Judy Niemeyer quilts and mushrooms!

I'll end this year with three photos.

I've been working on the blocks for that Judy Niemeyer quilt; I'm a little more than half way and trying to finish it up before I take another class building on the same techniques...  Here's part of what I finished this morning.  When I sew them together, the blocks will be 16" square.

Next are the fabrics for the class next weekend.

And finally, meringue mushrooms I made. Making these (or any meringue, really) was on my cooking bucket list. They were absolutely adorable and totally yummy, although a close inspection would indicate perhaps I need more practice with a piping bag. I took a small box of them to S and to P earlier this week when we had lunch in Carmel Valley, so now there are none left... So sad...

Happy New Year to all!

Quilt in progress

Quilt to be

Mushrooms, made from meringue

Fishy!!!

I've been wanting to make this fish since I bought a book containing the pattern (I'll edit the post with the name, I promise!) at a little quilt store in Queenstown, NZ.  I've been afraid of machine applique forever, and even cram-dyeing the fabric and putting all the supplies in one bag did not cause me to get over myself and start it.  Until last week.

When I put Fishy on the dining table he looked tiny! Fish is approximately 40" long and about 12" wide; technically it's woven, and then quilted. Do I need to make a larger fish, a humongous cotton representation of all the ones that got away? Time will tell!

I promised the final picture of my dress; here it is, all ready for presentation to the class. Too bad it's two sizes too small for me (at least); but it did fit the model, and that's what counts.

On other projects:

• I'm still listlessly knitting away at skirt... it's slow! And I'm bored of it. It may need to rest for awhile.
• I brought out the quilt I started in February, and finished another block; it took me a while, and I ruined a small bit of it, as I'd forgotten the method. I think I've got it down now, so more blocks to come before the end of the year!

Food wise, I've had 3 adventures...  I made a duck, andouille, and shrimp gumbo combining a recipe from Epicurious and a recipe from Paul Prudhomme; I decorated cookies with my knitting group at S's house and learned all about edible spray glitter; and I made 3 batches of macarons one afternoon with my friend J and managed to get her to take them all out of my house!  It was perfect. I'd like to combine my new-found love of edible spray glitter with macaron making...

I'm looking at 2018 goals for the studio and other than getting the new loom up and running, I'd like to be more focused, and finish some of the long standing projects hanging around in boxes and bags, as well as work through some of my stash. Most of the cabinets are a little tight, and this should help. Towards that:

• I'm taking another Judy Niemeyer quilt class (clamshell) out of my hand dyed fabrics.
• I plan on starting the Persian Dreams blanket out of primarily stash yarn; I'll need to order a background color to be consistent.
• I'd like to make some quilts (mostly baby and toddler) for donation; I've already identified a stack of free patterns I would enjoy, and a couple of locations where the donations would be welcome.
• I've got my list of currently planned or started projects as well;  I'm still looking at it. 

Yet Another Green Object (YAGO)

Isn't he cute? I call him Yago.

I'm helping a friend, C., with a group of 4H kids who want to learn to weave. This little guy is representative of what they did for their first project, which is stick weaving (we used straws).  This, by the way, would be a great project for kids of any age!!! The kids' weavings were much cuter, and theirs had googley eyes instead of button eyes.  This week, we're doing circular weaving on old CDs.

Very little else has been going on other than preparing the house for holiday guests and a small holiday party for DH's workmates. This did force me to straighten the studio and get rid of more boxes; I'm down to two boxes, I think... It's starting to look like a place I want to be.

Loom with a view

Other than that:

• I finished my final school project, a shift dress with low French darts (photos when I get it on the model)! Sadly it's a pattern-size 10 (class requirement) but if it were my size, I'd like it enough to wear it. 
• I finished a doll that I found partially finished in a box I unpacked (you can just see it by the spools under the window in the studio picture).
• I'm knitting away at my skirt which may be finished for summer 2020.

And I attempted to get organized by making a project list which gets eerily bigger every time I look away. I'll let you know how that goes.

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.

Dyeing with Toyon, a 10 day adventure!

Z is helping

There is a lot of toyon in my yard... it's supposed to be a great natural dye  First step was to cut some! I went to the folly with my helper Ziggy.  I picked 10.5 oz of toyon leaves, stems, and some berries and simmered them for about an hour. The book I have talks about the wonder scent of Toyon simmering... It is lovely, until you read that you need to cook it outside as the fabulous marzipan aroma indicates a low level of cyanide...

Toyon, by the way,  is Heteromeles arbutifolia.

Fresh stems, leaves and berries

On the 2nd day, I simmered it again for about an hour.  Then I let it sit on the deck for two more days, and look at the warm russet color of the water! Then I left it alone for about a week in variable weather, the color deepening daily.

Why a week? I wanted to leave it for several days, then realized I couldn't find my alum, so I had to order some, then I got too busy to wind the yarn... Yep, it was one of those weeks.

Boiled twice, then ignored for two days

Next step, I simmered 100g sock yarn (divided into 2.25 ounce and 1.25 ounce hanks) from my stash in water with alum and Cream of Tartar.  I think the fiber is Merino/Cashmere/Nylon.  I still can't find my last dye box after the move (I'm sure it's here but mislabeled), the one with measuring implements in it (scale and spoons), so I eyeballed a teaspoon of CoT and a couple tablespoons of Alum.  It simmered for about an hour, then cooled in the pot overnight.  Meanwhile, I drained the solids out of the toyon water and discarded the little bit of mold on the top. 

Now for the part where you learn why I'll never be a good dyer. Being a good dyer, who can begin to replicate results, requires that one measure reasonably accurately, and keep track of silly things like time. I suppose for natural dyes, I'd also want to note which bushes I took the cutting from, how small I chopped up the stems, what day I harvested the leaves on, what the weather was like while it "aged" and so on. But precision like that is hard for me, so I'll just detail the omissions and get on towards the photos of what happened when the fiber met the Toyon soup. 

I heated up the dye bath, adding the yarn early as I did not want to shock it. Then I threw the larger hank of yarn in and forgot to note the time. I think it simmered for about 90 minutes, then I turned it off and meant to leave it overnight... but it was looking pretty dark so I pulled it out after some time. Then I decided to throw in the smaller hank to see what would happen (it's the lighter shade), and simmered again for an indeterminate amount of time...While it sat in the dyebath, cooling, I got impatient and rinsed the darker one; I definitely lost some color. But I'm thrilled with the results! 

Next up in the dyepot: mahonia aquifolium!