPIDLY DEEPENING LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM WILL
TRACK NORTHEAST THROUGH THE OHIO VALLEY TONIGHT...TOWARDS
PITTSBURGH BY FRIDAY MORNING. THIS IS HISTORICALLY A FAVORABLE
TRACK FOR HEAVY SNOW IN DETROIT. SNOW IS EXPECTED TO OVERSPREAD
PARTS OF SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN DURING THE EARLY MORNING HOUR AND BECOME
HEAVY AT TIMES ALONG AND SOUTH OF THE M-59 CORRIDOR BY THE FRIDAY
MORNING RUSH HOUR. SNOW WILL LIGHTEN UP BY MID MORNING AND TAPER
OFF BY NOON. NORTHERLY WINDS WILL INCREASE LATE TONIGHT INTO
FRIDAY MORNING WITH GUSTS TO 30 MPH.

...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM TO 11 AM EST FRIDAY...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN DETROIT/PONTIAC HAS ISSUED A
WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 2
AM TO 11 AM EST FRIDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN
EFFECT.

IMPACTS...

 * ROADS WILL BECOME SNOW COVERED FOR THE FRIDAY MORNING RUSH
   HOUR.

 * ROADWAYS WILL BE SLICK WITH SLOW AND HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS
   EXPECTED DURING THE PEAK TRAVEL TIME.

I'll be sitting this one out at the loom. At least until shoveling out time.

For the record..

2011-02-21T09:51:00.000-05:00

We had another snow storm last night. It was originally supposed to be an ice storm, but the ice seems to have gone south of us. According the national weather service, snowfall accumulation for our area for the month of February is 17.5" with more on the way this evening.

Must sign off to help shovel out. So I will leave you with this cozy image:

That's our Jazzy in the front. The photo was taken while she was "visiting" Mowgli (cat in the back) while we were up north last weekend.

Random projects

2011-02-15T15:03:00.002-05:00

I forgot to show you my new yoga bag:

In the spirit of my word of the year, Sufficient, the only things purchased to make this bag were the zippers and a spool of navy blue thread.

The outer fabric, lining, and D rings were all from the stash. And the pattern for the bag was designed by me. My new Christmas gift Manduka mat is larger and heavier than most yoga mats. So I needed a larger, sturdier bag. I also like to carry my own block, strap, towel, and bottle of mat cleaner. This new bag holds it all, including my favorite little Esopus bag. I made a yoga bolster from the same fabric about 2 years ago and blogged about it here.

I'm thinking about this right now because today was Tuesday yoga, where I received one of the most backhanded compliments ever. This is an advanced power yoga class that I've been taking for a couple years along with an Ashtanga Basics class on Friday morning. Since Christmas there's been this African American gentleman join the Tuesday class. He's middle aged and though fit, had no yoga exposure (or much flexibility) before joining this class. I always pick the same spot for my mat in this class and he has generally picked the spot just to my left. Today at the end of class he said in a very loud voice: "You are my inspiration." Well that would have been good if he had stopped there. But he continued with: "To still be able to do all this." Uhm...still!? He clearly didn't realize how that was coming out. I thought it was pretty funny....but the yoga teacher and one of my buddies made a point of making me feel better about that "still" by commenting on my skills that were impressive...not my "advanced age". Thanks Stacy and Sandra!

Anyway...more things I've been putzing with:

Cotton which promises to become very expensive this year. This naturally colored cotton was a gift from J., who is the velvet lady from my previous post. I've been carding it and rolling it into puni's and then spinning it on the wheel: (as always, click for big.)

I'd like to use this yarn as an accent with some 12/2's natural white organic cotton for some kitchen towels.

Still working on the Tunis post. And still waiting for my new loom to ship.

Oh yeah...in case you've missed it, the NPR show "On Point" has a knitting episode here . It features Jenna from Cold Antler Farm .

Wow, this is a link heavy post!

More Pure Michigan...Valentine's Day Weekend

2011-02-14T11:25:00.000-05:00

Here's what we did this past weekend:

BTW The antler they pass around while waiting for dinner is 26 lbs. Imagine carrying two of those around on your head for 9 months of the year.

And we did this:

(We only did the cross country ski part, but we did see sled dogs and snowmobiles.)

Now today it is in the 40's and we are in the midst of a melt. But I won't say "melt down" cause I'm still in an UP mood.

Thanks!

2011-02-11T12:16:00.000-05:00

Thanks everyone for your book suggestions. Bill Bryson was suggested by several of you so I just came home from the library with a new one that he has edited: Seeing Further: The story of science, discovery, and the genius of the Royal Society. Okay, granted Bill Bryson didn't write this, but some fun writers are included:

Margaret Atwood writing about the madness of mad scientists (what fun!)
Margaret Wertheim (who masterminded the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef )
Henry Petroski whose writing on engineering and design is as entertaing as Oliver Sacks' writing on neuroscience and behavior.

Am looking forward to curling up with this collection of essays over the next few days.

Am currently reading The Girl with Glass Feet which was shelved under science fiction, but is more fantasy and perhaps allegory. Okay, I admit it's a bit dark, but so far I like it.

Also, thanks for your encouraging comments on the double weave samples. I hope to get some double weave project warps on the loom in the near future. Cross Borders weavers was interesting yesterday. The hostess presented on her exploration of weaving velvet. Truly amazing work with #30 cotton sewing thread sett at 60 epi for each warp (therefore 120 epi total!) If you don't know what is involved in weaving velvet take a look at Syne Mitchell's article here

I have woven one small piece of velvet, perhaps 3" by 3" in a workshop with Robyn Spady. If you think that it is nerve wracking to cut into your knitting to make a steek, I assure you that it is truly daunting to slice across supplemental warp threads that are suspended by weights from the other side of the loom.

Sigh....life it too short for all the books and yarns yet to be explored......

