What's on my loom and what a weaving pattern looks like

Ever wonder what is generally used by handweavers to set up their looms for certain patterns? Here's what I'm working on right now. The four component parts are:

• The chart at the top left shows what order to thread the loom through which shaft; I just keep doing that until I run out of yarns. For my current project, which is quite wide, I have over 600 individual threads.
• The chart next to it on the top right show which shafts to tie up to which treadles.
• The chart at the lower right tells which what order to treadle in; this one is a very easy to treadle!
• The lower left is what the smallest unique bit of this fabric

Here's the project on the loom

I also have to know how to space the yarn; the current project is pretty thick, 18 ends per inch, but the reed I'm using only has 12 slots per inch, so every other slot has two threads in it.  I'm using odds and ends of commercial sock yarn, including a couple of full skeins, some leftover green alpaca from Paulie sweater, and some over dyed partial skeins. This is an ambitious project; I need a piece of fabric that is 30ish inches wide and at least 2 yards long after being woven and finished; to do that, my weaving software tells me I'll need  1836 yds of weft (the sock yarn) and 1512 yards of weft (Jaggerspun Zephyr merino silk).

Normally one would "sample", that is to create a test piece to see if I like the fabric it ends up being when I take it off the loom. I need this fabric by next Thursday so I skipped the sampling step and am hoping that it's not a bad decision. I've woven sock yarn at 18 EPI before so I feel confident.

I'm over a yard into the weaving now; so should have finished pictures in a few days!

Mosaics at Esalen and a knitting retreat!

I spent last week at Esalen taking a mosaic class with Wilma Wyss... What a wonderful experience! This is the third class I've taken with Wilma, and the second one at Esalen... There were 6 or 7 of us that had been in the class last year, and the rest were mostly new to mosaic. Wilma handled the various levels of knowledge and skill perfectly! I love her classes. Here's last years next to this years:

Last year

This year

So my technique is getting better, although I think my artistic expression still needs some work. I spent a lot of time talking to Ilse, Wilma's assistant, who is a very experienced mosaic artist, and learned a lot from her. These are the things that I want to remember:

• Using tile tape to pick up and move a whole design; I didn't do this, but Angie did. It's fast, but has some risks for gaps under clear glass, splugy adhesive,  and tiles shifting, but I may try it anyways. 
• Ilse's been making "cookies", which are motifs laid into a very thin layer of thinset, then applied to a larger mosaic; the benefit is that you've got a chunk of a design you can lay all at once. The downside is because of the extra layer of thinset, it may be slightly raised from the rest of the design.
• We also talked about using clear shelf liner (sticky side up) as a temporary substrate; you lay your tiles out on it, then put a second layer on top of it. Flip it over, remove the bottom shelf liner, and then apply a substrate covered with thinset to the upside down mosaic. Hypothetically you can then peel off the shelf liner (pull back, not up) and adjust any errant tiles.
• K, one of my classmates, bought a card in the Esalen gift shop and worked on making that image in mosaic. Her husband had brought a laptop, so they used Wilma's projector to project the image on the wall, traced it onto paper, then simplified and transferred the image onto the substrate. 

There was a professional artist in the class, and a couple of trained artists...  Their pieces were so lively with a wonderful sense of light and depth that my works lack. This is in fact what I want to work on this year, I'll be figuring out how to study that in the spring.

After the workshop, I joined my Monday Night Knitting group in Carmel for our yearly retreat. The storm blew in shortly after I arrived, and the next morning we woke to a power outage. Power was out until about 10PM; there we were, knitting by candlelight. Thanks to G for picking up candles and for the rest of the group for emptying all those bottles before I arrived so we had candle holders! I finished some fingerless mittens to go with the tam I knit last year, and even added a little embroidery to them. I changed up the foreground and background colors for a little variety. They'll look a little more together when they've been wet finished.

It's probably time for a What Do I Want to Get Accomplished in the Next Period of Time post... I'll get to work on that for next time!

The first project of 2019!

