Looks good on paper.......

I'm still here, just been working on things I can't show like sitting in front of the laptop for hours working on this new draft, or doing some sewing for gifts which I can't show yet. I have done a little spinning but already showed what's on my spindle so won't bore anyone with that again so soon.  So this is my vines & leaves draft - I have worked on several versions of it, had to step away, then go back to it to see what was bothering me and do more tweaking. I can't tell you how many hours have gone into this and I won't know if it's a success until I actually weave it. Still on the upside of a steep learning curve with designing for the AVL. I plan on getting a gold tencel warp on after the holiday weekend to give it a try, am auditioning wefts but those always change and usually aren't what I usually envision in the planning stages.

On an upside - all of a sudden uploading photos to the blog is working after not working correctly since the beginning of the year - whoo hoo!

Read below if you choose.........or not - it's just me ranting........

On the downside - I live in a crazy county here in SW Oregon......everyone wants services but no one wants to pay for them, I just don't get it. For well over a year we have had very little law enforcement and when someone is arrested they are let out of jail before the end of the day because there is no money to fund the jail for more than a small number of prisoners......and that's if they actually make it to trial since there is very little funding for that either. This has been an ongoing issue for years but the last 2 it's gotten really bad. It is a joke in the county - criminals do what they want because there are no consequences. Last year a measure to fund safety was voted down, this past Tuesday it was voted down once again but this time only 51% to 49% - last I heard there were only 400 votes between the two. I don't even want to know how my friends and acquaintances voted because I'd probably be disappointed in them if I knew for sure they voted against the measure. Our county has the lowest tax rate out of the entire state by a large amount........that is because no one wants to pay taxes here. We have no county libraries anymore - thank goodness a volunteer group organized and started up communities libraries that run on donations.......so some of us donate each year so everyone can benefit of having access to a library, no one is turned down a library card.

So, here I sit on acreage with a locked gate, an alarm system that's only purpose nowadays is to alert me to something happening as no one will respond to it, great neighbors, guns if needed (hopefully never) and  fingers ready to dial 911 if I feel like I am in immediate danger......and what will I say when the 911 operator answers but FIRE.  I pay for fire protection so I know someone will show......I'll just have to deal with the consequences of doing that after the fact. And yes, this county votes down having county wide fire protection too so if we want it we contract for it on our own with the one reliable local company.

Enough of my ranting.......I plan on having a wonderful holiday weekend and I hope all of you do the same.....and I will be keeping in my heart the folks of Oklahoma who have lost so much.......so small are my problems........

Orchids - 3 blooming, 2 more will be soon.....they love, love, love this kitchen window......

Back to the art yarn

It's back to the art yarn......when I last left off on this project I had gone from this basket of fluff of all sorts of fibers, ribbons, glitz, etc. to spinning two full bobbins of singles.

Here's one of the bobbins of singles waiting to be plied with some rayon thread

Here it is plied - don't ask me what happened to the color on this photo, it's more like the photo above, not as orange as this looks. This is hard for me to spin and ply, I tend to like my handspun yarn smooth and even - dealing with the resulting lumps and bumps is pretty distressing to me. I know, I know, it's got character and is art yarn.......but you know, I don't buy art yarn or lumpy, bumpy yarn so I'm not exactly sure what project I'll use this in. Time will tell after I ply the next bobbin and find out how much yardage I have.  I'm sure I'll like whatever it grows up to be......I think........

Wine Country Treasury

Pour a glass and enjoy the treasury I've put together this morning......yes, yes, it's a bit early here on the west coast for wine but it's at least lunchtime somewhere, cocktail time other locations.  Click HERE to go to the treasury on the etsy site - favorite it, visit the shops..........

Pet peeve of the day........

Pet Peeve: "A pet peeve is a minor annoyance that an individual identifies as particularly annoying to them, to a greater degree than others may find it."

Ok, so many of my pet peeves I wouldn't consider minor annoyances but edging toward major ones. I promise I won't be posting a pet peeve of the day - that would be too depressing but I had to complain a bit today.