Double Weave

2011-02-09T19:49:00.000-05:00

Way back in October I took a double weave workshop from Jennifer Moore. I asked for your help here. So the workshop came and went, I organized my notebook, but there was still warp on the workshop loom.

Two people who were key to organizing the workshop were not able to participate because of health issues. So I decided to weave them samples from my remaining warp. Here they are:

The draft is on pages 134 - 136 of Jennifer Moore's Double Weave Book.
Here's the color order that I used:

So the samples are all finished and labeled and ready to give to my weaving buddies when I see them tomorrow.

So a man walks into a bar....

2011-02-09T15:23:00.000-05:00

Or, a robot rolls into a coffee shop...

more info. here

Strange new world we live in.

Yesterday I noticed the women in the Cardio Blast class that takes place in the gym right before my power yoga class. As I waited on the bench outside the room, I could see the class in the mirrored wall. From my vantage point were three women in line from front to back. The first was wearing a Hijab and tunic over her exercise pants. The second woman was Asian. The third woman was wearing a Tilaka. And the music that they were working out to?

Thinking about Janis Joplin. Considering the lyrics. Having been a teen in the '60's....
Strange new world....

Book Bound

2011-02-06T14:06:00.005-05:00

Winter is a great time for reading and I've been doing my share. So here's what I've read so far in 2011:

The first book finished in 2011 was The Glass Room by Simon Mawer. This also happened to be the first selection for the year for our book group. The link is a Library Thing link and my review is there.

Second book into the year was Mrs. Kimble by Jennifer Haigh. It's the March selection for our book group so I was reading ahead a bit. It's an interesting approach to a novel. There are in fact three Mrs. Kimbles in the book and the story unfolds around their relationship to the same (despicable) man.

Next was Great House by Nicole Krauss. There is some beautiful prose writing in this book. However I found it difficult to like any of the characters who are bound together by their relationship to a huge, dark, fantastic desk. I'm not sure I got the point the author intended. Judging by the other LT reviews, I'm not alone in that.

Lately I've been fortunate in winning Early Reviewers selections from Library Thing. Little Princes by Conor Grennan was one of those selections. I requested this book because of a concern for the problem of human trafficking and the various guises in which this abomination takes place. Little Princes is reminiscent of Three Cups of Tea but perhaps not quite as well written. Nevertheless it's nonfiction and a good read.

In a strange twist, the next book on my list explored a different dimension of human trafficking. Room by Emma Donaghue is narrated in the voice of 5 year old Jack whose only experience of the world is an 11' x 11' room where he was born to his mother who was abducted by her captor at age 19. The book is well done as a work of fiction and provokes some thought about an unpleasant topic.

This past Friday was February book group and selection was Mudbound by Hilary Jordan. This is a story about the deep south (Mississippi) after WWII. The story is narrated in six different voices from their differing viewpoints. The primary issue of the story is racial discrimination, however there are aspects of gender discrimination as well. This is another book about social injustice and our potential for complicity when we don't question local norms. It is also a good read.

Just finished is the story Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. This is nonfiction, a WWII story of a man who competed in the 1936 summer Olympics in Berlin. When the U.S. entered the war after Pearl Harbor he became a bombadier in a B-24 Liberator. After several successful missions Louie, his pilot Phil, and Mack are stranded in life boats in the Pacific behind enemy lines. Louie and Phil are picked up by the Japanese and their odyssey of horror through interrogations and beatings, starvation, and abuse in Japanese prison camps ensues. As the subtitle of the book says, it is a story of survival and resilience. This book is extremely well written, even though you want to cover your eyes sometimes. I highly recommend this book.

Currently reading: Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell. This book was made into a movie which won best picture at Sundance. I'm about a third of the way into the book and the writing is very good.

That's the list so far. Now, as DS was getting ready to go on a business trip he expressed the desire for some light reading on the plane. When I invited him to take something from my shelf, he looked at me and said, "You don't read anything light." When you look at the list above, he has a point.

So dear readers, here's a challenge for you:
Are there any "light reading" books that you would recommend to me? Everything I've read in the past couple years are listed at my LT account, so you can check to see if your recommendation is already there. But if it's truly light, it's probably not there. sigh

Breed study - Scottish Blackface

2011-02-05T14:26:00.000-05:00

It's taken me awhile to get to this post. Partly because I've been busy and partly because of a lack of enthusiasm.

My first encounter with Scottish Blackface sheep was on a trip to Scotland nearly 26 years ago when I was a new handspinner. While watching a few lambs gambol about on the green, I asked their shepherd if their wool was good. He replied, "Aye, for stuffing a mattress." Thus was my introduction to Blackface wool (as always, click on any photo for big):

This is the mass of wool I started with in class.

I sorted the locks by length in order to see the variability.

This is a close up showing the different types of fiber found in a Blackface fleece.

I used a pet slicker comb to comb out the fibers and laid them out as you see here (above).

Below is the mass of fibers that were combed out of the locks above:

In an attempt to find the best use for this fiber, five different yarns were spun.

From left to right:

1. Yarn spun directly from the slicker combed fibers.

2. Yarn spun from the mass of combed waste.

3. 4 ply yarn spun from cut, combed fibers.

4. 2 ply yarn from cut, combed fibers.

5. 2 ply yarn spun from the fold of combed fibers.

Close up of yarn 1

Close up of yarn 2

Close up of yarn 3

Close up of yarn 4.

Close up of yarn 5.

All of the yarns are pretty stiff and scratchy. I imagine this wool could be good for rugs and floor mats. Of the kind of yarn crafts that I do, there isn't much use for this wool. But then again, I may prejudiced by that "mattress stuffing" comment from long ago.

Must See TV....

2011-01-26T17:52:00.000-05:00

This afternoon NPR had an interview with Kathy Bates because she has a new tv show.

