Back at it!

Mistakes Scarf

 Now that the Rug is off the loom, lots of stuff is happening...

I wove off the scarf we put on the loom for B's Mistakes Clinic in April... It's going to J's charity scarf project. Yes, I know I've been weaving for many years now but this is the first time it clicked that the tension of the threads after I advance the warp greatly affects the WPI and makes a huge difference in how the textiles looks... Light Bulb Moment!!! I'm excited to weave more consistent cloth. It's 8/4 cotton carpet warp,  probably sett at 10 or 12 EPI, maybe 8 inches wide? I used purple, blue, magenta and yellow warp, with the same blue weft.

This is so light and
squooshy and warm

I also made this deflected doubleweave on for a study group project, and to wear to upcoming cool weather trips... It's from MA 2020 Handwoven magazine, Gilia and Locoweed. I used 18/2 wool and 18/2 wool silk from stash, set at 24EPI. I was aiming for 16 WPI in the weft but was afraid of beating too hard (this has been an issue) and so I beat WAAAY too lightly for the first 15 inches. Note to self; check WPI often at the beginning of a project, and put on an extra 12 inches so I can play with the weave structure before beginning the project.  Here I'm showing the last part of it, which is pretty consistent, and correct.

I also took a basket class and made my first ever basket. It's darn adorable, and just big enough to fit in today's crop of Peruvian groundcherries. It's seagrass bound with raffia, and it's a coiled basket. It's almost round.... 

I also have been knitting on a green sweater for summer... I measured it and sadly it's too small. I'll be ripping it out.. 

Also have been prepping some of the ikats I bought in Indonesia for hanging. This is time consuming! And I've been spinning paper; I think I have enough to start weaving.

Next on the Gilmore is 2 baby blankets in blues; I'm in the process of threading them. One will go to the newborn Grandneff, the other probably to his slightly older cousin. I'm using 8/4 cotton (not rug warp) in a rose path pattern with alternating colors. It should go quickly once I have all 544 threads on the loom.  There may be some more baby blankets in my future; I'd love to have a couple of them put any just in case they're needed anywhere.

And for the baby Mac, one or two more deflected doubleweave scarves in blue; one for R, as a thanks for letting us crash at his place in September, and the other? We'll see. 

There's a work queue... later this year, it'll be the paper yardage, an ikat project (more yardage?), a trip to SOAR and it's ensueing projects, and some bulky stuff for a rug. I also want to make a couple of rugs for the lodge master, and... and... It never ends, does it?

I showed T how to spin paper a few weeks ago; she's intending on spinning bulky and weaving with it. I'm thinking I'd like to do the same, making coiled baskets with it, and using thrums as the weft...

Tales of the Rug.

 I'm going to document most of the issues I had with The Rug. 

Inspector Zig 
looking for errors

The impetus for making The Rug was DH declaring we needed a rug of a specific size and material for by the den slider; it has to cover dirty feet coming in from the door, and also needs to go under the cat door and stepping stool to keep the stool from scratching the floor. The material should be of cotton so it can go in the washer, since this area needs regular cleaning. It also gets a lot of direct light, so fade proof would be great, and it has to absorb water from people and cat feet in the winter. It needed to pass my idea of what might look ok in the room. A quick survey of what's available in the market place yielded nothing. Good thing I'm a weaver!

I decided to make a rep rug from one of the books in the library; it has a mid century modern vibe and a sturdy construction. It's a type of weave that takes forever to warp but weaves up very fast. I ordered an 8/4 poly/cotton warp in dark blue and light blue that's supposed to be fade resistant, and loaded the draft into my weaving software.

1. The first issue was that this warp rep weave is so dense I had to order more heddles. Not a big deal, and they arrived quickly.
2. I wound 30? 40? ends too many, and I'm not sure why. I think I was going by EPI and inches as opposed to following the pattern... I took them off the warp chain before I started, so also not a big deal. They're chained up nicely awaiting reuse.
3. Then I threaded... and threaded... It's about 1200 threads. I took it slow to favor my back and also to avoid mistakes. Then I wound the warp on.
4. When that was done, I tied on and then doubted my tension... I unwound the warp and rebeamed it, retied it on and started weaving.
5. I could not get the reed easily through the threads!!! I checked everything I could think of... Asked for help. Verified the sett. Pouted. Tried again. Varied tension. Nothing worked. I decided I needed a less dense sett.
6. I arrived on 30 EPI (down from 36 EPI) because it would be 3 ends per in a 10 dent reed instead of 3 dents in a 12 dent reed... That would avoid uneven reed marks on the finished rug. I probably should have sampled to see how much denser I could have made it, but this is what I decided on. Simply resleying in the other reed would make the cloth wider than my loom could handle, so I decided to throw the extra ends off the back.
7. Oh if it were that easy! There are a lot of stripes in this warp, and I had to remove threads proportionally from each stripe. 
8. This took months, as I avoided the studio to avoid the "Dog on the Loom". Several folks recommended that I cut my losses, get rid of the warp and start something else but DARN IT I'm a weaver and I was going to make this rug.
9. I didn't finish the resleying before my vacation, so when I came back I had to figure out where I was. I signed up for a sewing class at the local community college to justify my procrastination.
10. Finally I got it to a near weavable state! and found a couple of threading errors. I fixed those and started weaving.
11. As I finished the hem, I noticed a spot that was less dense than others... Yep, I had one thread in that dent instead of 3. Luckily it was close to the edge, so it was easy to fix. Had it been in the middle, I would have fixed it anyways; I really want this rug to be right!
12. I think there were some crossed threads, too, which I fixed and forgot about.
13. The first 3 inch border is a bitch. It requires switching shafts and pickup to get a solid color right across. I thought this might look weird, and I wish I hadn't done it! Sadly it's too late.
14. Ahhh... then the real weaving started, and went quickly. I wove most of the 60 or so inches in a few days, then started on the last foot, which took about the same amount of time as the first 60"

