moonfrog

Way back in July, I promised to report on the Farmer’s Market demo that our guild was hosting. Well, it has been over a month, but here it is.
It was a lovely sunny day, which has been in short supply around here lately. We set up our canopy and wove and spun to music, surrounded by the fruits of the season. You can see my rigid heddle loom in the bottom right corner.
I remembered to take some photos for the guild archives, and this one was my favorite. This is guild member Berniece showing someone how to use an Inkle loom. She loves teaching people about weaving and it is sweet to watch.

And here’s my finished cloth from the day’s work. The night before the market, I decided there were enough people coming to demonstrate spinning, so I warped my rigid heddle with the yarn from my shadow weave blanket. I was thrilled that I’d thought of it. Now I have enough fabric to  make a couple pillows to go with the blanket. I just have to get myself to sew it up!

Right now I’m working on an angora hat and a scribble scarf — two small take-along projects that sit in between jaunts or get spurts of work and then are ignored for a couple days. Soon I will push to get the hat done and sent off to its intended home. I also did some spinning for the county fair in our guild’s demonstration room. And yesterday was the Sheep to Shawl at the fair (we called it Fleece to Piece this year.) I picked wool for the carders as my part. So there are plenty of fiber activities going on, just not much talking about them afterwards!

I’ll try to catch up with the rest of my activities in my next post. I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to as the summer fades away . . . .

Check out my first tomato of the year! It’s almost ripe. The amazing thing is that the plant is alive at all. Our summer has been very cold. We don’t get warm enough here to grow tomatoes, so I picked out an Early Girl just to have fun. The Husband chose a couple heirlooms and is rather petulant that his don’t even have fruit set and I have about a dozen with this little ripe one coming along. I’ll have to let him eat it to make him feel better.

We had a good time at the Kate Wolf Music Festival, even though we cut our trip two days shorter than usual. The music was great. Seeing friends was awesome. It was actually relaxing compared to life at home right now.

As soon as we got back home we collected the keys to our new house and started the work that needs to be done before we can move. The biggest job is putting in a kitchen. The before picture shows the old wall and island that had to be torn out. Then the really hard work of tearing up the old floor, which was particle board, so it had to be removed down to the bones. Lucky for us, the husband is a retired flooring contractor. We will have nice floors!

When we aren’t working on the house itself, we are knee deep in the planning and choosing. A trip to the lumber store with our cabinet maker was lots of fun. Such pretty wood!  We’ve met with many people this week to arrange all the details. Today we ended our day buying our stovetop and ovens. They went on sale right before we got them, whoopee!

Here’s what the kitchen looks like after the tear-out and almost done with the under-floor replacement. The old man worked hard and is snoring in his recliner as I write this.

And what’s going on with my knitting, etc.? Well . . . I added a square to a traveling scarf, and, um . . . yep, that’s it.  Maybe the triangle scarf got a few rows farther along. I still have a baby sweater started — with one month to complete it. Yikes! Is it wrong to say I hope the baby comes late?  I think it is, poor mama.

Tomorrow is our guild’s demonstration at the Farmer’s Market and I’m in charge of getting us all set up. I’m looking forward to a day outdoors weaving on my rigid heddle and inkle looms. I’ll try to remember to take pictures for a change.

Oh, wait!  I forgot that I haven’t posted my hats for the last round of Caps for a Cure. They are all fairly simple, but patterns that I hadn’t tried before.

The purple hat on the left is shown inside out and right side out. It’s reversible! It’s Beret Gaufre by Veronik Avery. I made it more a beanie than a beret. One side looks ribbed and the other looks like seed stitch. I believe it is a broken rib pattern. I used the leftover yarn from my Mondo Cable Vest. It felt virtuous to use up every last bit of the Debbie Bliss cotton.

The red hat with the cabled band is a Ravelry free download called Esme. I used an old favorite — Paton’s Shetland Chunky Tweed – for this one and blocked it into its beret shape.