I have loved Kathy Bates ever since Fried Green Tomatoes. So I had some spreadsheet work to do at the computer and looked to see if her show was available online. Sure enough you can watch the pilot and this week's episode of Harry's Law by clicking on the link. Watched both episodes and I am hooked! Yay, finally a tv show that speaks to my demographic.

Okay now, help me keep this show going. Go watch it, put it in your favorites...do whatever to give it great ratings. We need to chuckle and we need to look at things a little differently than they've been presented to us.

Enjoy!

Random

2011-01-23T14:01:00.002-05:00

January is usually the slowest month of the year, but not so in 2011. We ordered the new loom right after Thanksgiving, so it should be arriving in a couple weeks. Then we ordered some new furniture for the family room (a credenza sort of thing for the tv and matching end table) which should also be arriving in a week or two. There was a quick weekend trip to see dh's parents. Ds is in the throes of purchasing a home. And there have been guild meetings and preparations for another guild's dye day.

Here was my show and tell for the last guild meeting. It's a backed weave based on the cover fabric from Handwoven magazine, March/April 2010. The blue face of the fabric is 5/2 merc. cotton with a cotton space dyed knitting yarn as accent. The green face is 10/2 cotton....green with some co-ordinating stripes. You saw the warp here:

Yesterday was dye day for Michigan Weavers Guild (click of pix). This has become an annual event the past two years, where we gather all of our cotton, rayon, tencel and other cellulosic yarns for a day of dyeing with fiber reactive dyes and Jeanne Seitz shepherds us through the process. Preparation for this event includes days of winding warps and skeins from cones and balls of yarn to get the most out of the day. My bag of warps and wefts are still wrapped in their plastic jelly rolls.The dyes work best at 70 degrees F. With temps in the single digits and negative numbers this weekend, it's been a challenge to keep things at 70 degrees, so they are tucked by the radiator in the warm bathroom. I probably won't get around to rinsing them until tomorrow....or maybe Tuesday.

The Scottish Blackface wool is spun, but I have to take more photo's before doing that post sometime in the coming week. The wool after that will be Tunis. It turned out to be one of my favorite wools from the breed workshop and it sort of fits in with the current events in Tunisia.

Stay tuned.....

Spinning the Breeds - Karakul

2011-01-05T14:31:00.000-05:00

Karakul is the third primitive breed we looked at in the class.

Above is about an ounce of washed Karakul locks. Below you see the variety of fibers found in this mass which is characteristic of primitive breeds.

Considering the diversity of the fibers, I decided to sort through the mass of locks to see how this variety was distributed.

The pile of fiber on the left side of the photo is the majority of the fiber. The lock on the ruler is representative of that mass. The longer fibers are at center top and the short, straight, dark fibers are at the top left.

Thought you might like to see a close up of that sweet little lock:

There was nothing about this bundle of Karakul fiber that said "Comb me!" I looked at what was there for awhile and ran my hands through it. The locks are strong. The wool is lofty and not terribly coarse to touch. It sprung back into shape when squeezed in my fist. My first thought was that if I had a full fleece of this, I would send it out to be made into roving. With that I decided to pull out the drum carder and run the whole batch of fiber through it.

Above is the batt after the first pass through the drum carder. Below is the batt after the second pass.

And finally, the batt after the third pass through the drum carder:

I didn't think it was going to get any better than that, so decided to split the batt in half and head over to the spinning wheel.

The yarn was spun with the large pulley on the medium whorl of my Schacht Matchless wheel. I used a supported long draw to spin a woolen singles:

Here are the singles on the bobbin. The singles had about 4 tpi and about 11 wpi.

Because of the short, dark fibers in this yarn, I kept thinking of making this into a 4 ply cabled yarn, as a means of locking those fibers into the yarn. So I plied the above two bobbins on the smaller pulley of the same whorl with a lot of plying twist:

So here's the two ply. You can see that there's a good amount of ply twist. I wound this yarn into a center pull ball and switched the drive band back to the larger pulley to re-ply this yarn with a z-twist to create a 4 ply cable yarn:

Here is the finished yarn. The skein is balanced. The yarn has a lot of fuzz to it, is a bit prickly against the skin, and isn't terribly elastic. If you click for big you can see the chain like structure of the yarn. This yarn would make a warm vest, a cozy pair of boot liners, or it would be a great rug weft in weaving.

In all honesty, this cabled construction is probably not the best choice for this wool. I don't think the cabled construction would allow for much more fulling/felting A balanced three ply would probably be a bit more elastic and useful for a wider variety of knitting applications. Perhaps balanced three ply would make great felted slippers.

The little bit of balanced two ply yarn that I sampled had just a bit too much "bead" to the two ply bumps for it to be good knitting yarn. And the large amount of short fibers in the yarn made it not very good for weaving, especially for warp.

So, that's my experience with Karakul. I'd be interested to know about the experience of others with this breed.

The next breed will be Scottish Blackface, but not before next week.

Spinnning the Breeds - Navajo Churro

2011-01-03T16:03:00.000-05:00

This is the second entry on the primitive breeds. Deb defined the primitive breeds as those being closer to the wild animal vs. the domesticated animal. She also gave us a list of characteristics that included:

there may be a mix of fiber types in the fleece.
there may be a mix of fiber diameters in the fleece.
the crimp may be irregular.
more likely to have colored fleeces.
and a lower yield.

There's more....lots more, but Deb has a book coming out in the spring and I just want to whet your appetite for all the sheepy, fleecey, goodness that will be served up there.

So...the Churro:

Here we have just under an ounce of washed Navajo Churro locks. The thing that struck me most in handling the fiber was it's dryness. It certainly wasn't over scoured, it's just that this wool did not have the grease and oils that I've come to associate with wool. Upon the first feel, it reminded me more of the camelid fibers because of this dryness.

