It's a green day...

Heat and cat related insomnia is making me silly! So here are pictures of things that are green.

 I ended up processing 14 pounds of green tomatoes into 12 pints of green tomato relish;  I added red pepper flakes and cut the sugar in half.  It's good, but not fantastic; looking for a new recipe for next year!

While we're looking at food, I had to pick the last of the toy choy before it bolted. We had it twice so far and I have enough for two meals this weekend. 

Also in the garden are the green pea plants I recently planted.  They're climbing up the hand spun Romney wool yarn I made practicing for the sheep to shawl contest.  I don't think they (the pea plants)  are appropriately appreciative.

My weaving guild had hosted an event around little looms, and the call went out for rigid heddle loom owners to demo...  I hastily put on a short warp and demo'ed Lisa Reyner's Free Form Overshot technique, and let my braver guild-mates try it out... I am weaving the piece a little longer for a small tote to take a mug to the guild meetings; Owl, in his usual fashion, wanted to play "what's on my loom". 

Navajo Weaving

Blearly eyed after 2 days...

I just got home from a 3 day Navajo Weaving Class taught by Two Grey Hills Weavers Lynda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Ornelas, taught at Lou Grantham's SF Fiber in Oakland. I'm still digesting the experience... there's a lot to learn while producing a roughly 6" x 8" textile, while soaking in a small bit of that indigenous culture. Barbara and Lynda were so generous with their knowledge and a true pleasure to learn from.

At the end of the second day I was wondering if I could finish on time, and also bleary eyed from concentrating on that patterned section...

Barbara brought in a tapestry she was working on that was amazing. I don't feel right sharing a photo of it without her permission, and I didn't ask her, but I will describe it. Two Grey Hills tapestries are characterized by only using natural sheep colors; wool from different colored sheep can be carded together to make new colors, but natural or aniline dyes are generally not used. Barbara's piece had "black", cream, and browns, but also contained a beautiful medium turquoise color. She spins her own wool from Navajo sheep, a very fine lace weight, and weaves with singles; she told me she sets the twist by wet blocking the yarn and weighting it while drying.  The edges were finished in the same dark wool used at the top and bottom of the pieces, twisted in a way that make me think of the card woven selvedge...   Barbara confirmed that they were twisted, but her hands moved so quickly and the dark strands were hard to tell apart...

Such an honor to watch such competent knowledgable hands!!!

Bok Choy, Baby!

Super bonus from the weekend; I sat next to my Favorite Indie Dyer Ever,  Elissavet from Wonderland Dyeworks. I've met her at shows but we've never chatted; it was like being seated next to a celebrity! I really enjoyed weaving with her. Hoping she signs up for the class next time Lynda and Barbara are in town...

I did manage to get some home cooked food on the table over the weekend as well, featuring the first harvest from the new garden; the bok choy is mine but the onion and red bells come from the grocer.

And here's the final project picture, with matching reading glasses to show size. 

Ange weaves a shawl in 4 hours, and sheep steal her coffee!

Right before the starting bell...

Last weekend I competed at the Sheep to Shawl contest at Lambtown.  What a fabulous team I was on! I really enjoyed the event!

Our weaver had food poisoning, and dropped out last minute leaving us with a partially warped loom and no plan.  I became weaver under protest. They prepped the warp while I pulled out my tablet and iWeaveIt software  and hastily came up with a couple of options for the group to look at; we decided on a zig-zaggy point twill that could be done with an easy treadling and a 4 shaft loom.

Here's the loom after tieing on, just before the competition started.  And here's the finished product, on the judging table about to be disqualified for being too short (this was a purposeful decision by the team; we knew it would be too short but we wanted to be done).

Right before being disqualified!

I'm going to analyze this in the context of textile design; I don't know what the weaver had in mind, so can't judge what she would have done with this but I can judge what I did with it. The warp was set up with uneven width stripes. The two larger swathes of purple purplish colored stripes used two different colors, alternating.  Some of the colors from the larger stripes were repeated at the other end of the shawl as smaller stripes.

I would have found the overall effect more pleasing if the warp colors had been intermixed in smaller stripes. The red (fuschia?) and the turquoise are jarring to my eye in full stripes, but would have made the shawl sparkle had they been intermixed in small stripes with the rest of the colors.  The weaver had wanted a black fleece but not were available, so the weft was a very pale grey, almost white, which, against the darker colors, highlighted all of the weaving errors. Stephanie, the competition judge,  suggested when asked that a weft color matching one of the warp colors would have tied it all together, and thought a dip in a pale dye bath would bring everything together. R. did dip it in indigo the next day, and it does indeed look better! I need to try this...

Weaving wise, I had a couple of notes I wanted to make:

• I used floating selvedges as I was weaving a twill, which slowed down the weaving; I don't normally weave with them. C. said she would have done 2 threads of plain weave at the border while L. thought a few threads of a different twill would have suited better. 
• The "frown" in the weaving on the right of the picture indicates the tension got uneven towards the end; I could feel it on the loom but did not have time to figure out a solution. 
• I overlaid fluffy ends where the yarn joined (L. said C. said to do it this way) which resulted in an uneven look; I think there is a better solution. 
• My beat was okay but not entirely even; practice before the event would have helped this. I might have been able to mitigate this by measuring PPI at the beginning of the shawl and periodically checking, but did not think of it.
• Putting a couple of threads of the weft color on the selvedges, spun like the warp, is a good idea. L. made the point that good selvedges come from lots of practice, which is true; but given that the weft is the product of 4 spinners spinning under pressure, and somewhat thick and thin, this would help mask inconsistencies from many eyes (but not the judges!). 

I thought I was done with all the things I signed up for... But then a Navajo Weaving class came up! So I'll be done that this weekend.  Other projects:

Sheep stealing my coffee!!

• I'm done spinning the singles of the orange cashmere blend yarn. One of the cats peed on the rest of the roving and I thought briefly of spinning it then washing the yarn then came to my senses and tossed the remaining into the compost. Not sure what the next step is.
• I'm still spinning on some demin-ish wool.
• I started warping a silk scarf on the Baby Mac.
• I am looking for the instructions for the cotton dish towels, they'll go on the big loom.
• The fall colored wool ruana pieces are off the RHL and waiting until I can get back to them.
• I had about 4 inches knitted on the mummy skirt, then ripped it out and have restarted. Definitely a KUI.

And I have 20-30 lbs of green tomatoes that I need to process into chow chow. So that first.