Why is it nowdays that it takes a major tool to get a lid off a jar??? Ok, so this picture is just a free one off the internet, it's not really me, but I'm thinking I might need a wrench like this to get the lids off jars. I've got 3 types of devices to open jar lids plus a pretty strong husband and sometimes it's almost impossible. I fought and fought this evening to get the lids off a jar of roasted peppers and artichokes. It shouldn't be this hard. I know companies are trying to protect us, covering their asses, but do they really have to put them on quite as tight as they do?

And while I'm on a roll here's another pet peeve of mine - why is it that loading pictures on the blog used to work fine until a few months ago and now it's a major issue to get them up on my blog? The only way that I've been successful is to start my post, publish it, and then go in to edit it - that's when I can upload pictures.......most of the time. So, that's my routine now, takes much longer to post than it used to. I've gotten no help from the blogger forum. Oh well, guess I just have to suck it up and deal with it.

Ok, that's it - no more pet peeves for the day. Speaking of tools (yes, there's one pictured above) my hubby surprised me with a reciprocating saw for our anniversary, commonly known as a Sawzall. Normally that would be something that wouldn't earn him points but it was a joke, and a joke that he'll enjoy using and already has. For years, probably all 30 of them we've been married, I've been saying I want one of those saws - cool things can be deconstructed using one, including taking down walls. I'd watch in envy on the home improvement shows when they'd pull out the Sawzall.........hmm, what can I use it for..........  A little history on gift buying in this relationship - hubby is not allowed to buy me anything with a power cord - years ago when he wanted to buy me an electric bobbin winder for weaving he called a friend to make sure it was ok since it had a cord - she assured him it was......great gift, that was.

Now off to collapse after weighing out close to two hundred pounds of roving today, bagging and tagging it, putting it into inventory. I still have a large amount of natural fibers sitting down there to weigh out tomorrow for future dyeing.....it's dye season again.

Steampunk

I had the embroidery machine running today while taking photographs of handwoven towels and scarves for my etsy shops. I need to stay close by since it's an inexpensive machine and I have to be there to change thread colors unlike commercial machines where there are many needles threaded with all the different thread colors.

I love this new to me steampunk spinning wheel embroidery design. I only stitched two of them in case no one else is as enamored as I am with this funky wheel.

This is a nice soft cotton flour sack towel with red twill stripes - I thought the primitive country sheep with heart embroidery suited it well. I like this towel as it has a handy twill tape to hang it with.

And more of the white sheep on oatmeal linen towels - a variation of ones done in the past - they're very popular.

These towels are up for sale now in my etsy shop. I also got the last of the Deep Blue Sea Waves scarves up in the shop for sale. And tomorrow handwoven towels will go up after friend Yvonne picks out the ones she wants to buy.

I am longing for a day of frittering but it doesn't seem to happen - too much to do - and I've still got pounds and pounds of roving that arrived last week waiting to be weighed, bagged, labeled and relisted in the shop.....not to mention weighing out roving for future dye days. No rest for the wicked.........

Mother's Day gift

My mother is at that stage in her life where she says she doesn't need anything, figuring out a gift can be hard so I try to go handmade. For mother's day I altered a sweatshirt into a cardigan. She lives in a retirement community and goes from her cottage to the main building for meals, the dining rooms can be cold in the summer time so this will be perfect worn over a t-shirt. I took a commercial sweatshirt, cut it down the center, cut off the neck ribbing and put on a binding out of some fun ginkgo fabric I had in the perfect color (yes, I do have a big stash of ginkgo fabric, no surprise, huh?). Her arms are short so I cut off a bunch on the sleeves and put the binding on the edge of them too. What you can't see in the photo are the pockets - I was trying to get a picture of the t-shirt and didn't think about the pockets. After cutting off the sleeve ribbing I opened it up, cut it into square pockets, edged the top with the fabric binding and sewed them on. Then I took a t-shirt and appliqued a piece of the binding fabric on the front and a little applique on the back. I think it turned out really cute. I've got an idea for one for myself, maybe with some beadwork, some handwork too.........but not sure when that will happen as it's not high on my to-do list at the moment, too many other things that need to be done right now.