The last one is the One Ball Really Easy Instant Chemo Cap from HeadHuggers. I used some GGH Esprit that didn’t work when I tried to crochet it, since it is so fluffy and hard to see the stitches. It worked fine knitted. And it is soooo soft! I think it must be like the Chinchilla yarn that the pattern calls for, which is recommended for chemo caps.

So that’s my life right now. Very busy, not much crafting, but enough of everything to make me happy. A special thanks to Carrie for prompting me to post what I’ve been up to lately. It’s so easy to get caught up in the busyness and let the blog slide. I’ll be back soon with a report on the Farmer’s Market.

Last weekend found me, once again, in class. This time it was an Inkle Weaving class. In April at CNCH, many of my fellow guild members were weaving bands on their very portable inkle looms. My hotel roomie, Connie,  even bought a new full-size inkle loom while we were there. You can see it here next to her Ashford Inklette.

So, when Connie was scheduled to teach Inkle Weaving at NorthCoast Knittery, I signed up to learn. The price of the class included an Inklette loom, and earlier I had bought a wider model off eBay so I could make scarves and other projects on it.  For the class, I used the smaller loom and made a cute band. It was a super fun class, and easy, too. I was really surprised to finish my band during the class.

I really want to use my new little band, and I wanted to try warping my bigger Inkle Loom, which Connie had figured out for me during our class. So, here’s a pic of my little band and my big band, which will be sewn together for a bag for my shuttles.

I was going to make the warp wider and didn’t, so the pattern is offset, but it will work for the intended purpose. I’m really enjoying seeing the pattern emerge, which is the same on both bands. I had some plain cotton  for the big band and the small band is done in mercerized cotton, so it has a sheen the the bigger one doesn’t. It’s amazing how well they match, though. I was really pleased with that.

In spite of this detour, I’m making good progress on my raglan sweater. It’s at the waist decreases right now. I’ve tried it on twice to make sure the fit is right, and I’ve found a great way to make the trials quick and easy.

When I reach the try-on point, I switch to knitting off to one of my old Denise needles with an extra-long cord created by using the extensions. This could be done with either Knitpicks or Addi Clicks needles by using an extension to add more cable length. The plus with using the Denise cables is that the cords are thicker but pliable, and there are caps to put on the ends so that no stitches fall off. My knitting seems very secure.  I’ve even put the raglan sleeves on Denise cords to hold them and will just pop on the needles when it is time to knit them. The wide variety of cord sizes in the Denise set make custom cord lengths possible.

All this makes me feel better that I don’t use the Denise needles much anymore. They still have a purpose. It’s also way easier than putting all those stitches on waste yarn or holders and then having to move them back to needles.

Although I’m happy with this sweater and enjoying the process, the color pattern is so far outside my usual that it is hard for me to adjust to it. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I’m not quite sure.  I remember that my beige Hey, Teach! sweater was borderline for me, too, but ended up being just fine.  I’m hoping this one will be like that.

My latest project is on a roll. Everything else is secondary, so I’m taking a short pause tonight and then it’s back to it.
I hope all you mothers out there had a lovely Mother’s Day. Mine was very sweet. First, I started the day knitting. Then my grandson called from Kansas. Hearing his voice lifts my spirits incredibly. More knitting. Then we drove an hour away for our traditional dinner with my mom, my two sons, my husband’s daughter and her son. It was once again a good time together. Back home and more knitting.
What is it that is keeping my attention so forcefully? Nothing spectacular, but I feel like I’m actually making progress on this one. It’s the Mondo Cable Shell that has been in my queue for a long time. I’m on the last cable crossing (an extra one to add length) and then a bit of finishing and it is ready to wear. Well, that’s the theory anyway.