Here are three locks selected from the mass of fiber. Note the variation.

This was the very first yarn spun from this fiber in class. It's a 2 ply made from locks combed on my Louet mini combs, spun semi-worsted (I allowed some twist into the drafting area), and plied from a center pull ball. It's a haphazard sort of yarn, but this was a busy workshop.

So I got the rest of the fiber home and decided to do the same thing that I did with the Shetland. I combed the mass of fibers on my Forsythe two pitch combs and produced these nice little combed nests:

Yes, I am a bit of a control freak and it is sometimes to the detriment of my spinning. But you have to love these nice orderly little nests of fiber. I spun these nests with a worsted draw (no twist allowed in the drafting zone) and plied the yarn from two separate bobbins. The singles came out to about 35 wpi, plied yarn about 21 wpi. There's about 5 plying twists to the inch and the yarn is pretty much balanced. It's not very elastic and would be better for weaving than knitting. You'll see the yarn from these later.

Meanwhile here's the combing waste:

Wow! That's a lot of fiber still left. So I sat down with the hand cards and produced these fat, sausage-like rolags:

These were spun up woolen style with a supported long draw and just enough twist to hold the fibers together. The yarn was then plied into a 3 ply from three separate bobbins. There are about 4 plying twists to the inch. The yarn is nice and lofty, and would make a great knitting yarn at about 9 wpi.

Here are the two yarns together:

The worsted is on the left and the woolen is on the right.

Here's a closer look:

Two ply worsted on the left, three ply woolen on the right.

Here's a close up of some of the fibers left from the rolags:

Click for big and note the different types of fiber in the fleece. Those short dark fibers in the upper left and in the center aren't second cuts. They are just some short, wiry little fibers that are all part of the package.

The worsted yarn would be nice for a blanket or outerwear but is kind of scratchy for anything close to the skin. The woolen yarn would be great for mittens or gloves. It would also make a warm hat, but I would probably make it a double thickness with something a little softer next to the skin.

So there you go...that's my first round with Navajo Churro.
Once again, thanks to Beth Smith at the Spinning Loft for providing the washed fibers and hosting the workshop (Beth & Chelsea do mail order...I just got 2 oz. of birthday quiviut in today's mail...color me happy!) And thanks to Deb for the great class!

Next fiber will be Karakul, but there will probably be posts of a different sort before that.

Birthday !

2010-12-31T16:03:00.001-05:00

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments yesterday. It does seem that I frequently have a day like that somewhere around my birthday. But today is a new day and a better one! Well, how can you not like a day that brings you dark chocolate with ancho chiles wrapped in a purple ribbon?

It's a bit strange to have a New Years Eve birthday and I always wonder if I would be a completely different person if born one day later. You know....

like, what if I were the baby instead of the old man? Ah well....it's the old man that I am and always will be.

I do have the Navajo Churro fleece spun up and photo's of the process to post. But the past two days have been way too dark to get a decent picture of the finished yarns which are a medium to dark brown. So I'll get those up in a day or two. I think the next breed after that will be Karakul.

There will be some changes in the coming year. One having to do with the new loom that was ordered for me as a Christmas gift from dh (yep, the guy I maligned yesterday about the CO detector...we'll blame that on my inner old man.). Am so excited to be getting a new 32" 12 shaft Macomber loom. with a double warp beam! They are made to order, so mine won't be arriving until late January early February. I'm sure the new loom will bring about changes in my weaving.

There's one more finished item to add to the 2010 list:

Socks from the stash. The ball band from this yarn is long gone. But the socks are very current and are on my (happy) feet right now.

Over the years I've known several people who choose a word to embody the coming year. My friend, Judy, reported that a word would usually come to her sometime toward the end of December and she carried that word with her throughout the year. Bonnie has chosen the word Simplicity for 2011. She has a link to this site that helps you select a word.

Ever since Judy told us about her word thing, I always think about it, but nothing meaningful ever came to me. This year, I've been thinking about how much fiber and fiber related stuff I have. Much of it I've purchased. But after awhile, fiber stuff starts finding you and the accumulation begins. So I was thinking about making 2011 the year of the stash. But I don't want to set hard and fast rules that will just tempt me to break them. Instead I want to set goals. I would like to spend this year using the limits of what I already own to inspire my creativity. The socks above are the beginning of that. There's also a new hat for ds on the needles. He picked the yarn from my stash.....yarn that has been there for maybe 10-12 years.

So as I have started on this "work from the stash" adventure the word Sufficient comes to mind. I know that the stuff I currently own (unspun fiber, knitting yarns, weaving yarns, and fiber books) is sufficient for me to create anything I care to design and make by spinning, weaving, and/or knitting in the coming year. And it is often said that boundaries inspire creativity. So wish me luck, join me if you like, and let's see what sort of fabric a life of sufficiency creates!

Well dear readers, wishing you all the best in the New Year. Let's close out 2010 with a little bit of soul, thanks to the late Sam Cooke. I hope 2011 brings the changes of your hopes and dreams.

Some Days Are Like That

2010-12-30T14:41:00.002-05:00

At 5:30 AM today I was awakened by an electronic beeping sound. I looked over, dh was sound asleep, so I got up to investigate. Stood at the top of the stairs and listened, it wasn't from ds's room, more like it was downstairs. I trundled down to the first floor and cocked my ears. Hmmm...not on this floor, sounds like maybe the basement?

Yep, it was the carbon monoxide detector which is right above the boiler. The cat usually sleeps on the boiler and was nowhere in sight. I did a quick scan of the basement family room and found her cowering above the bar with her hackles up. She hadn't been overcome by carbon monoxide, but she definitely interpreted the beeping as a predator. After opening the patio door for ventilation, I scooped up the cat to take her to safety. Half-way up the stairs the cat was spooked again and jumped out of my arms leaving claw marks on my chest and the base of my throat.