I'm still here....just busy as all get out.....

First off - this is not my sweater. This is my friend Kathy's (who should have a blog) handspun handknit sweater which is the product of some of my hand-dyed roving (SW BFL in Golden Turk colorway which is currently sold out). It's a cute adult short sweater - so cute I'm going to go find the magazine in my stash with the pattern.

It's been over a week since I last posted - I've been busy, well, busy part of the time. Our 30th anniversary was earlier this week so Sam surprised me by taking 3 days off work - we left for the coast Saturday morning after a community concert Friday evening, and came home Wednesday evening. It was a great relaxed time with walking on the beach, reading, painting a few pieces of furniture and just plain old relaxing. Oh, and dinner out at The Loft - I've written about this restaurant before - it's one of those places where all we talked about during dinner was how good each bite of food was.

Thursday was spent baking for my guild hostessing duties, catching up on business, shopping,  finishing up a mother's day gift, packing and shipping orders, doing laundry.  Friday was spent sitting the WeGO (Weaving Guilds of Oregon) traveling exhibit in which I have 2 pieces......the exhibit is traveling the state for a year and May is the month our guilds host it at a gallery in Jacksonville, OR. We had some very interested visitors in the morning but it was slow in the afternoon so my friend Kathy and I sat and  spun and caught up (that's when I got the picture of her sweater above). I stayed a little while for the opening reception in the evening. Then yesterday was the monthly weaving guild meeting (which I baked for) - it was held at the gallery so members could see the exhibit. In a few hours I'll be heading to town to pick up my mother and bring her to our place for the day and dinner. Tomorrow I crash......and pack up orders to ship, hem 13 handwoven towels, maybe get some pix up on the blog of the traveling exhibit and if I get to it start weighing out roving to go in one of my etsy shops.........boring job, I usually put on a movie or book on cd......

Happy Mother's Day to all of you mother's out there whether it's to 2 or 4 legged kids.....

Another etsy treasury

I just created another Etsy Treasury showcasing pretties for the kitchen featuring handwovens from an etsy team I'm a member of - Handweavers of Etsy.  Click HERE to go see it on etsy, favorite it, click on the items and visit the shops.

Sunflower towels......

Sunflower towels off the loom, washed, dried and now awaiting hemming which probably won't happen for well over a week due to everything else on the schedule...........

New treasury created

I created a new Etsy Treasury through my wool roving/fiber etsy shop - please CLICK HERE to go see it, favorite it, visit the etsy artisans shops who created the items. Aren't they fun?!!

Sunflower towels

Finally back to the towel warp I started on April 3rd - wove some towels using the natural weft that day.......those were my favorites......

 ....then today some in yellow gold weft.......

 ....then some chocolate brown weft.......

.... and then a nubby cotton slub.........actually now that I think of it I pretty much like them all......still enough warp to weave 3 more towels......

Whoo Hoo

I got word Saturday that my white/mint ginkgo scarf made it into the ANWG (Association of Northwest Weaving Guilds) Conference Juried Exhibit - Whoo Hoo. The conference is June, I'll be receiving a packet with info on where and when to ship my scarf. Very fun.

Not much on the fiber front going on here. I did sew 2 more petal pouches to go inside the one I sewed last week to gift a friend today - she loved them. I also worked on a Mother's Day gift which I can't post until after the 12th as my mother does occasionally read my blog.

I did get a couple hours in at the loom yesterday - back to work on the towel warp I put on a couple weeks ago. I've been dreaming of what new draft I should design for the AVL.........a sea theme draft is to come but not quite yet, am thinking maybe vines & leaves, or vines & flowers, or who knows what.

