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.

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.

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.

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.