Handspun and Toyon dyed

I'd wanted to make a scarf for Peter... he's greatly admired everything he's seen of my weaving, and frankly the way to my heart is to love my craft... I've only seen Peter in jeans and jeans jackets (probably because he's always working), so I made this scarf to go with denim. It's the last of the hand spun that I used with the Ligeia shawl, combined with some commercial MCN (Merino/Cashmere/Nylon) sock yarn that I dyed with Toyon from my yard. It's sett at 15 EPI and woven at 15 PPI in a simple birdseye-ish twill. I just took it off the loom and will put it in the mail to him soon. (Hint, if you're reading this and want a scarf, feel free to say something).

I like the drape of the scarf, but would like to sample fingering weight sock yarn at 12 EPI; I think it would drape better for a scarf. I'm currently warping up fingering weight sock yarn for some yardage for a class I'm taking at Stitches; I'll be setting/weaving that at 18 EPI as I want it to be firmer for a garment.

Five dishtowels, finished in December

Other than  that,

• I finished the Melon Shawl I'd started in December and blocked it on New Year's Eve! 
• I finished a run of 5 towels and set two to friends in Sweden, complete with card woven hanging loops.  
• I've got a couple of knitting projects in flight; some fingerless gloves to match the ram tam, and I'm working on the skirt again.  
• I'm ready to start on my next stained glass mosaic project.
• I'm getting ready out to a week long mosaic class, then to my knitting retreat, leaving my DH to manage the barbarian cats.

All that and I'm looking at remodeling the kitchen later this spring; we want to do it anyways, and it was the best way to attract someone to fix the leaky deck. So I've been researching appliances and looking at granite slabs. I'm not unhappy about all this! But it is getting in the way of my fiber work.

The Christmas quilt and the Pub quilt

I have two quilts that have been in progress for Quite Some Time (20+ years) and need some design work and some hand work to progress to the next steps. Every few years I take them out, figure out the next steps, and do a small amount of work on them... Then I forget all that I figured out and the cycle starts again. So why not document things in this blog?

I'll tackle the Christmas Quilt first. It's a collection of 12 18" blocks of hand pieced stars; I decided to make appliqued border for them. It'll have  6 swags and 5 flowers on the short sides, and 8 swags and 7 flowers on the long sides. One short side is done and one long side is done except for finishing the flower.
If I recall correctly, I was going to run out of one of the flower fabrics, so I need to alternate them on the next long side.

Next steps:

• Finish the flower on the one long side.
• Draw the guide lines on the 2nd long border and make some swags, then start appliqueing while I make the following decisions.

Decisions:

• Do I do the corners as designed or change to something simpler?
• Do I do swags on the top border or not, give than the top border generally sits under pillows? Or do I do a different pattern across the top?

Here's the layout I decided on for the pub quilt. It's progressed slightly further along; all the blocks are now bordered with a small 1" border in the dark red color. 

I'm stuck on the setting triangles on the border (and have been for about 18 months now). I think they need to be pieced semi stars; if so,

All the same? Some variation?

Apex near the center? or at the edge?

Some type of soft-edge applique using the amazing border print featured in the blocks? 

Some interaction between the setting triangles and the next border?

What, in fact, is the next border?

I'd like to finish this one soon, as the whole cloth quilt on the bed is slowly dissolving, and it is indeed our anniversary year. I'll go work on this now.

And yes, both of these quilts have a story. I'll document that when I have the quilts in progress.

One last bit... I have 3 egg whites leftover from key lime pie; they're now pecan meringue cookies; super easy and super tasty!

The Four Slaws of Christmas, a food post

Happy New Year!!! I'm sitting in the window chairs looking out over the ravine and the hills beyond, drinking Costa Rican coffee with Strauss cream (my favorite!!!), surrounded by the Beloved Husband and cats. Later, a friend is joining us for a hike and dinner; I did all the prep yesterday so there's very little to do today other than update this blog! Few of my posts lately have been about food, so it's due...