Lesson learned on Saturday. I asked Sam to bring the power washer up on the deck so I could wash off the deck furniture - great fun. Then I moved on to the windows - great fun and I thought they looked cleaner until they dried, maybe a bit cleaner but the old elbow grease is needed to really clean them.  Lesson learned is when I moved around front and saw a hole in the flower bed that belongs to the dreaded ground squirrel - don't ever spray a power washer down a ground squirrel hole unless you want to end up totally covered in mud when it sprays back up at you. Funny thing is when Sam saw me after I finished he never mentioned that my face, arms, clothes were all covered with mud.

We watched two good movies recently - Life of Pi and Argo - highly recommend both.

Peacock Feathers Treasury

I've put together another Etsy Treasury.  Click HERE to go see it on Etsy - and when you do be sure to favorite it and visit the shops whose items I've handpicked.

A bit of sewing.....a petal pouch

I did a little sewing yesterday to try out a little pattern I picked up at Sewing Expo in March - it's called a petal pouch. This is the largest one, maybe big enough for sock knitting supplies - there are two smaller sizes in the pattern too.  I'll be making more of these for little gifts this year.

 

 

I put a couple more things up for sale on my "Other Stuff for Sale" page on the blog. I had so much trouble - it kept putting the pictures in weird places and then pictures of the needlefelting kits totally disappeared, had to put them back up, very puzzling.......and aggravating........

 

 

 

Some pix

After twisting fringe on some scarves I decided to do some photography work......which I'm terrible at.......only took pictures of 2 out of the 6 scarves so I can list them on etsy.

A bit of weaving.......

Only a bit of weaving today on the scarf warp - my back is bothering from way too much walking over the weekend on the coast........2 long walks each day, really long walks, and lots of bending over picking up shells off the beach.

This scarf I used a teal weft, it's nice, not as eye popping as the black weft but I like it.  Next scarf with be another one using the black weft.

Yellow Daffodil Days Treasury

I've put together a new etsy treasury called Yellow Daffodil Days - please click HERE to check it out, favorite it, favorite the shops/items, visit the shops whose items I've included.

And the winner is.......

And the winner of the Beaded Embellishment book is Hayewe - so Pat, when I see you next I will have the book in hand - congrats.  I expect to see wonderful beading projects from you.

I used Random. org to pick the winner. I put in that there were 10 participating, clicked the Generate button and #5 came up as the winner. R.L. Delight commented but already has the book so she didn't want to be included in the giveaway so I ignored her post when counting from the first post down to find #5.  Thank you all for commenting and visiting my shops.

A start.......

A start on the painted warp - been busy this week with family stuff but I did find time to get one scarf woven on this warp today.



I love the black weft

Auditions

This afternoon I got a little time at the loom so threaded the heddles, reed and auditioned weft colors for the latest painted warp on the AVL. I have enough for 3 scarves - will definitely weave with the black weft but thinking on the others.......who knows, might end up weaving 2 out of 3 scarves with the black since it will be striking. This draft is by Ivy DeHart, I found it on handweaving.net. It was a 32 harness horizontal draft - I decided I wanted the design to be vertical so turned it and it ended up being only 20 harnesses.

Auditioning 7 different weft colors - might find some more to audtion before making my final decision

 

Neat thing happened while the AVL was running - power blips due to the strong winds - and my new (bought last fall) battery backup kicked in. I heard it click on, then click off - not a beat was missed with the compudobby loom - whoo hoo - money well spent to protect the electronics.

 

I'm still having issues with posting pictures to the blog. Last week all of a sudden it was uploading pictures like always, then it was back to getting loading errors. I've found that if I start the post with text and publish it, then go back in to edit I can then get the pictures uploaded although sometimes it takes several tries - never got any answers on the blogger forum - oh well.......

 

 

Sewing Sunday

Sewing Sunday was at my house today. I took pix of the foods I prepared for the theme I had of finger food/appetizer/tea party food. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the entire spread after everyone else got here with their contributions - it was impressive. It was an afternoon of a lot of eating, talking and a bit of fiber fun......but really a lot of eating.......

