Back at school and ignoring the blog...

I think I'm getting a little overloaded on craft; especially after the intense dye, cleanup, dye, cleanup, repeat cycles I did for the surface design midterm. So I've been laying low for a few weeks, not really working on any wet projects and trying to figure out how to set goals and achieve them.   Meanwhile, here's a catch up on what I have been doing.

I have the school loom warped for doubleweave and have been happily weaving away.  I like double weave. The teacher drafted out a double weave twill for me after I asked questions about it and I have yet to try it cause the home loom is occupied. I dyed one warp with procion bronze; the other warp is forest green, all of it 5/2 cotton.  This is solid background with lace foreground; towards the bottom is leno, the top is brooks bouquet.

I have 5 yards? 6 yards? of 10/2 cotton napkins on the home loom; I'm on napkin 6 of 8. When I'm done I'll post pictures and also a list of all the things I did wrong... Good to document them so I don't make the same mistakes? Anyways, they're Dutch Flag napkins and the color is glorious... I hope they come out nice enough to gift to a friend.

I took Syne Mitchell's class at CNCH a couple of weeks ago in using handspun on a rigid heddle loom; great class!!! Most of what she talked about was in her book, but it always sinks in more when someone's looking over your shoulder, right?

It's about 10" wide and a couple of yards long. All of the warp is my handspun wool (except for a bit I picked up from a destash); the weft is my handspun (turqouise) pick and pick with a commercial dark blue sock yarn. It felt good to use a lot of those odds and ends from classes that have been in the handspun bin for years!!!  I think it's destined to be vest fronts.

I took another class where we tried to identify weave structure in already made fabric and chat about how the colors and weave structure worked together. I had a great time in this class too!!! Fabulous textiles on every table.

I also bought a color gamp kit, expect to see that on the loom this summer.

I did screen printing for the first time in the surface design class; I love these wolves (shamelessly snabbed image from the internet).

I put some wool that was gifted to me on the wheel; I have a pound and a half and sadly it's not suitable for next to the skin. I want to see what happens if I weave it and try to felt it. I took a break and tried to spin up some overspun singles for a collapse weave next semester; our teacher has suggested that it might be a cool idea and of course I agree. Yay! I tried with some merino and I can actually spin that fine. That'll be my summer project.

One last topic... I made some macarons; chocolate with peanut butter butter cream. They were a little subtle; I will make them again but try to make them less subtle. Someone suggested that I use peanut butter powder to cut some of the fat in them... I laughed out loud and made a snarky comment about it feeling ridiculous to try to cut the fat content of buttercream... Still laughing about that one.