Before I rush back to my knitting, I want to show you a small weaving project.   It started last year. My friend Connie gave me some really lovely dishcloths that she made based on the WeaveZine pattern called Spa Wash Cloth. She varied the weaving techniques and included some loop pile in the pattern. They are beautiful and useful and I use them all the time.
When it was time for me to participate in our guild demonstration at the local coop grocery store, I noticed some Aruacania Chacaburo cotton that had been a prize from a local yarn store. Slubby cotton might be just the thing for some easy washcloths — I didn’t want to  try something as difficult as the spa cloths just yet.  I warped my rigid heddle with some turquoise worsted-weight kitchen cotton, then used the Chacaburo for the weft. I wove a sample and then two cloths in plain weave and hemmed them by hand.

I varied the picks per inch for each cloth, resulting in more warp showing on one. Next time, I will try a green warp. I was a little worried about how the slubby cotton would wear, but it is doing fine with regular use and it is very soft, so I use my sample as a face cloth. I will do more of these since I have another skein of the Chacaburo left.

Well, it’s time to get back to my knitting.  I should have a new vest to show you very soon!

Time flies at warp speed nowadays, a week can go by and I don’t even realize it. I’ve been knitting some, but it’s all the same old projects.  My Baktus scarf, which I started in September, reached the halfway point and was racing along, halfway to the end point, when something went terribly wrong. The second half did not match the first half.  So ribbit, ribbit!  Back to halfway done. I completed one eight-row repeat and set it aside to be my travel knitting again. Not quite a time-out, but pretty darn close!

I’m thinking of doing a mild over-dye when this is done since it is so eye-searing bright. I know, dyeing over Wollmeise is crazy talk, but you can see it is even hard to photograph it is so bright. Of course, this is a photo using my computer camera while I was out of town — and the scarf was much larger and closer to finished than it is now.

And where was I? Well, last week, I spent a four-day weekend at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Santa Clara, but it wasn’t Stitches West, which I skipped this year. I attended  CNCH which is a weaver’s guild conference.  (Okay, I’ll look it up.)  Conference of Northern California Handweavers.   Pretty clear, eh?

I took three half-day classes and really enjoyed them all. The first one was called Warp Fast by Daryl Lancaster. She showed us how to warp with a warping paddle, which was great. Then she showed us two ways to warp a sectional beam. That was awesome!  The last step in learning to use my “new” loom that I got probably two years ago, was to figure out what to do about the sectional back beam. I had no clue whatsoever. Daryl’s presentation gave me just the information I needed.  In the photo here, she is talking about the AVL warping wheel which is barely visible on the slideshow screen.  It winds the warp and tensions it while a section at a time is wound onto the beam. So, that is what I spent my CNCH market budget on this year. I’m excited to use it, but will have to wait for a while until things settle down around here.

My other two classes were for spinning — one on mixing colors and the other on making fat yarn. Both were taught by Judith McKenzie. I learned a lot more about spinning, especially that I don’t really spin like most people. Fortunately, I sat next to a very friendly woman who spins exactly like I do. We commiserated and practiced spinning “properly” with some lapses into our old ways.

Connie and I roomed together again, other members of our weaving guild across the hall, even though we asked for adjoining rooms. She had some great classes, too. Here’s a Celtic pattern she started on her Inklette loom. It’s amazing what can be done on these small looms.

There was a fashion show Friday evening and it was spectacular. The garments ranged from everyday chic to wild and crazy. The highlight was Tien Chui’s wedding ensemble. It was even more spectacular in person. The photo to the left is Sandra of our guild modeling one of her woven jackets. She makes gorgeous garments out of her woven fabrics.

Saturday evening we had a banquet with Syne Mitchell of Weavezine giving an awesome presentation about weaving and the internet. She was hilarious and her stories were fantastic. (Please excuse the blurry, far away picture.) On Sunday we drove home in a heavy rain, but it didn’t really dampen our spirits. It was a great get-away.

I’ll try to catch up on the other projects I’ve been working on in my next post.

Our first winter storm arrived last night. Wind and rain.  It makes me feel like snuggling up in my living room and knitting. And what could be better than to snuggle under a brand new handwoven blanket?

A couple posts ago, I showed you a view from under the loom.  This is what came off the loom a week ago.  I wanted to make another one right away, but time just won’t allow it.  This project finally makes me feel like I am a Weaver.

