Purple Towels?

We ate our way through Santa Fe last week...

• The tasting menu at Sazon was amazing but the synchronized service was a bit odd. I tried the tasting menu which offered a lot of tequila... not my favorite but it was interesting. 
• Dined at the Shed for the first time; really solid NM cuisine and very popular. Fortunately mid-November is not a popular time in town.  Note that the Shed does not serve Sopaipillas.
• DH's sis joined us for dinner at the Pink Adobe; we enjoyed that quite a bit... I had a huarache and now I want to cook some.
• Met my brother and his wife at Cafe Pasquals; it never disappoints.
• We had one disappointing meal, at Coyote Cafe's rooftop cantina; I had an enchilada... the chile was ok but the enchilada had too much cheese and sour cream on it which made it feel gloppy.
• Finally, dinner at Artichoke Cafe in ABQ... still solid after all these years. 

Museum wise:

• The Museum of American Indian Culture on Museum Hill had an amazing Navajo rug exhibit; there were a few works and commentary by Barbara Teller Ornalez and Linda Teller Pete. I've taken a few classes from them so it was nice to see their work given the praise it deserves. ... The wedge weave tapestries were amazing. Some of the pieces were attributed to "a once know artist" instead of "an unknown artist which I really appreciated.
• The nearby Botanical Garden had an outdoor exhibit of works by Native American sculptors. 
• SITE in the Railyard had some really interesting contemporary art exhibits; pictures of the Arctic taken through a (melting) lens of ice in a huge boxlike homemade camera; huge cyanotypes of trans and non-binary artists, created on the National Mall in DC (the film was as interesting at the art); and an exhibit which used found glass bound with wire to create surfaces and sculptures. This is the first time I've really enjoyed contemporary art exhibits.

Zig, getting attention from the backup 

We also visited our favorite galleries, and attended the opening of a fiber arts show, run by EVFAC, at the Masonic temple. Very little of it was by Native American artists but the work in general was very high quality and certainly worth a visit if you're in town when it happens, and like to look at fiber-y things.

I can't really help but post this selfie... I don't really mind being the backup human; Z snuggled up with me after DH had gotten out of bed. He was VERY happy to be shedding hair on a handmade quilt again.

Komebukuro, just needs rice

Komebukuro #1 is done. I'm pretty happy with it, but I used a chambray for the lining and it's a little heavy with the recommended interfacing. I'll use a lighter fabric next time, and maybe skip the interfacing. I added a zipper pocket on one side of the lining. I have blocks ready for a second one and I think I have most of the fabric I need for 1-2 more. I think it's super cute but there's a lot of time in it; it's also larger than I expected, about a 8" cube. Someone on Etsy was selling bags with machine embroidered Sashiko on them (for $65ish) and it turns out I have some images for that... I might try that if I want to do more. 

I also started weaving on the ikat towels I was threading last report.... It's looking fun! I may try a different weft for the next one, possibly a lighter weight yarn and plain weave instead of twill. Not thrilled with the purple... It was supposed to be blue but there was a dye mishap...

What the heck will I do with Purple Towels?

Ikat Warp shifter!!! Komebukuro, and some cooking

Warp shifter? More info in a later post

I asked DH to make an ikat warp shifter for me: I'm currently trying to learn how to use it. Here's a teaser photo! And when I'm weaving I'll publish a review and some notes. I suspect this won't be a good test as the warp was poorly dyed (by me)... but weaving it anyways.

The October cookbook was Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean... I choose a baked fish dish, covered with a tahini sauce and chopped hazelnuts; I'd cook that again. Paula suggested to eat it with pickled veggies, and yep, that's the right side dish. This cookbook is organized differently than most modern cookbooks, and may not appeal to everyone, and I enjoyed the stories about where she found the recipes... And the Eastern Med covers a HUGE area, which was fascinating as well. 

