A few more.......

A few more towels.  I didn't do too much weaving today as I'm trying to not aggravate my back/sciatica issues.  Wove 2 towels with the light dusty sage weft above......note that is not a color difference between the left and right side of the towels, it has to do with the window beside the loom making it look different. 

Started on towels with a lavender weft.  Not sure what color I'll choose next. 

Weaving away.........

Weaving away on some towels for hostess gifts.......and will also be keeping a couple of them.  Two block twill in unmercerized cotton. I like the way these first two turned out using a white weft.  The warp is a medium gray and black. 

I took a 2 day workshop with Denise Kovnat last weekend - One Warp, Many Structures: Exploration in Extended Parallel Threading.  I learned a lot about how to do my own designing in echo and will start playing with it after I finish up some other projects.  I still have some warp on my table loom so will be playing with it more in the near future.  Denise was a great instructor.  I'll take photos of my samples and post them soon. 

Beam me up scotty........

Weaving a scottish tartan pattern at the moment in 'old natural dye types of colors' for a secret project to be unveiled after the holidays. Using 10/2 perle cotton for warp and weft. Fun to be back at the loom, been too long, life sometimes gets in the way and I'm making an effort to get back to spending lots of time in the studio again......I need it for my mental sanity! 

Two new shawls & stash sale yarn update

I finally got the shawls recently woven finished up - they needed to be washed and have the fringes twisted. These are woven in an undulating twill pattern in rayon, rayon slub, bamboo, rayon cotton novelty and rayon seed novelty yarn. These make me think beach wedding or beach/cruise vacation.

There are shades of taupe, peach, off white and pale mint green in the warp.  In this one I used a white novelty rayon for the weft. This shawl is so light and lovely, almost fly away......

.....this one I used a heavier weft in a peach rayon seed yarn - it's a heavier shawl but still perfect for cool summer nights.  Both are available in my etsy shop in the Shawls - Handwoven section of the shop.

There's an update to the Stuff for Sale section of this blog - more destashing of yarns. Details can be found in the Stash Sale Section of my other Etsy Shop.

New shawl warp on the loom

Finally a new warp on the loom for summer shawls. It's an undulating twill in cotton, rayon and bamboo. Next one up will probably have a peach weft. But I won't get to it for a bit, still trying to get photos taken of stash yarn to sell and also need to do our taxes now that I have all personal and business pulled together........will be glad to get that done, I do not like tax season, too much administrivia for my blood.........

Stash Sale - Yarn

New updates in my fiber etsy shop with a yarn stash sale - they can be found in the stash sale section of my shop. See the details there or on the other stuff for sale page of this blog.

Ice-dyed warp

Here's the finished ice-dyed warp woven up in an undulating twill. I like it but don't know as if I'll ice dye any more warps..........the watercolor effect I was going for wasn't quite what I expected, not as much color variation.

Fun effect

 Recently I asked friend Verna to knit me a blank on her knitting machine so I could experiment with dyeing and weaving it. I forgot to take a pic of it in the dyeing process, I folded it over so it would be a mirror image along the length of it and blended from a grey dye to eggplant. Above is what it looked like after being dyed and washed  - it's all curled up into a tube which will happen being stockinette. I could have wound the warp straight from the knit piece but the last time I did it I was dealing with corkscrews of yarn while trying to thread heddles and reed.........so I wound the knit blank into a skein and wet it to get those curly-q's out of it so it was easier to deal with.

Yesterday I wound the warp and got it on the loom. Here it is underway. I finished the long table runner and it's now sitting in the sink washing, then off on a towel on the deck to dry.  I like the effect although I still see distinct lines of color in the warp.  I've done this technique once before in silk for a scarf and loved it so much I kept the scarf for myself rather than sell it.  This ended up being a table runner because I just pulled a small cone of 5/2 perle cotton off the shelf to give to Verna to knit for me as a test.  I'm going to ask her to knit up some more blanks on her knitting machine but this time in silk and maybe tencel which I'll use for scarves.

Now off to walk Bailey and decide what to do with my day.........so many options........

Etsy shop update

New handwoven towels and table runners available in my etsy shop

A good part of my day was spent with the camera and these handwovens, lots of editing to get some decent photos to use in my etsy shop. This is the part of the job I struggle with but no one else is going to do it so I've just got to suck it up and do the best I can.

Replenishing stock

Spent some time at the loom today weaving on the huck shawl warp.  It's hard to tell in this photo but it's a lovely pale sage green. The first shawl (not pictured, because I forgot) I used the same novelty rayon weft as warp. For this shawl I used a 5/2 perle cotton for the weft in the same lovely sage color.

Sorry if you're already tired of hearing about fires but it's just the start.........it's going to be a long fire season. In the future I'll try to only post about it if there's something big or dangerously close......otherwise there will be a daily report and I know all my readers will grow weary of that real fast. Last Friday fire season started with many restrictions in the moderate fire danger guidelines, tomorrow we go to high fire danger already......I wonder when extreme fire danger will follow. Copters flying overhead today to fires in the area, they've been doing a great job all week fighting them, numerous fires already snuffed out..........winds pretty strong so hopefully nothing new starts up, we're under a red flag warning through tomorrow afternoon due to the wind.

Good things
 - men and women who choose fire fighting as a profession - many thanks to them all for keeping us safe while they work in extreme conditions - heat, smoke, steep terrain, falling snags, poison oak, etc.
 - cool lovely mornings even though it gets stifling hot by afternoon - but no humidity so really good.

Bad things
 - toxic people....I won't go into that subject any further, if you have them in your life you know it.
 - robo calls - slow day today, only 4 so far - whatever happened to that Do Not Call list.

Cottolin galore

Today I had Sam pull down all the cottolin I had that was way up high on a shelf. My goal was to get some other cones of yarn off the floor and up on shelves - a number of them found homes but there are still some cones on the floor.  So, now that the cottolin, stacked 4 layers high, is sitting in a mesh bag on the floor my goal is to weave it up into towels and hopefully get them sold. In addition to all this I've also got two 4 pound cones in an oatmeal color.  First warp on the loom will be the oatmeal in a twill pattern, I'll use different colors for the weft woven in pairs of two. Ok, so I don't think that will really make a dent in all these spools so I'll have to start thinking about the following warp where I'll use color and hopefully empty many spools. I may tire of weaving towels before it's used up, if that happens I'll just have to take a break and weave something else in-between.

I put a couple new items for sale up on my 'Other Stuff for Sale' page - check them out if you're interested. As I go through my stash I'm sure I'll find more........

New scarves........

I finally finished twisting fringe on newly woven scarves....photos taken of 4 of them and they're now listed in my etsy shop for sale.

Sand Castles Buttercream

 

Sand Castles Taupe

 

Raspberry Cream - Lavender

Raspberry Cream - Fuchsia

 

 

New scarves being woven

Here is the painted warp I put on the loom late this morning. The warp is Sarafina from Henry's Attic which is 70% cotton and 30% rayon, it's a bit nubby in texture. This threading is out of the Carol Strickler 8-Shaft book and has a M's & W's threading and looks like 2 block twill. It is sett at 24 epi. The scarf on the right I used a lime green Bambu 7 for the weft. The second scarf (on the left) I'm using a navy Bambu 7 for the weft. I probably could have finished this warp off this afternoon but decided to quit for the day.