I proceeded to wake up dh since boilers and carbon monoxide monitors are his household areas of responsibility. He went to the now ventilated basement with fresh batteries to determine if it was the monitor or the boiler. Fresh batteries produced the same beeping sound.

While I was putting on a pot of coffee, dh stood behind me with the beeping monitor and asked me: "What do you hear?"

Dirty look.

"No, how many beeps do you hear."

"Uhm....two."

"That's not one of the options."

"You didn't tell me this was a multiple choice test...what are the options?"

"One, three, or four."

I listened again, "Three."

"You're sure, three? Is that the same as when you came downstairs?"

Mustering as much patience as my pre-caffeinated personality would allow. "Well, I'm sure as can be without having my coffee. Why, what do you hear? And what does three mean?"

Without a word he puts the instructions in front of my face....Three means replace the carbon monoxide detector. Something we really needed to know at 5:30 AM during a holiday week.

At this point I decided to just go to the gym and do some cardio. Started to put on one of my usual lined yoga tops and noticed that the huge cat scratches were visible. So just opted for a white crew neck T-shirt instead.

Once on the road I learned that while we were determining that a new carbon monoxide monitor needed to be added to the shopping list, there was freezing rain outside. So I slip-slided my way to the gym in the dark on the ice.

Got to the gym, pulled out my mp3 player and selected my workout playlist. First song on the list cues up but there's no sound. Hit the various buttons, nothing...nada...just the song title on the screen. Even the "off" button produces no response. Okay then...it's 5 years old, so I guess it's done and I will be working out music-less.

My favorite stationary bike was available so I wiped it down, adjusted the seat and selected my usual program. Five minutes into the program I went to take a drink out my water bottle and the whole top of the bottle came off, dumping about a quart of cold water down my front.....you know: the front....in the white T-shirt. I looked like the loser in a wet T-shirt contest in a gym full of the holiday work out people.

At this point, I gave up and came home. Dh had gone out to home despot (they open early, you know) and purchased a talking smoke detector and carbon monoxide monitor (guess he wanted someone else to talk to him after our earlier exchange.)

I'm going back to bed with a book. I figure the worst that can happen there is a paper cut.

Hope your day is going better.

Spinning the Breeds Part 1

2010-12-27T15:52:00.001-05:00

Remember back in November I took that workshop with Deb Robson? I promised some posts so here is a start. Shetland was the first fiber we handled. (as usual, click on the photos for big)

Primitive Breeds - Shetland

We started with a small bag full of locks. This lock is representative of the lot. Notice there are some really long fibers (I didn't stretch them out for the photo, but they measured about 7.5") and some shorter fibers.

These are the 4 distinct yarns created from that bag of locks. The two mini-skeins on the left were spun in class. The two on the right were spun at home. All of the skeins in this photo have been plied and washed.

This is a close up of the yarn on the far left. It is made from the longer fibers in the locks. The longer fibers were separated by simply pulling them by the tips out of the lock. Then they were combed on two pitch Louet mini-combs and spun worsted style before plying as a two ply from a center pull ball. The yarn is very strong with very little elasticity. It would make a good rug warp or a strong braid.

This is the second yarn from the left, spun in class. It is made up of the shorter fibers left after the longest fibers were pulled out of the lock. These shorter fibers were also processed on the Louet mini combs and the yarn was spun semi-worsted by allowing the twist to enter the drafting zone. Again, this is a two ply yarn, spun from a center pull ball. The yarn would be great for mittens, hat, or a cozy scarf, especially if I had made it a 3 ply.

Once I got home with the fiber, I decided to take a little more time in fiber prep. I combed the locks with my Forsythe two pitch hand held combs to separate the longer fibers from the shorter ones. Here are the little "nests" that I pulled off the combs, ready for spinning:

And here is the yarn made from them:

It's a two ply yarn, spun worsted from the combed "nests". The plying was done from two separate bobbins. There's a tad more spinning twist than plying twist in the yarn. It's not as coarse as the first yarn because it has a greater mix of fibers than just the very long hairs. The yarn has a lively hand and springs back to shape when crushed. In this two ply it would be a great weaving yarn. It would also knit up beautifully in lace patterns because it's springiness would hold open the lace eyelets and show off the patterning.

The combing waste was carded on hand carders and rolled into these rolags:

And below is the yarn spun from those rolags:

This yarn was spun with a supported long draw with just enough twist for the yarn to hold together, then plied with slightly more twist from two separate bobbins. The yarn is loftier than the second yarn, which was spun semi-worsted. It would make great mittens, which would probably full together to make a very dense fabric as the mittens are worn.

So...four different yarns from one small batch of Shetland locks. What fun! Much thanks to Beth at The Spinning Loft for holding the workshop, washing all that wool, and putting together all the little packages of various breeds.

The next one of these posts will be the Navajo Churro fleece.

Merry Christmas...

2010-12-24T19:00:00.003-05:00

And since I started with Charlie Brown:

Merry Christmas.

Inspiration...or...The Detroit Stories That Don't Make the National News

2010-12-23T12:36:00.002-05:00

This story about the local Annual Mitzvah Day is in today's paper.

IMO, this is what we should be hearing more about on the national news, and less about politicians behaving poorly. So there....

Christmas Time is Here

2010-12-22T15:16:00.004-05:00

A few quiet moments to share with you some of my thoughts of the season. I tend to share Charlie Brown's sentiments about the weeks leading up to Christmas:

I like for these weeks to be quiet, contemplative, and very deliberate. Advent is, after all, a time of watching, waiting, and interpreting signs. This advent there have been sympathy cards to send and condolence calls to make. Not personal losses for our household, but very personal losses for people we care about. For one friend it was the quick passing of a brother living far away. Yesterday's condolence call was to an elderly gentleman dh and I have known since before we were married. He is now legally blind due to macular degeneration. His wife died suddenly this past week, though she has been carrying around an oxygen bottle for a number of years. Together they were able to prop one another up and stay in their home and drive (!?!) to the doctor and for groceries. It's not clear that B. will be able to do that by himself...especially not the driving. Loss in many layers for him.