Pasta wanna-be

For DH's birthday, I made cheese canneloni and a salad with the last tomatoes from the garden... I took a photo at the start but failed to take one of the finished dish! I made a pan of 3 servings, and yep, they were all gone... but there are 2 smaller pans in the freezer to eat later.  We opened a bottle of 2007 Castello di Ama Chianti Classico that we bought at the winery on our 25th anniversary trip... it needed some time to open up and in act was a lot better on the 2nd day. We've noted that for the other bottle we have.

P. and I picked up a pattern and fabric kit for Komebukuro at Sew Creative in Ashland; awesome shop!!! Komebukuro are Japanese Rice bags, used to carry offering of rice to the temple... these bags are super popular for project bags or lunch bags right now. I bought a fabric kit for it but can easily see using leftover fabrics; these bags are embellished with applique, and sashiko and boro stitching.  So far I've sewn together the sides of two bags; the kit is supposed to have enough for three. I'll use scrap fabric for the lining and maybe get a couple more bags from the nice thickish fabric in the kit... (What am I going to do with a bunch of bags? Hmmm...)

On the weaving front, I'm working very slowly through warping with the warp shifter. I don't know what I'm doing and that makes me hesitate. I will likely warp up a runner on the other empty loom.

The beginnings of my komebukuro

Sewing wise, I have nothing currently planned other than the rice bags. 

I cast on the April Cardigan (a v-necked cardigan in blue cashmere) for travel knitting, repeatedly. I finally got the hang of the right facing and left facing increases and am knitting away. It's a simple top down cardi and it's going pretty fast in the DK weight cashmere.

Still working on the Modular Color Vest version 2, since I screwed up version 1 pretty badly. I'd unraveled it and cast it on a while ago. I'm about 2/3 complete. 

Ikat class piece, lessons learned and another cautionary tale

 

I took Mary Zicafoose's slipped ikat class over Zoom through our guild in September.  FABULOUS class. Absolutely brilliant.

I made a "cartoon" in a spreadsheet then tied white 8/2 tencel and dyed it in Procion "Bronze" fiber reactive dye. There's some black tencel in there as well.  Weft is a 16/2 cotton fortuitously commercially dyed a close color, and it's woven in a straight twill reversing at the center. 

My intention was to have triplets of white, descending, on each side of center with small chevrons in the border. the three white stripes just below center came out pretty much as I envisioned, the rest did not. Design wise, I like the center although the two groups of three should be offset slightly more; and I'd prefer that the upper triplet be as concise as the lower. The space on the outside of the triplets could be slightly narrower. For the border pieces, I would either set them further apart or leave them straight; either way, though, they need to be more concise, the mud that is on the top border is just sloppy work.

What went wrong:

1. The tencel had some worn spots on it; I think there was abrasion on a part of the cone; but I decided to proceed anyways, predicting the worst that could happen was broken threads.
2. I'm pleased with the color but I'd aimed at darker; I had a limited window to dye and my scale wouldn't power on; futzing with the scale compressed the amount of time I left my yarn in the dye. Either the quantity of dye or the timing resulting in a lighter color.
3. As I dressed the loom, I slipped groups of yarn then knotted the back beam side of the warp. In a previous piece I'd attached those to the back apron rod with string, so on this piece I tried looping the bout over the apron rod and securing it with the knot. I don't think this was a good idea.
4. As I wound on, I realized that my alignment wasn't what I wanted it to be. I was torn between redoing it or declaring it a class learning piece, and decided to move on, threading the heddles and reed.
5. At this point, I wished I'd fixed it and debated rebeaming. I wasn't sure the delicate parts of the tencel could handle rebeaming, so I left it and started weaving.
6. About three inches into weaving, I realized the tension was really wonky. I examined the loom and found the locking arm that holds the back beam out was not locked on one side. There were bad words, then I fixed it and tied on again. I debated rebeaming but again decided against it. 
7. About 12 inches into weaving the tension went to shit again. I debated tearing out the 12 inches and rebeaming it but threw some weights on the loose parts and kept weaving.
8. The tension got worse and worse. At about 3' into the project I had a glass of wine and cut it off the loom.
9. It's possible that the tension issues caused some of the misalignment, but I didn't analyze that.