Endive Leaves filled with a cream cheese/smoked salmon spread, topped with a caper

Fruit kabobs of strawberry, banana and grape with a yogurt cinnamon dip

Kabobs with basil wrapped around a marinated mozzeralla ball, artichoke heart and cherry tomato

Tea sandwiches of potato bread spread with butter/apricot preserve mixture - inside stilton with apricots, sliced pear, then the butter/apricot mixture on the outside edge before rolling in pistachios - YUM

Lemon sandwich cookies



At guild today........

Today at our weaving guild meeting we played with needlefelting flowers. Here's mine, started out with a rose pattern but ended up looking more like a pansy. It's around 3" around. Everyone's flowers were different - very fun.

Stuff for Sale

I've added a new page to my blog called Stuff for Sale. I will be adding fiber related items here and there as I simplify my life and attempt to find new homes for items I no longer need (making room for new items I really do need). I have so much that I've bought over the years that I've finally come to the realization that I will never use, it's time for them to go to someone that will enjoy them. They are for sale for much less than they could be bought new. Check out the new tab on my blog called Stuff for Sale every once in a while to see what's new. I've just posted a number of children's books and two felting kits. As I go through my studio I'm sure I'll find more fun things to list.

Giveaway

I'm holding a giveaway (US & Canadian residents only) for this great book called Beaded Embellishment - Techniques & Designs for Embroidering on Cloth by Amy Clarke and Robin Atkins.  I had this book in my library, it disappeared for a long time so I thought it was a goner, I bought another one......of course, the old one turned up later......so, I decided to share the second one I bought. (the cover is perfect, those are lights reflecting when I took the picture)

All you have to do is to visit one of my etsy shops - eweniquely ewe or eweniquely ewe fibers - and post a comment to this blog post telling me what your favorite item was in one of my etsy shops.  Yes, this is a blatant way to get you all to visit my etsy shops. 

I'll pick a winner using random.org next Friday morning, April 19th for the book. Be sure I can contact you through your blog or leave me an email address in your comment or check back Friday morning to see if you've won. If I can't contact the winner, or the winner hasn't contacted me by the end of the weekend I'll pick another winner and try again.

Spinning my wheels......

.....and not producing any yarn......sometimes life is like that, busy as a bee but not much to show. I did spend 3 days earlier this week on the coast with friend Yvonne which was great fun, we collected a boatload of shells for her daughter, took long walks and ate!

In-between everything else I needed to do today I did get this painted tencel warp wound on the back beam of the loom - it's now ready to have heddles & reed threaded.

Sea Glass Treasures

I just put together another treasury called Sea Glass Treasures. Click here to visit it online where you can click on each item and visit that artist's shop. If you aren't familiar with Etsy Treasuries it's a great way to promote other etsy shops, which in turn I hope brings me more exposure to my shop........and it's really kind of fun to put one together. The other fiber artists I've featured are all fellow members of the Handweavers of Etsy Team. There's something in this treasury I'm thinking about buying..........

Happy National Tartan Day

 

 

Clark Tartan - my paternal grandmother was a Clark

Towels.......

Here is the start of the new towels from the warp I put on the loom yesterday, kind of fun how I can go from 40 harnesses to 4 harnesses without blinking.

I was planning on just getting the heddles & reed threaded, tying on and weaving just a couple inches but I ended up weaving 3 towels. I then played in WeavePoint for a while. I had planned on pulling out my beach quilt fabric to start planning out my quilt top project only I couldn't find the pile of quilt patterns/books I had set aside - I know they're somewhere safe & sound in that sewing room but where I have no clue........will look for them again soon.........major organizing is in order but not sure when that will happen........

I milked this one......

It took me forever to wind this warp today, finally it's on the back beam ready to thread heddles & reed. My back was ouching me since early morning so I wound the 12 yards in slow motion taking many breaks during the day. My original plan was to get this warp on the loom and start weaving, take pictures of weaving to put up for sale in my etsy shop and actually cook a dinner.......just didn't happen.......but I'm not beating myself up over it like I used to do, the world won't come to an end.....

