Pleats! Napkins! Dumplings!

Lots to write about today!!!  I've spent the last month or so in class making pleated fabric... first a test piece and then a scarf; photos are of the scarf.  It's alternating blocks of 1/3 and 3/1 twill; I found I got sharper pleats when I gave it a good firm beat. Warp is handdyed 8/2 tencel, alternating with 8/2 tencel that's a dark blue green, sett at 32 EPI; warp is Spruce colored 20/2 cotton, 28-32 PPI. It'll collapse about 50%.
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The napkins are off the loom and table tested!!! I made Creole Chicken and Dumplings from Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen (for the cookbook challenge). I'd never fried chicken before (and not sure it added to the dish) but I'd make this dish again.  Anyways, now I have 8 color gamp napkins in 7 different twills and plain weave, plus I used the leftover on the loom to make a table runner with grey scale weft. The napkins are hefty but have a soft hand. I love them. Here's one napkin, still on the loom; the blocks are square after wet-finishing.
Should I do napkins again, I need to put a plain weave border on them, or at least make the outside blocks larger. Also, the plain weave hem was wider than the twill, so I had to futz that while hemming; that's why people do the hem in a smaller yarn. 

Old news: 
I reworked an old top that I'd knit that was 4 sizes too big into a skirt; basically straight up to the hips, then I added a 3" wide waistband out of cotton doubleknit. Super cute. I will remake the top one day; it's the Bonita Shirt by by Mercedes Tarasovich. That's Owl doing the photobombing.

For sewing class I did a shibori shirt, a pair of elastic waist pants that actually look good, and a lined vest. For the vest, I took solid fabric, stamped it with some flowers in black ink, then quilted onto flannel (for some warmth), then lined with a contrasting quilting fabric. I'll likely put a line of stitches around the perimeter to keep it from rolling. That's my final project, so now all I have to do is work on class samples until the end of the semester.

On the knitting side, I finished the A Capella wrap (super cute); Stitches folks will enter me in a drawing if I post the photo as I made it from last years stitches yarn.

New News:
Just put 20/2 silk on my loom for a scarf for Scott. Sadly, I'm 4 tie rods short of being able to tie up the darn thing so will call Macomber tomorrow. I suppose I could but a call out to Bay Area weavers to see if anyone has any to lend...

Knitting on a little shoulder shawl from yarn I bought in Amsterdam last year.

And I finally found where I'd stowed my drop spindles, so I might actually finish that silk cap and make it into yarn...

Two months later...

No excuse, no posts.

What's new? In no particular order. No pix this time.

• Sheep to Shawl! I was a spinner with Three Sheeps to the Wind in the Dixon Lambtown Sheep to Shawl Competition and we took 2nd!!! And I bought some zwartbles, and some alpaca.
• Working through the color gamp, and a little bored of it. I'm on napkin 6.
• At school, I did some woven shibori samples with tencel warp and tencel or polyester yarn. Then steamed the polyester, which takes the shape permanently. So awesome. I got great result painting one side one color and the other side another color. Love. Love. Love. I need to do more of this. 
• Started on two deflected double weave samples on the school loom.
• Finished the hybrid vigour shawl? Poncho? Anyways, it's adorable, and the perfect weight for summer; good thing we have a few more weeks of warm weather!
• I made 2 T shirts in my sewing class and have cut out the next project, pants, and a 3rd t shirt. TShirt 1 is hand dyed but too big, but looks well made (Size 42 with FBA and a lot of tailoring). TShirt 2 was a miserable color of grey before I shibori'ed it and slightly tight at the bust (Size 40 with no mods); it's now indigo with grey lines; I did a super cute mock turtle and 3/4 length sleeves. Tshirt 3 will be size 40 with the FBA, wish me luck.
• Attended a wearable art show and bought an amazing vest and an awesome jacket.

What's next? Hard to tell. I'm operating on my Bonita shirt, planning on making into my Bonita skirt. Someday I'll finish my napkins. I also need to figure out a class project for the weaving class.  I'll try to get some pictures to post...

Whales! And School! And Dyeing

I spent a couple of weeks in Belgium and Holland, and bought some Danish yarn in Amsterdam and Stephen and Penelope's: a sweaters quantity of a lovely heathered silk and a shoulder shawl's quantity of wool and nettle sock yarn. They have a lovely selection of stuff-I-can't-get-in-my-LYS and some actual wool from local sheep!!! Beautiful store, friendly people inside, and a hip neighborhood.  I could go on about the cycle node system in these two countries... Absolutely brilliant... but... Fiber...

I finished two of the eight napkins on the loom; the tie ups change between some of the napkins. In the case of napkin #3, it's just the treadling. So I'm ready to start but haven't yet; the room is a bit messy and it's putting me off. So I'll save that for next time.

I've been spinning the wool I dyed and carded... It's coming out a bit rustic, which is okay; my plan is to weave with it and then felt it a bit. I've spun up the fun colored bits on the new Louet and now have a pile of light brown wool to go. Tuesday I drifted to the coast with my wheel, and found a bench at Pescadero Beach, where I sat and spun for a few hours; the weather was perfect, a little overcast but warm and the local or visiting whale population entertained me by blowing and breaching right off shore. It was MAGICAL.  A mom came by with two small children; I showed them how it worked. The little boy wanted to know how the wool got purple, since sheep aren't that color!

Last night I got over my bad self and threaded up some cards; this morning, wove a band. There isn't enough contrast for it to be interesting, but it's better than other things I've woven. I started leaving a loop every pick, then pulling the loop in tight to the selvedge after rotating the cards... G had mentioned some people do it that way. My selvedges look much nicer. It turns out my issue with cardweaving is that I hate doing samples, and until I get some level of expertise, it's all samples. I think this yard long band will mark the transition to doing things "for-reals". I'm going to use it to decorate one of my little holding bags... See how nice it looks with a wood background?

8 cards of 5/2 cotton thrums from my Spring Weaving class project

Finally, I spent 3 days in Fort Bragg with some friends learning how to dye using fiber reactive dyes from a woman who can come close to duplicating color. Wow. As an output, I have formulas,  color wheels and other samples, which I've glued and arranged nicely in a binder. I need to go through the rest of the dyes I have in the closet to produce sample gradiations; would also like to do some other color wheels.

I did find some fun fiber stuff in Europe, and I'll post it here as I have time. Next week school starts and I'm trying to get some things done around the house in preparation for that... can't wait!!!

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.