What have I learned? All of my issues went back to the first item on this list, using material that I was concerned about.  I should have rebeamed by step 6 and risked the broken threads.  Not listening to my inner voice has been a problem in the past and it's a problem again.

Q2'23 Finished Objects (7)

Comboweave yardage

Looking over my Q2 list, I realize that I've become awful at photo'ing my finished objects... Maybe I should make that a prerequisite to calling them "finished"? There was some spinning, too, but it's hard to thing of a finished skein as a finished object...

It does feel good to be finishing things... Here's what I've done:

Weaving:

• 2 pillow tops in beiderwand
• Comboweave fabric, finished on the last day of Q2; this is 8/2 tencel, sett at 27 EPI; colorful warp was dyed in a Kathrin Weber workshop, the rest is commercially dyed. It's twill and basketweave.
  

Knitting:

• Dan Doh's Permutations poncho (alas no photos)
• Sommerloch (also no photos yet)

Quilting:

• Machine quilted runner

Sewing:

• Shirt in linen (no photos... sensing a trend?)
  

Other projects

• Limoncello
• We sleeved and hung 3 of the Ikats on the walls!

And here's what is in progress:

Weaving:

• 2 rugs on the big loom; loom is threaded and I'm ready to start weaving.
• I'm pulling a warp for a class with Inge Dam at CNCH (local weaving conference); the class combines weaving and card weaving in one fabric. I've admired her work and book for quite awhile so I'm excited to learn this. I'll need to have the loom ready to go for the first week in August.

Knitting:

• 
  Still working on Sand and Sunsets... I got a manicure prior to my nieces wedding only to realize my nail polish matches my knitting! Scary, no?
  
• I started two things at the knitting retreat: I'm half way through a shawl (perfect travel airplane knitting) and I started a sweater. The sweater will probably have to wait until Sand and Sunsets is done, but I think the shawl will be my drag around knitting.

Quilting:

• There are a couple of quilts I'd like to finish. And I want to continue to explore continuous line designs with my embroidery machine.

Sewing:

• I have one camp shirt cut out and partly sewn, and would like to finish the paper one before the end of July.

Other:

• I'm taking an online ikat class from Mary Zicafoose in September.
• There are mosaic and linocuts I'd like to work on.
• It occurs to me that I have a minimum of 2 nieces, their spouses, and 2 grand-niblings that live in cold climates. Maybe scarves this year? I suspect I'll also have to start thinking about a baby blanket...

August has just been too damn much fun!

August has been an interesting month, what with the wildfires and smoke and all. Looks like we've made it through the worst. Can't wait to see what September brings!

This month has been a food month of internet recipes, and tomatoes, which just keep growing. I've cooked the following. Don't ask for links, I did not save them.

• Tomato jam from 2 lbs of cherry tomatoes using a recipe from Thea but with suggestions from the internet... I also made it with the surplus of heirlooms but the cherry tomato one is far superior.
• Tomato Salsa over halibut and cilantro lime rice; I'd make this again.
• Tomato risotto: OMG good!
• Peach ice cream: meh
• Chicken and butternut tagine: also good
• Brocolli salad with a tahini dressing

On the fiber front, I've been mask making again; I'm adding medium weight interfacing on the sides to give it more body, and experimenting with the flat metal strips instead of Scott's wires to see if they're more comfortable. 

I finished the 3rd border of the Festivus quilt and have been knitting on the Double your Pleasure cowl until I can get around to marking the final border.

The 2 ikat scarves are off the loom, and one will be flying away today... I dyed some shibori fabric with the warp and weft to coordinate and made a mask to go with it.

Ikat at the Eugene Textile Center!

Solid weft, pattern weft, and a slightly blue hand

I took a 4 day class last week/weekend in Ikat weaving from Marilyn Rogers at the Eugene Textile Center. It was an amazing experience! As a class, we spent the first day learning how calculate where to tie our warps, then we tied them and dyed them in indigo. On the second day we learned how to do the same for the weft. The next day we dressed our looms, and the last day we wove.