This is another towel warp - not sure why I'm weaving more towels than usual these days, I used to weave tons of towels for sale but got away from it for a while. These probably won't be off the loom soon, just wanted to get a simple towel warp on to work on here and there in-between other projects. These will be a mix of basketweave and point twill. For those of you that aren't weavers this is a view from the back of the loom, the warp threads are sitting in the raddle and behind that the lease sticks. Once I thread the heddles and reed from the front of the loom I'll take the raddle and lease sticks out - they're just keeping everything in order for the time being.

Dragonfly Dreams

Please go check out the newest Etsy Treasury I've put together - Dragonfly Dreams - let's get lots of clicks on every item and push it up on the treasury list.

Update a few hours later - Hah - I figured out how I could capture the screen, make it a jpeg and put it here on my blog - I knew I could figure it out given time. It's just a jpeg though so you can't click on this image and go to the treasury or the shops, you still need to click on the link above.

Update another few minutes later - here's the ginkgo treasury I made last week that I couldn't figure out how to post here. Look one square is empty - that means that item sold, too bad I can't remember what it was but I was glad to help someone else out promoting their shop.

More gingkos.......

You'd think I'd be tired of ginkgo leaves but no way, I love them. Spinner/weaver friend Virginia has a beautiful ginkgo tree in her front yard - last fall I picked up an entire bag of leaves to put between the phone book pages to dry. I peeked at them and they looked beautiful. The next week the phone book has disappeared - Sam had taken it to recycling - yikes! Not sure what possessed him to pick it up off the washer and take it, it was a new phone book, it was not in the recycling basket. So, there's always this year.......

This past month I bought some new sheets & towels which I decided needed some pizazz.

Using the embroidery machine I embroidered these ginkgos on all 4 pillowcases. Ignore that purple mark in the middle of it - that was my marking to get them lined up in the hoop, it's  air erase marker which disappeared with 15 minutes after stitching (I guess I could have waited to take the photo after it disappeared)  Our comforter is shades of sage green so these pillow cases match perfectly.

I found some great ginkgo towels on the clearance rack at the store only there were no handtowels, just bath towels and washcloths so I bought some off-white hand towels and embroidered the ginkgo on the them too. I love the commercial ginkgo towels, see how the color reverses from front to back.

While the embroidery machine was running I got all 12 handwoven towels ironed, hemmed and ironed again. I need to be in the room to change thread colors so it worked out perfectly to have the embroidery going on one machine and me sewing on the other.

Today is tax day - argh. In a couple hours Sam and I will sit here with Turbo Tax Home & Business and work through our taxes, such a pain but I've got everything ready to go personally and business wise. Sam would be thrilled if I did it all but this is a joint effort, since he does none of the rest of it he's required to sit with me and do this part.......and there will be no sidetracking by putting golf on tv.

I still have no clue what the issue with blogger is for me these days, pictures won't load when I work on my post but if I start the text, publish it, then go back to edit the pictures will load. Kind of a pain but I'm not sure what the solution is at the moment and I got no help from the forum. Oh well.....

Oh shoot..........

Here are towels just out of the dryer waiting to be trimmed, ironed and hemmed. Of course this will have to wait until I get a new iron as mine decided to die. Sam found a loose wire the other evening and fixed it but it only lasted for one day. What a shame, it's not very old. Hopefully I will have a new one in the next couple of days.

I did something I can't remember ever doing in my weaving career of 27 years - I made errors in treadling on two the towels (don't worry Yvonne, they aren't on any of yours). That's not to say I haven't made a treadling error but I've always caught it and have unwoven to correct it, this time I never caught it until I got to the end of the towel and it wasn't the right length. It must have happened in one of the many times the phone rang (yes, I need to stop answering it when I'm weaving), I came back to the loom and started weaving the wrong block - argh! Looks like I'll have two new towels for my kitchen......which isn't necessarily a bad thing........

More turned twill towels......

After a weekend on the coast I was ready to get back to the loom and the turned twill towels.

Dark brown weft.....these are spoken for......

Blue weft towels are also spoken for........

These red ones are a really pretty shade of red, need to pick out a couple more weft colors tomorrow.....