The technique is shadow weave, using a dark and light component to create the design. It takes 2 shuttles to alternate the 2 colors with each row. The pattern uses 8 shafts and is done in Lamb’s Pride worsted. The blue is an extra that caused some concern about how it would look, but I’m quite happy with it as an accent.

I took the Shadow Weave class from Linda Hartshorn last April and May in order to learn how to use a countermarche loom.  It was a long and difficult process to get the loom warped and tied up, but the time and effort was so worth it.   Linda was very patient with my procratinations and I managed to finish this the day before her next class started. Whew!

Now I need to transfer the process over to my own loom at home, a lovely countermarche that looks much easier to warp than the one at the studio. I hope so!  I find myself perusing drafts (patterns) to start as soon as I can find a couple free days.  What I really want to do is make another shadow weave as complex as this 8-shaft design, but my loom is only a 4-shaft. But I started looking more closely at my loom after hearing of some people adding shafts or harnesses to looms that weren’t called “four now four later.”  I saw there was room for more, so I emailed the Louet company and found that I can add four more shafts to my loom.  Something to look forward to!  I’d love to  make more blankets just like this one.

On the knitting front, I am working on hats and scarves, bit by bit. As soon as one hat in particular is finished, I’ll be casting on some mittens for my grandson. I’m headed to see him in a week, so I need to get busy on that!  If you are reading this and you are near Kansas City, let me know what the weather is so I can pack the right clothes.

I’m so excited to see my little guy, who is no longer little!  He will turn 7 while I’m there, and I haven’t seen him in a year and a half.  I have to confess to my knitter’s shame, though.  I have never knit anything for him. Not one thing. I’m not entirely sure why.  Maybe partly because I knit so slowly and children grow so fast.  I don’t think he likes knit garments, and I see him so rarely, but I’m going to give it a try and see how this goes. Mittens are a small thing.

I was thinking about kitten mittens, because he loves cats.  Then I thought skull and crossbone mittens, because he likes pirates. Guess which ones I’m going with?    I hope I can remember to take a picture before I give them to him.

Stay warm and cozy.  And knit a few.

(Blanket pattern can be found in the book 1000+ Patterns Shadow Weaves by Marian Powell.  Page 233, draft 8-26-1.  Tromp as writ.)

In a couple weeks it will be this blog’s four year anniversary, so I figured it would be good to say a few words, especially since it has been a month since my last post. Sheesh!  I really would like to post more, so I’ll try to do just that.  In the meantime . . . .

Let’s have an anniversary give-away.  All you have to do is leave a comment. You can answer the question at the end of this post or any other comment.  It’s that easy. In a couple weeks I’ll award four prizes — for my four years of blogging.

Now I’ll show you what I’ve been up to lately. Actually, this has been going on for quite some time. I took another weaving class in the spring and didn’t get very far with my project, so I am back at it. I’m using a countermarche loom so I can learn the tie-ups that are like my own loom, which sits waiting. Threading the warp took a long time on this big loom since I had to sit inside the loom to do it. It was crowded in there! The project is a blanket in shadow weave, which is quite complex, and I’m using all eight shafts. I never knew it would be such a long proces just to get the loom ready to weave. The picture is my view for the last two sessions, while I laid on the floor beneath the loom threading and attaching these chains.

Okay, enough whining, because here’s the loom now. The weaving has begun.  I’ve gone a bit further than  in the photo, doing the practice weaving. It looks like I threaded it correctly and the design is coming out lovely. The shed (the space to put the shuttle through) is not very big, which is a mystery since this type of loom is supposed to have a great shed, but this will do if I work slowly and carefully.  Heh.  Slowly is my best-est way.

My weaving instructor, Linda Hartshorn, has been very patient with me and helped me at each stage, even though the class has been over for a long time. I’m really excited to be actually making the blanket now.

There’s something else that has me nearly dancing in circles. I finished Hey, Teach!  I just hunkered down, hardly going out over the Labor Day Weekend, and knit, knit, knit.  The motivation?  I want to cast on a vest, but wouldn’t let myself do it until this was done. Ha.

