What came off the loom yesterday is my guild challenge. I'll post a picture of it once it's done, I'm still in the thinking stage of how to finish it for display. The Theo Moorman weave structure for it turned out just as I wanted.
What came off the loom yesterday is my guild challenge. I'll post a picture of it once it's done, I'm still in the thinking stage of how to finish it for display. The Theo Moorman weave structure for it turned out just as I wanted.
Sorry the picture is sideways - I took it using both orientations with my phone and both were turned. There's no rhyme or reason to why sometimes it works, sometimes not. I take several pix.
Thinking of guild challenges, our challenge for this year was pulling a National Park postcard from a pile of envelopes containing them. I pulled Isle Royale which is a Michigan island in Lake Superior very close to Canada. I had never heard of it. A fellow guild member told me about author Nevada Barr who wrote a series of mystery books that take place in National Parks, the main character is a female park ranger. The second book in the series took place on Isle Royale. I have now read 3 books in the series, they're light and quick reads and I'm enjoying learning about more National Parks.....will soon get the next in the series from the library. I have an idea for my challenge piece but am waiting for one supply I need - will share my plan when I get it on the loom. I decided in addition to a woven piece I'll also knit the hat out of the book Knitting the National Parks - I'm ready to start that any day now. BTW - that book is a beautiful knitting book, love the hat patterns for each park.
Onward with the day..........
Yesterday was not without snafu's at the AVL when I started weaving. Springs at the bottom of the harnesses sprung off a couple times, cable came undone from the top hooks and jumped out of the guide a couple times. Very frustrating but eventually all was well, not sure what the problem was...........and then when I started to weave again I was getting a shed so small the shuttle wouldn't fit through. I did what often needs to be done with techie things, turned everything off and on, more than once but eventually the shed was back to normal - phew. The rest of the time weaving was uneventful.
Next warp planned for the AVL. It's an original design of mine. I may wind it today........or may get sidetracked and work on something else...........
More hats being knit on the Addi machine in-between other projects and chores.
(in case anyone is interested this pattern is Queen's Delight out of the monograph - Miniature Patterns for Handweaving by Josephine Estes)
Today we have torrential rains which is better than the ice to the north and snow to the east. I'll be staying in to weave and knit while listening to audio book 8 of the outlander series. I had wanted to go to the weaving guild meeting but it's probably 50 minute drive, much of it on the highway with crazy drivers, especially semi's, in this rain I'd rather not be on the road with them. As a friend on the coast would say it's raining pitchforks and shovels.
The bad - I hadn't put this on my to-do list even though it was something I've wanted to do for months. Now I don't get the pleasure of crossing it out. Does it still count if I write it on the list now and then cross it off???
I continue to go through some stash/books to see if they need to go live elsewhere so they get used. I have a container of novelty yarns that would be great to mix in as accents in knitting or weaving projects that will need new homes, still keeping some for myself. Today I'm going to look over my knitting books, some of which I bought but will probably never knit any of the patterns.
Sheesh - just noticed in the picture I have a mistake, a white stitch where it should be purple. Thinking it will stay that way. I could try doing a duplicate stitch overtop the white stitch but then that might even draw more attention to it. Oh well.........
Today's chore was organizing my knitting supplies as they were spread all out over the house instead of where they should be. I thought I was done and then found another basket full. Now they're all organized. Two dilapidated knitting totes are off to the trash, all combined into a third one. I also went through my felted knitting books to share with others. I kept one. I will never make all those projects so best the books move on to someone that will use them. This freed up space on one shelf for more quilting books...........ah, there's always an upside to cleaning out.
Other than the knitting projects I have going I'll have to go look over that very long to-do list to see what I'm in the mood to work on next.
I wish you all a Happy New Year - I wish you peace, good health, no chaos or crisis and lots of time to be creative at what you love doing..............
I've got another gift project planned - a couple table runners to match some melamine platters. It's hard not to put on long warps like I did when selling my weaving but I'm starting to get used to it. The table runner project wouldn't really work for many others because of the bright colors so no use putting on a long warp.
Tonight will be spent hand hemming a few table mats off another table runner warp. I need to lay out one of the table runners on the table and get a pic of it to post.
But it was a comedy in errors getting this on the loom - I'm blaming it all on the prednisone I started on Saturday for intense sciatica pain. It is helping quite a bit but I'm wondering what will happen when my 9 day course of this med is over, will the pain return??? I'm waiting on the scheduler to get me in with PT so hoping that happens soon. Now back to this project. I wound the warp, got it wound on the back beam yesterday. I threaded the heddles. Then I sleyed the reed - I'm using 24 epi in a 12 dent reed only I didn't double check which reed was in there and it's so close to my 15 dent reed. You can guess what happened - I got to the end of sleying the 'wrong' reed and sat back and could see it immediately so I pulled all 476 ends out, put in the 12 dent reed and re-sleyed. I got the warp tied on the front beam and started to weave to make sure all was correct - nope. But it wasn't a threading error, I had 3 out of 10 treadles tied up incorrectly. I have NEVER used the wrong reed and NEVER tied up treadles incorrectly in my 37 years weaving so I've determined it must be from prednisone brain, if there is such a thing. At least fixing treadle tie-ups is much quicker than dealing with a threading mistake.
I stopped to watch HGA's Textiles and Tea zoom presentation at 1:00 and now am having a hard time going back to the loom, just can't seem to focus. While the presentation was on I did cut out fabric for 4 tote bags for gifts (maybe one a gift for me) - I'll get to sewing those another day as I need a color of thread I have none of........isn't that always the way it is.........
In other crafts I'm working on small holiday gifts here and there. Hoping to get a warp on the loom soon but need to finish up a couple of other projects first, feeling very scattered. Would love to get holiday gifts finished up in the next 2 months so I can get back to a wall quilt I had taken a class on.
Not much else to say. It's hot, but not as hot as it could be, that's coming this weekend. Just like every summer we're in extreme fire season - fire just a bit to the west occasionally throws some smoke in our direction but it's mostly blowing the other direction. Counting down the days until the end of fire season. I hate summer.
This is weft color number 3. I'm not sure what color will be next. I had hoped to have this warp woven off this past weekend but it didn't happen. Since I no longer sell woven goods I'm not weaving much these days but would really like to get back to it. There have been many projects on my very long to-do list that I could never find time for.....not sure how to get my mojo back........