    

    Finally weaving!!!

15. Yeah, and I realized I was likely going to run out of thick weft... I found the invoice from January and went to order some more, then realized my credit card had been hacked and I had no way to pay for it. DH came to the rescue and bought the yarn for me.

16. 

    I added even more weights
    later in the process

     Remember back where I threw a bunch of threads off the back? When I warp back to front, I loop the thread over the back apron rod... so when I near the end of the warp, the threads under tension that had mates that were not under tension started going limp. At the end of the weaving I'd deployed over 30 weights to weigh these down, and had started putting two threads per weight in some places. This slowed down progress considerably, as I found and fixed and found and fixed the threads.
    

    

    Not a lot of weft left!

17. Turns out I had enough yarn with just a few yards to spare! I'm sure that was only because I ordered some. So now I have a spool of blue mop cotton waiting for the next project.
    
18. That 3 inch border was a bad at the end as in the beginning, and doesn't look any better to me. I can't really fix it, so I will live with it, maybe put a sticky note in the book to consider it carefully. In the transitions between stripes there are often two threads in the same shed; I'm not sure if that's an artifact of doing odd things in rep or if it's an error on my part... No one walking on it will notice it, but a fellow weaver might.
19. And it's done except for borders, fixing a surprisingly few errors, and a good bath. Then a photo shoot. The loom is cleaned up and ready for the baby blankets that'll go on next.

The Rug usually has 2 cats on it...

I'll also post photos of the blocks DH constructed to keep my loom from walking across the room... It's only useful for those types of weaves that require a hard beat, like most rugs do. They are awesome!!!!

Q2, '22 Finished Things (1)

 And... that would be the shoelaces..

There was that super long ambitious list I'd made at the end of Q1, some of which got worked on and most of which did not. Honestly I spent a lot of time in the yard, playing games on my phone, traveling, and a lot of time procrastinating.

And speaking of procrastinating, this post has been sitting as draft for over a month! So I'm just going to publish it and get on with life.

Post vacation, nothing getting done...

Sunset in the tropics

 I've been back from our trip for a few weeks and honestly getting nothing done!!! I'll post here about the trip at some point... but still trying to wrap my head around the culture, the weaving,  and all that... I did come home with a number of ikat textiles that I'd like to mount on the wall; I found this article and I intend to follow it's instructions to safely attach velcro to the back of the ikat.

What I have been doing is:

• I've started and restarted the back of the sweater I took to Indonesia with me several times, and I think now it's good... It's knitted flat in two pieces to the armhole then the rest is done on circs... I'll be knitting on that for awhile, although it is DK weight so maybe it'll be faster than I think. 
• I went to my spinning guild meeting and spun more paper.
• I'm taking a class in copying ready to wear, so I'm working through copying a Hawaiian shirt from Hilo Hatties.
• I 3D printed a band weaving rigid heddle that I found on Thingiverse mostly because I was confounded as to how it works; I bought a book but haven't tried weaving with it yet.
• I poked at my loom. Then walked away.

On the wine front, I do have a report on wine in Bali. Apparently there are of wine makers (Balinese, Antipodean, or European); some of the grape juice is brought in from other areas (I think primarily from Australia and New Zealand) but they are growing some grapes in Bali as well. We had a decent but not spectacular white with dinner at Warung in Uluwatu, and then tried a few more wines on the tour... At best, I'd suggest that they need a little more time to adapt their practices to the climate and terroir; at worst, I'd say "Just order the beer". The Bintang was nice.

For June, we're opening an Italian Soave... More on that once it's opened and tasted. 

Pre-vacation shoe lace waving

I'm getting ready to leave for a longish vacation... All my shopping is done and now we're sorting and waiting and not doing much until we can start packing. Honestly you'd think we'd never been on a vacation before. Of course I had to have new shoelaces for the shoes I'd intended to bring, but since they're not broken in enough, I will take other shoes. I think I need to acknowledge the calming power of making shoelaces during times of stress. Here's the laces!