I've been doing a fair amount of cooking over the holidays, really more than most years; we did some entertaining on non holiday occasions so I wasn't bound by traditional menus. Working from the premise that vegetables are healthy and that everybody loves a good slaw, I tried some new recipes, all with slaw pairings:

Salmon Pie with cabbage, mushrooms, and caraway

• 
  On Christmas eve, I cooked a salmon pie, and served it with a fennel and red pepper slaw. I knew exactly why there's a layer of rice on the bottom crust; thank you British Baking Show! Next time I'd used one of those tasty Lundberg rices for a little more flavor.
• We joined friends for Christmas dinner, and I brought a cabbage and apple slaw with pomegranate to go with their big roast beast.
• G&C joined us a few days ago, and I made Green Chile Stew from Hatch chiles that I mail ordered to delight my Darling Husband, and made a southwestern slaw to go with it; I also found my new favorite cornbread recipe. 
• Tonight, B is coming for dinner and we're making jerk seasoned chicken, black beans, cornbread, a Jamaican inspired pickled cabbage salad, then my first ever key lime pie for dessert.

The Four Slaws of Christmas recipes are here. A small word of advice: with 4 slaws in 8 days, we're definitely over-slawed. Be careful you don't suffer from the same problem!

• Fennel and Red Pepper Slaw 
• Red Cabbage Slaw with Apples and Pomegranate
• A Southwestern Slaw from the Santa Fe Cooking School Cookbook
• Pickled Cabbage Salad

Marshmallows getting dipped into Tcho Chocolate

I can cross Make Marshmallows off my bucket list, If you've never had a homemade marshmallow, they're nothing like the Kraft ones in the bag. I made vanilla ones, and dipped some of them in Tcho dark chocolate.  I prefer them plain, DH liked them better with chocolate. There will definitely be more marshmallow in my future.

Q4'18 Completed things (8), just a list, really...

Poppy table top

In the last quarter of 2018, I finished:

• The poppy table top
• A tiny woven demonstration purse with inkle handle
• The Modular vest except for buttons
• Handmade Christmas cards
• Five Dishtowels, 2 with hanging loops
• The Melon shawl, which has been on the needles for 6 years
• The Ligeia shawl, handspun and pinwoven, 
• and Power Mitts to match the Ligeia shawl

I also finished the pebble beach Shawl, but I'm going to frog it, so I'm not counting it.

Looks like I completed 29 things in 2018, I'm feeling pretty good about that. What's up for 2019? A Stashdown! That's where I try to work primarily from stash to make room on my shelves. Let's see how that goes...

tiny woven purse, with inkle band handle.

Things that aren't working out

I brought a quilt top out of timeout; it's been sidelined for 15-ish years, and it's time to do something with it. If I recall correctly, I was in a class or a club, and there was a monthly assignment that we were all supposed to do to make individual medallion style quilts. We started with a center block; one month had us add something with curves; another add triangles, another add fans. I took it as an opportunity to exercise my creativity and chose to interpret the directions in a quirky way. After a few month of this, I ended up with a quilt that I could no longer figure out how to add to.

It's important for me to look at my work, and frankly others work as well, and analyze what works and what doesn't; that's the only way I'll learn how to create an effective design. I spread this roughly 45" square piece on the floor and came up with the two following observations.

• There is no cohesion of design, the various elements don't make sense. The fans and the appliqued triangles are particular problematic.
• The yellow draws the eye in a haphazard way. If you're going to highlight something, it should become clear why you've highlighted it.

Is it salvageable? I suppose I could do one or all of these:

• Set it on point again and draw the green out to repeat that element.
• Add more fans or triangles in a way that didn't look like they were randomly tossed onto the quilt.
• Add an interlaced border similar to the center motif. 

I promise to update with a useful picture later, but meanwhile,
here's the cat being helpful as always

But I don't love it enough to spend the time to try to make it right, or I wold have done so already. So my current plan is to add a yellow and red border to finish it off, quilt it, then donate it to someone who will hopefully love it despite all it's flaws!

While I'm admitting to things not working out, I finished the Pebble Beach Shawl. I like the shawl pattern, and I like the yarn, but not the combo. I think I'm going to frog it and combine the yarn a solid; currently looking for a pattern.

I also dropped my Canada College class; I was too busy working through some family stuff and house stuff to give it the attention Tailoring requires. I'll be looking for a sewing tutor to get some individual help on specific projects going forward.