Hashtag Ikat!

I'm not going to describe the entire process in detail... there are plenty of books that do that. I'll just note the things that I need to pay attention to.

• Measure very carefully for the tie placement.
• Make sure the ties don't extend a lot further than they should (this is hard).
• Ensure that any choke ties are loosely place or remove them.
• Marilyn recommended taping the dyed warps to the back beam before winding on to prevent shifting yet all of us had some issues; I think you have to be very aware of where you place the tape. I am wondering if it would be worthwhile tieing one tie on each pattern bundle in the loom waste near the cross end to use as a "registration" mark to ensure I've got it right.
• We used an 8 1/8" template for the 8" weft. The 1/8" is to account for the yarn going over and under all the threads, but doesn't account for draw in. Marilyn suggested weaving 10 inches or so on a dummy warp to check what the actual length of the weft should be. This would reduce the little loops on the side of the ikat where I've place the pattern threads.
• The weft squidges around when you place it then beat even with in a close shed. Marilyn said this is normal and fairly regular so I should be able to anticipate it with practice.
• This is a precise art! So be very careful when doing the setup, then the weaving is easier.

I figure I should make a couple of travel notes.

• Flying into Eugene is pricey! but convenient. Flying into Portland is a better deal but then you have a two hour drive after your last class.
• I stayed at the Inn at the 4th, which is the shi-shi hotel in town. It was very nice, very quiet, and within easy walk of lots of restaurants. They have a bizarre chicken theme.
• I had a vegetarian entree at Marche; it was amazing! Wish I'd gotten back to taste their fish.
• Another night, the group of shops and restaurants next door had a live band, so I had wine and small plates while listening to the music. It was very tasty.
• Nearby Ta Ra Rin had good Thai food.
• Provisions had some tasty wheat based breakfast treats, and I tried them, and my head still hurts. But they were worth the headache. They also had good granola and oatmeal.

First Ikat, a cautionary tale...

My First Ikat on the loom

I promised the technical details of the ikat scarf... It's 7" of 20/2 cotton in the reed, at 40 threads per inch. Warp is 3 yards long. 

I tied it in bouts of about 15 threads and randomly bound of some pieces (see photo in my last post). I dyed it in a 2% dye solution using Procion MX dyes from Dharma; I used a small amount of "Indigo" and the rest is from a 20 year old jar of "Teal Blue". The color is slightly darker out of the pot than I wanted but I like it.

I want to document my four gotchas:

• I didn't put in enough properly formatted ties and the yarn isn't balanced. The yarn corkscrewed a little in the dye bath and my warp chains were a little tangled. I overcame this... sort of...
• I thought I had all the crosses well marked and put on the lease sticks I screwed it up so am warping mostly without a cross. I do have some well organized threads but not a lot. I had to warp very carefully.
• Remember in disaster 1 where I said the yarn corkscrewed? Wow, how fun to try to wind that on without a good cross. I'd probably be just as unhappy if I had a good cross. Yarn should behave.  And its 20/2... so tiny... I broke a couple threads.
• Messed up the threading; I have two 1-8-1 runs together instead of alternating 1-8-1 and 8-1-8. Decided to leave it and proceed anyways. 

There actually is a fifth gotcha. I didn't sample... and was surprised that the scarf wasn't as drapey as the last 20/2 cotton scarf.  I went back to my notes to find his grey scarf was at 30 ends per inch and this is at 40. Oh well. It's still lovely, and I was testing technique; I may do another one day in silk.

It could also be a little longer; I wove to 68" but it shrunk back to 63".

Most of the strong vertical lines in the top pictures are reed marks, and went away after wet finishing. I did find one strong vertical that ended up being a blue thread that got lost in a white section. I blame the lack of cross.

I realize I've just listed all the things wrong with this scarf. But after all, this blog is primarly a way for me to record what I've done and identify how I can avoid the same mistakes. Despite all the issues I'm beyond thrilled with the outcome and more importantly, my DH is in love with his new scarf!

FInished Scarf on the new granite