Yesterday after yoga, one of my classmates stopped me to ask how I had handled it when my son began to question the reality of Santa Claus. Am not sure why she asked me (ds is soon to be 25!)...except that this gal is also the mother of on only son....and I'm the oldest person in the yoga class. My response: "Gee...it wasn't only one conversation...I'm sure of that. And the thing that I remember most clearly was that I never wanted ds to be able to say that we lied to him".

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you can guess that I took a pretty cerebral and calculated approach. Here's some of what I told her:

First, our church observes the Feast of St. Nicholas and that was always an opportunity to talk about the beginning of Santa Claus.

Second ds's first grade teacher had them do a "book" about Christmas traditions around the world. That was a big help because it gave us the opportunity to see that other cultures have traditions that vary from our commercial "Jolly Old Elf" who at that time drank Coca Cola (popular ad that ds picked up on).

The other thing I remember is using Dr. Seuss' book How the Grinch Stole Christmas and my very favorite Christmas video The Muppet Christmas Carol to shift the thinking from the elf who brings gifts to the spirit of generosity. And an assurance that generosity of spirit is at the heart of Christmas giving.....and getting.

So for Jennifer and her son it is my hope that in losing something of that jolly old elf, they will gain something in exploring new possibilities for understanding this holiday. Something like what Dr. Seuss had to say here (click on the link to read the story of this artwork and poem):

Prayer for A Child

From here on earth,
From my small place
I ask of You
Way out in space:
Please tell all men
In every land
What You and I
Both understand . . .

Please tell all men
That Peace is Good.
That’s all
That need be understood
In every world
In Your great sky.

(We understand.
Both You and I.)

My new understanding for this year has been the need for us to be less boisterous (ie.Snoopy in the above video) and more tender with one another in this time when the days are short, the nights are dark and cold, and hope may feel just beyond reach. With thanks for some of the people who brought this awareness to me these past few days:

The woman at the grocery store deli who told me that I had to order a cold cut tray 24 hours in advance. When I said I needed it to take to a bereaved family, she quickly made up a huge tray of lavash sandwiches while I watched then handed me the sample end, because it was lunch time. Thank you for reminding me of Grace.
For my knitting, spinning and weaving friends who take the time to knit for others. And who gather together over a cup of coffee to do so. Thank you for reminding me of the importance of community.
The woman who cut me off with her big SUV in an empty parking lot, shaking her fist at me because she wanted to get the spot closest to the door before Costco opening. Thank you for reminding me that disapproval and disdain of others is very unbecoming.
For the folks who maintain the Passive Aggressive Notes site. Thank you for making me chuckle everyday and for helping me to recognize that my last item was just a tad passive aggressive.
And for all of you readers who show up here despite my rather haphazard approach to blogging. I always look forward to your comments, though I can't respond to the ones without emails. Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my rambling thoughts.

Wishing you all the very best for what ever holiday you celebrate this time of year. May warmth, light, and hope prevail!

Pepto bismol by any other name

2010-12-18T16:11:00.001-05:00

is still Pepto Bismol pink. The other name would be Honeysuckle which has been named Pantone's color of the year.

You know, I've been thinking about this past decade and it really was a pretty grim decade. Just as I was building hope for the decade to come, this slaps me right down. There are shades of pink that I do like...just not this one.

Then again, I have been planning to make 2011 the year of "shop from the stash" and "buy no clothing unless it is replacing an item." This color trend may serve me well in pursuit of that goal.

Spinning wool breeds...

2010-12-05T12:49:00.000-05:00

Cathy requested that I do a longer post about Deb Robson's workshop two weeks ago. It is something that I want to do, but not likely to happen before the holidays.
To sate your appetite for more information, Sasha has posted a podcast interview with Deb that I think you'll find very interesting. Grab your knitting or your spinning and go listen here.
Enjoy...

Current events...

2010-12-02T16:24:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update on what my hands have been doing.

The sister skein to the blue/green alpaca has been spun and plied:

The white was spun using a supported long draw while the blue was spun with a worsted draw. I used the same size whorl to spin both, though I went up a size to ply the blue and went down a whorl size to ply the white. You have to look pretty closely to see any difference between the two skeins, but you can tell the difference immediately when handling the skeins.

Just in time for our first snow, I finished a new pair of gloves to go with my new winter coat:

The yarn is some old two ply Harrisville from a cone in a color called cimmaron. I don't think they make this yarn anymore. The pattern is from the very first issue of Interweave Knits. I love hand knit gloves, not least of all because they fit.....

....Uhm...like a glove. (Yeah, you saw that coming.)

And currently on the needles are a new pair of socks:

I'm doing the magic loop on a 42 inch needle. The yarn is from the stash and the ball band is long gone. So far I'm not loving the magic loop. Double pointed needles are not a bother to me. But I thought I'd give this a try since dh does not like me kntting as a passenger in the car with five size 1 double pointed knitting needles between me and the air bag. Am not sure he'll be happier with just two points.....I'll learn that on the next car trip.

And there has been more spinning and plying:

I spent about 9 hours plying this over Thanksgiving weekend and still have at least an hour or so to complete it. The fiber is Blue Faced Leicester (75%) and silk (25%) in the Frolic colorway by Black Bunny Fibers. There's a total of 4 ounces and I plan to weave with it. Will give you the specs. on the yarn once I get done plying and head to the loom with it.

And the looms....still no good pictures. We've had a lot of gray days.....