This is my first cardigan. Never have done a button band before. This one wasn’t hard. Whew!

This is blocking and waiting for its buttons.  And that’s where you can help me. I found these wooden buttons in my button bag that will work. The husband says they are great — but he always says that. (Secretly, I think he was raised by Tony the Tiger of Frosted Flakes cereal fame  — Grrrreat!  I wish I was that optimistic.)

Anyway, should I go button shopping or use the stash buttons?  What say you?  The yarn is soft, but tweedy and nubby and  I’d like it to have just-right buttons.  I’ll write up the official finishing post after I sew on the buttons and try to get a decent modeled shot. It fit very nicely before washing and blocking, so I hope it’s the same after.

Make sure you leave a comment for the contest.  I’m looking forward to a better-blogging year ahead.

Back in August of ’08, on a Wednesday, I shared my first weaving project, a decorative pillow.  A few months passed before there was more time for tackling this new art, but in ’09 it went full speed ahead.

First, I took a beginning weaving class that spanned from the first week of January until March. Here’s the loom warped with red wool for samples and a scarf. It took a long time to choose, but I ended up using a shiny magenta rayon and  aqua blue wool/silk for weft, making this change greatly in the finished product.

As the class came to a close, I started looking for a floor loom and had the good fortune to find one at an estate sale. I think it’s time to introduce my new baby.

This is my lovely Louet Hollandia, a countermarche, 4-harness. I’ll have to take a picture that shows all her glory later. For now, this gives you an idea. She’s 54 inches wide, but not too tall. The colorful warp is just there to make it easier to warp and was there when I bought her.

My scarf from the beginners class is in the front, with its random purple and blue stripes. Behind that is the sampler from a three day workshop with Robin Spady at the end of March. Whew!  That was a lot of weaving for me and I learned a lot.

Here’s a picture of many of the samplers and weavers from the workshop. We used one warp and varied the treadling to make many different patterns. This is a way to do less warping and more weaving.  We even learned how to make corduroy, which we cut right on the loom.

It was a fun workshop. Robin is a patient and enthusiastic teacher and has a lifetime of weaving experience. She even gave us a mini-workshop in the evening,  covering the inkle loom, which was a bonus.

Next came another 8-week weaving class, this time learning shadow weave. I’m working on a Cranbrook countermarche loom, hoping to learn how to set up my Hollandia once I’m done. The tie-up is different than the jack loom. I’ll share pictures of that class project once I make a bit more progress. It is going very slowly.

With all the big looming going on, I haven’t forgotten my first loom, the Schacht rigid heddle. In fact, I managed to squeeze in a workshop in Sonoma at CNCH, the Conference of Northern California Handweavers. This class was spinning and weaving. Connie (on the left in the picture above) and I filled her little Honda to the brim for this one.  First we spun the yarn for the weft. Then we learned the direct-warping method for the rigid heddle. What a difference!  This will make it easy to keep the loom warped all the time.

Joan Sheridan, owner of Heritage Spinning and Weaving in Michigan,  taught this fun workshop and has a picture of our little group on her blog.  She took extra time to show me how to make Leno Lace  and Spanish Lace with a pick-up stick.  The Leno has rolled over onto the cloth beam, but you can see the Spanish Lace at the bottom. The black is a commercial yarn used for the warp.  You can find instruction on how to make these and other laces in an article on Weavezine written by Robin Spady.

And since no one broke a warp thread, Joan used my cloth to demonstrate a repair — by cutting one of my warps!  She did a nice repair, though, so I can’t hold it against her. That’s what she’s doing in the picture. Thanks for the great workshop to Joan and her wonderful helper/angel, Debbie!

Well, I guess that catches me up in the weaving department. I feel like it has been a stealth activity as far as this blog is concerned. I’ll try to keep things more up-to-date, although there are still a few things to catch up on from knitting bag.  I really have been busy, haven’t I?