I have almost finished the vest from Petit Point fabric but I don't like the way the armbands sit on the body... I'm still thinking about solutions. Meanwhile, here's a bad photo of it.

I've been knitting away on Sand and Sunsets but it's gotten too big to be vacation knitting; I'm probably 1/3 done? Meanwhile, I'm looking for a DK cotton knitting project for travel.

The rug on the loom is stalled. Don't ask.

The textile trip that was scheduled for July (not June and I'd thought) has been cancelled.  

On other fronts, I did finish marmalade and limoncello... And have planted tomatoes, basil  and cucumbers in the garden. There are 2 other tomato plants that I bought before I decided to rehome one of the many volunteers... they need spots this week.

Q1'22 finished things (4)

Did I honestly not publish this at the end of March??? Shame on me...

This is what I finished in Q1'22...

• 5 yd warp from overshot departures class, including a bunch of samples, 3 1/4 yds of petit point and some plain weave samples using paper yarn as weft.
• 2 card woven mask lanyards
• An icelandic wool shawl

I also started a rug, started spinning a painted roving for a sweater, spun and plied more paper yarn, started a summer sweater, and have partially sewed together a vest from the 3 yds of petit point weaving from above. I also tried fitting a shirt for Scott and have stalled on it...

I'll hope to be spending nearly the entire month of May travelling so Q2 may not be that productive either... we'll see...

Here's the list from December; the green stuff is new. Wondering why the list didn't include the icelandic shawl? In green are things that are in process or new. In orange are things I want to finish or get substantially done in Q2.

• Sewing
• A vest from the Petit Point fabric (started)
• Make a shirt from paper fabric
• Sew up some of the fabric in the stash
• Fit a pattern to Scott (started)
• Make a shirt for Scott
• Embroidery Machine
• Figure out how to "machine quilt" strips and sew them together.
• Green shirt
• Blue sweatshirt
• Another grocery bag, with embroidery
• Spinning
• Spin enough paper for a shirt (started)
• New: Spin that colored roving
• Spin silk for card weaving
• Cotton
• Band Weaving
• Bands for the Petit point vest
• Weave with handspun silk
• Weave the the silk yarn in the studio
• New! Shoelaces
• Quilting
• Finish the two Judy Niemeyer quilts
• Duvet in lodge from marbled fabrics (quilt top to plain fabric, plain backing) (played with marbling)
• Make some baby quilts to practice quilting techniques (craftsy)
• Knitting
• Summer sweater (started)
• Cashmere sweater
• Knit a yoked sweater from stash of fingering
• Ann Zilboorg sweater
• New: Dan Doh Shawl
• Weaving
• Keep working on ikat
• Paper yardage
• Rug for Main slider
• Rug for entry and sliders at Lodge
• Lodge bedroom rugs
• Rag rug for guest laundry
• Finish guest bath towels
• Make Guest bath towels for lodge
• Hand dyed tencel warp
• Mosaic
• Play with Paltiya.
• Finish poppy table
• New: table for lodge entry
• Printing
• Print some fabric and sew with it.
• Print some cards 
• raven from the 7 ravens
• Christmas card: nutcracker
• try multi-color again
• Other
• Fix the two needlepoint pillows that are falling apart. Decided to retire them
• Marble panels for duvet
• Explore my sewing machine
• Take one class a month from Craftsy
• SOAR
• Stitches
• Retreat
• 2 textile trips
• Don't forget the garden, processing garden produce, exercise to make me sleep, cooking for the two of us and tending the home wine cellar.
• Made lemon marmalade and limoncello

Limoncello!

Doldrums...

With the trip to DC and a familial visit, and some random stomach ailment, I haven't been getting much done. 

I actually finished something...

I did use my plane time to and from DC nearly finishing my shawl; then finished it right when I got back. It's blocked and drying... The fiber is a single strand of Icelandic wool, slightly felted, then natural dyed; DH brought me the kit from Iceland. it's a pretty straightforward garter shawl with slight Faroese shaping on the shoulders. I'm also working on a summer sweater using some yarn I bought in Florence; it's coming along nicely but it's a slow process.

Unhappy rug

On the weaving front...  The rug on the loom is unhappy. Or is making me unhappy.  Or maybe both. At any rate, I think it's sett too close, and since I can't make it wider (I'll run out of loom) I need to throw some threads off the back. I'm waiting until I'm ready for this. 

Meanwhile the project that appeals is a vest from some fabric I wove for a class and some lightweight commercial denim. It's also being problematic and I'm trying to work through it purposefully instead of winging it. Today I cut out the pieces and stabilized edges... I still need to cut out the lining. I have to put in a style line (in this context this means I screwed something up and am fixing it by putting a seam where a seam would not otherwise go) and want to add a horizontal in seam pocket! I'll need to sew a test.

I also bought some shoes that need custom shoelaces... Maybe soon...

One the subject of wine, we're currently drinking a white rioja (viura grapes); darn tasty with a mushroom risotto. It's not new to us but worthy of mention.