Finally the right answer to a 40 year old question

2010-11-24T14:05:00.000-05:00

Way back when I was just out of high school and had spent just a few stays in hotels, all the wasted soap really bothered me. I remember a late night dormitory discussion my freshmen year in college about what happens to that hotel soap. Naive, small town girl me hoped that somehow it found its way to someone who needed it. My more worldly suite mates chided my naivete and said it probably was thrown in the trash. Every time we stay in a motel, the conversation replays in my head as I choose whether to unwrap the face soap or the body soap and resolve to make the most of it.

Turns out I'm not alone. Clean the World collects and sanitizes soap from the hospitality industry and puts it to good use around the world. Clean water and soap is critical to prevention of deadly diarrheal diseases in areas of crisis.
You can listen to the npr segment on this here . What a great idea and use of resources.

Meanwhile...I have tons to blog about if I could/would just get my act together. Spent this past weekend in a workshop with Deb Robson at The Spinning Loft. We covered about 17 different breeds of sheep with about an ounce of washed locks for each breed. Two solid days and one evening of sitting and spinning and listening to Deb impart information about the wonders of wool.

So perhaps in the near future you will see a post of my mini-skeins and all the wool that remains to be spun. Then there's the weaving....still a lot of weaving to show you. But first there is a holiday meal to prepare.

As I contemplate the embarrassment of riches in my life, there is so much to be thankful for....for what is in our life as well as what is not in our lives. I am grateful for those of you who stop by here regularly, even while I am not regular about posting. Thank you so much for your encouraging comments along the way. May you all have many blessings in your lives and few trials to contend with. Happy Thanksgiving, even if you aren't in the USA.

Surprise!!

2010-11-18T19:49:00.000-05:00

I wanted to show you what arrived in the mail yesterday from Liz at Sundown Alpaca Ranch :

Well actually, it was two balls of alpaca roving but it was already pretty dark when the mail came yesterday and I couldn't get a good picture when the box was freshly opened. Last night the blue green ball just hopped into my hands as I sat with the spinning wheel in front of the tv. So, you'll have to use your imagination for that blue/green fluffy ball.

Liz had a lottery for new followers of her blog last month and I was one of the winners. The fiber is just gorgeous and spins into beautiful yarn:

There's just a little bit of glitz in this yarn, I think it's firestar, but this photo doesn't pick that up.
Thanks so much, Liz!

Then today I had a less welcome surprise:

This warp has been a monumental PITA. It's a double layer warp with different size threads in the two layers and there are stripes in both layers. So it had to be warped front to back. It seemed to take forever to sley the reed and thread the heddles, probably because I procrastinated more than I actually worked on it. Then today I sat down to tie onto the back apron rod and smack in the middle of the warp there are 8 threads that were not threaded through heddles. ARGH! Fortunately the threading is a straight draw on 8 harnesses. I thought about rethreading from that midpoint to the end again then decided to look in the weaving cupboard.

Ahem....clearly I have made this mistake before. Perhaps not a whole 8 thread bundle worth, but enough to have cut into a few heddles to create repair heddles. I just needed to cut two more and put them on the heddle bars to thread those loose ends and we're back in business.

I finished tying on the back apron rod, crawled under the loom and tied up the treadles, then cut the ends in front of the reed. By then it was time to make dinner and I didn't have the heart to tie onto the front apron rod and check to see if there are other threading errors. Save that for tomorrow.

Right now I'm going to park my carcass with some yarn and knitting needles and work on a pair of gloves to go with my new winter coat. They're forecasting temperatures in the 20's tonight and I need new gloves!

Can you relate?

2010-11-18T13:07:00.001-05:00

This video sort of sums up what life feels like right now:

Yep, they did mix the fiber metaphors, but that's that next generation I was telling you about.

Thanks to Cady May for making me aware of the video.

The Next Fiber Generation....

2010-11-12T13:53:00.003-05:00

Over the past several years a topic that frequently surfaces when weavers, and almost any fiber-crafters other than knitters, assemble is "where will the next generation come from?" We bemoan the lack of art and manual skills taught in the schools and we note that most of our guilds are populated by those who have left the mainstream working world and have entered retirement. Guild participation and enrollment is waning.

Both Sandra Rude and Laura Fry have recently written posts that express concern about how new weavers will find their way. And in a recent conversation I had with a prominent weaving instructor, Syne Mitchell was pointed to as our best hope for bringing in the next generation. I love the work that Syne has done. She has demonstrated phenomenal energy and creativity in getting the word out about weaving through the electronic media. But....(and I can say this because I am a lot older than Syne..almost old enough to be her mother) Syne recently celebrated her 40th birthday. There are at least 2 generations of weavers coming up behind Syne.

Three years ago in a workshop with Randall Darwall at Penland we spent one of the discussion sessions talking about where the next generation will come from. I opined then, and I maintain that opinion, that the next generation of weavers are already there, but they are very different from our generation. They have to reinvent weaving to make it their own. In the same way that many of today's mature weavers started out with hemp rope and macrame' frames, the next generation of weavers will discover the magic in the intersection fibers and they will create their own web.

These young people were raised on electronic media. They have played video games all of their lives. This is where they learned the tactics and strategies of problem solving. They do not attack problem solving in the same linear fashion that was drummed into us. Their approach is not likely to be exactly like our approach. Yet we leave them a legacy that they will eventually discover. They will find it in places like: Handweaving.net, with deepest gratitude to the work of Kris Bruland, in places like YouTube (look! no gray hair!), and in places like Syne's Archives.

