Three cookbook challenge meals, updates on fiber projects.

Well, looks like two weeks is my summer interval on this blog...

Food:

• I did two of the cookbook challenges. The first was from Mark Miller's Red Sage Cookbook; I made a marinated flank steak and some black bean tamales with a chipotle crema. The black bean recipe was fabulous; so flavorful! I'll make that again. Then you basically refry then beans and use them inside the tamale.  We had the penultimate bottle of '03 Columbia Crest Reserve Cab with it; very nice.   
• July's cookbook was Secret Ingredients (I can't find an online reference but will at some point put the authors name here). I grilled some turkey with a peanut marinade (this was fabulous) on Saturday, and some ribs with a anise marinade on Monday.  Both excellent recipes. I also grilled some napa cabbage with garlic/lemon/olive oil dressing, which was excellent. DH has selected an Italian cookbook for next month.

Fiber wise:

• There are a couple of projects that are not going well,  I'm not going to talk about these now, but will later.
• I carded a bunch of stuff. The wool I dyed (still in the garage) and some wool/tencel (for color blending). Then Ziggy slept on it. I think it's still spinnable, will start on that in a couple of weeks.
• The gamp is on the loom; the first napkin is finished and I'm part way through the second one.
• And I bought a Louet Victoria; it's a dinky travel wheel and it spins very nicely. Looking forward to putting it through it's paces.

Here's Owl on the color gamp:

Lots of new projects going on!!!

A picture of DH's cotton scarf, as promised. 

• I'm working on getting the color gamp on the loom; it's threaded and I'm about 1/2 through sleying the reed.
• I wet spun the linen/merino roving, and moved it to storage bobbins (using water, not spit). I'll let it sit a week or so to let the twist get less lively before putting it on the rigid heddle loom.
• I gathered together all of the quilt magazines for the block and setting that I want to do with the pub quilt blocks and checked to see if I already have templates for the pieces (I don't).  It's written for machine piecing, so I either have to adapt to hand piecing or buck up and machine piece it. 
• I borrowed a drum carder from the Spinning Guild... The DH immediately took it apart and fixed a part that was mis-installed, and made a new handle for it (handle had broken and was replaced by a crochet). I'm still figuring out how to use it; I'm getting a lot of buildup on the front wheel.  Then I'll need to figure out how to spin a batt.
• I took some of the white and brown merino fleece I had from G's destash and dyed it; it'll go on the drum carder later this week. I used too much dye, and didn't rinse it well, so I'll need to hit it with some heat and vinegar after I spin it. I used Saffron, Cayenne Red, and Plum Dandy.It suits the hot weather.
  
  
  
  

Hey! Goals work!

The goal thing is working. I'm setting 6-10 goals and finishing at least 3 of them. This way I have direction but don't feel like any project is work. Updates:

• DH's scarf is finished, and lovely; maybe a little short. I think he'd prefer silk or tencel to cotton, so next time, I'll do that. I screwed up the pattern; left off one of the shafts from a treadle and ended up with some horizontal floats that while wrong, are still quite lovely. I will post pics later of what it should have looked like (I wove off a few inches at the end as a sample) and what it does look like.
• I finished the pin drafted roving I was working on; 22 oz of it. It's roughly DK weight and not next to skin type of wool. I'm thinking of weaving it into some outerwear. 
• All the looms are naked, it's time to start on the color gamp.  I'm still working through the details of the design but it'll be 1 plain weave gamp napkin and 5 twill gamp napkins. That'll give me enough left over to do a table runner with the grey scale.
• Also I think it's warm enough to start on the linen for the Lobster Port scarf from Spin-off a few months ago. It uses Spunky Eclectic's merino/linen blend roving (I bought forest) and Habu's silk/stainless (I think mine is tea green). I need to make a final decision on wet spinning or spit spinning the linen/wool. The enzymes in spit apparently make the linen smoother; however, because of the high merino content, I'm likely to go with just wet spinning it. 
• On the knitting front, I turned in 11 chemo hats at Googleserve; I finished one more and have #13 in progress. I'm trying to knit A-Z hats (one hat with a pattern starting with every letter of the alphabet) in honor of my mother in law and so far have done A-J, L, and O; working on K right now. I'll probably try to do one a month to finish up the alphabet. I also resumed work on the piece I started that's woven and knitted (the cow coat); I ripped out the large unattractive white band and am doing a half linen with the remainder of the hand dyed. At some point I need to figure out the collar.

Today I'm avoiding going into the studio and cleaning it up enough to start working on something. I need to head south in time to get some 10/2 cotton at Purlescence and then run to a 3PM appt. I fear this will put me in the worst of the traffic coming home...

School's out for Summer!!! And I ironed my final.

I turned in my final a week or so again for the textile design class, and yes I ironed my final! How many people can say that? Anyways, I've had issues with the format of the class, but in retrospect I learned a lot and am really excited about that. The final exam was to make four fabrics in a collection following a mood board. I put together a New Zealand Rainforest mood board and here are my fabrics. The color is a bit off; the lower right is much greener. The two on the right are monoprints; the upper right is stamped with a linoleum block that I carved. The lower right is Elmer's blue gel glue resist with some black dye crayon added after to give it some depth. The upper right is painted stripes which didn't turn out that well; I added some black lines (string glued to a dowel, then rolled) which seems to smooth things out. The stripe looks a lot better in smaller bits. Each pieces is approximately 1'x2'; I'm going to try to make a table runner from them after taking a better photo for my class book.

On the weaving front, I finished the Dutch Flag napkins, and gifted them to their final home last night. They loved them. Here they are right off the loom.  Did I mention I'm a novice weaver? The selvedges were AWFUL so I turned them under 1/4 inch and hemmed; that problem was solved. The last two definitely showed some bowing toward the edges which was clearly a tension issue... And they're all slightly different sized. Still, what they lack in technical expertise, they make up for in exuberance.

And here they are all stacked up and ready to be wrapped up. Let me just give a call out to the textile designer who created the pattern, Erica De Ruiter; excellent stripe design, fun napkins!!!

What's next? I need a little more structure, so last week I put together a sheet of weekly goals. I'm not going to accomplish all of them since I do get distracted by shiny objects; also, as I'll be doing a bike tour in the near future, I figure I really ought to spend some time on the bike, eh?   I did hit 3 of the 8 goals (it was never going to be 8/8): I finished the napkins, unpacked the school gear and stashed in the studio, and decided on a design and wound the warp for DH's summer scarf. 

Wrapped warps..

I just love these colors... Half of my class loves that bronze, and several of us have used it in our dyed pieces.  Next Monday I'll try to straighten out the wraps, then I'll used the rest of the weft for some kind of art project.  I'll need to work on design over the weekend.

For my final in the other class, I need to design four fabrics; I'll probably start designing those tomorrow. Also no idea of what I'm going to do. 

Today I stamped flowers onto paper napkins (whee!) and worked on the Dutch Flag napkins; I'm about 1/2 way through the 8th one. Hmmm. I think I have to "design" what my next project is going to be.  I'm sensing a theme here...

A cat picture

I did promise a low number of cat pictures, but this one is too cute to pass up.

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.