I am confident that they are there because I am confident of the human need to create. The need to make things is an essential part of being human. Not every human has the need to make something out of fiber, or even necessarily something that can be held in the hands. But I think we can trust that there will always be a segment of society that does need to create a tangible object and a portion of that segment will be inspired by fiber. These relatively recent developments are what inspire my confidence:

The Crafter's Manifesto

The Maker's Manifesto

The iFixit Manifesto

The Young Makers Program

And while you're there, subscribe to the RSS feed for Craft
See, they are there. They are differently inspired and they organize themselves differently than our generation. Why would they want to just clone our generation when we who lived through the 1960's didn't want to replicate the generation who went before us?
Especially when a part of the legacy left them has been this:

I think they are going to be just fine. Let's get behind them, give them support, and encourage them to lead us in new directions.

Things to do on a gray November day.....

2010-11-10T14:12:00.001-05:00

November is definitely here. The furnace is on, the days are overcast, and the nights are cold. Hot cocoa tastes good, especially in the evening. And handknit socks are a daily wardrobe item.

My spinning wheels are definitely affected by the change of seasons, so twice a year I find myself giving them an overhaul:

Today is the day to nourish the wood by rubbing it down with a beeswax/lemon oil product for wood. Then clean out the old oil and gunk from the all of the bearings, lubricate everything generously, and use leather restorer on the leather parts. Also, replace the drive band, brake band, and brake band "spring" (I use covered pony tail elastics).

All of my wheels are wood and they change when the furnace comes on in the fall and when it goes off in the spring. The change is so dramatic, that it's almost impossible to spin with them until they get their overhaul. Such was the case last night, when I thought I'd spin a few more grams of a fiber that I've been working on. So today is the day for wheel tune-up.

A gray November day is also a good time to thread the loom:

I don't usually warp front to back, but this is a double faced weave and there is a top and bottom warp, both with stripes. So this one is front to back. Must thread the heddles and tie-on to the back beam before I'll be able to throw the shuttle.

And when all this is done I will sit down to watch last night's episode of The Good Wife and knit on some socks in progress:

Yes, I still have more weaving to show you. But I need a day with good lighting for photography as well as good motivation for writing the post. Hopefully those particular stars will align soon.

Hope your day has as much pleasant fiber as mine does...even if it is gray outside.

Oh yeah....one more thing to do on a gray November day: write a blog post!

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T14:25:00.001-04:00

You must go look at this.

The physical therapist in me has sat and scrutinized the vertebrae to be sure that they are the right shape and orientation for each level of the spine. The pelvis is in great alignment.

The yogi in me wants to tell the skeleton to draw the shoulder blades together toward the spine.

The knitter in me says, "It's a bit late for a sweater."

Regardless...Happy Halloween. Today is dh's birthday....chocolate mousse cake for two with a bit of Cherry Garcia ice cream tonight. Woo hoo!

A Start on the Weaving Posts..

2010-10-30T14:52:00.000-04:00

At first I thought I would do all of the weaving posts in one go. But perhaps it would be better to take it "one bite at a time".

Fresh off the loom this week is my Baby Alpaca Scarf:

I made it to go with a pink down vest and a black suede jacket, both of which get a lot of wear this time of year. Here are a couple other views:

The yarns are Plymouth Yarn's Bably Alpaca Lace Weight: a 2 ply yarn in 50 gr. skeins of 437 yds. I used one skein of pink and one of black. The black yarn was slightly more heavy than the pink with slightly less yardage. I sett the yarn at 24 epi. and beat the plaid to square.

The weave structure is an 8 shaft 3/1:1/3 twill plaid. The source for the draw down is pattern #235 from A Weavers Book of 8-shaft Patterns, edited by Carol Strickler. The above photo's give you the view that the plaid does not "read" the same on both sides. In the photo immediately above the right hand side of the photo you see more of a squared, balanced plaid effect. On the left hand side of the photo, the plaid is dominated by horizontal stripes.

The scarf was 7.33" in the reed, the finished width is 6.75". I was hoping to get a finished length of 70" plus fringe, but ran out black yarn. So my finished length is 54" plus fringe.

The yarn was easier to work with than I anticipated. It fuzzes, so I expected a sticky warp and perhaps some broken warps from the fuzzing weakening the yarn. But none of that happened.

All in all, other than being a bit shorter, the hand of the scarf is just as I planned......Love that!!

The spinners equivalent of hitting a tennis ball against the garage wall:

2010-10-29T14:08:00.003-04:00

The reason for my title on this post is because the video reminds me of the Mitch Hedberg joke: "never play tennis with the wall, because the wall always wins."

To increase the challenge, add cats.

Colors of October - One Michigander's Perspective

2010-10-29T11:57:00.000-04:00

I wasn't going to do Colors of October this month because it has been a very busy month with little time for leaf peeping. But Sue tells us that this is the last Colors of the Month posting, and IMO this is really the prettiest time of the year in Michigan, so here's your colors:

Most Octobers we take a "leaf peeping" trip and get to see things like:

and:

(all of the above photo's are from October of 2008)

But this year, the month has been filled with working and waiting and getting things fixed: a flat tire that took three trips to the tire store before it was repaired correctly; a tv that required a service call; a broken printer; a four hour power outage. Before starting this post I just said goodbye to the cable guy who came in and replaced the cable box which got fried in the power outage.

However, this summer was exceptionally hot and wet in southeast Michigan, conditions that make for good compost.

So I spent time shoveling out this:

Wonderful, rich soil made from kitchen vegetable scraps and last year's garden clean out.

I worked in into the soil of the cleaned out flower beds.

If you notice in the photo below, the remains of many of my earlier "colors of the month" are in the compost bin, getting ready to be the compost for next autumn:

So I guess you could say my colors for this autumn are essentially brown: rich, dark, composted earth brown.

Now, go visit Life Looms Large and see the colors from other parts of the world, and perhaps add your own!

Driveby...

2010-10-26T13:05:00.001-04:00

I have weaving to show. Actually, quite a lot of weaving. But first I must get the lighting right to take some decent photo's. Meanwhile we are under severe storm warnings, so good lighting may not be possible today.

So while you wait for that update, please go read this. It's something I am passionate about.