So much for good intentions

I wanted to get better at posting regularly. Hah! I actually got WORSE! It’s now been 6 weeks since I posted. Yikes.

Here’s my excuse – I haven’t woven much. Does that work for you? It doesn’t really work much for me.

Anyway, the time frame means this will probably be another lengthy post. As I was preparing it...and I’m not at home when I’m doing so...I see that I’ve neglected to take photos of everything I should have to show you what I have been doing. Sigh.

Let’s continue in the kitchen first. In the last post you saw & heard about my efforts with gluten free sourdough. Of course, that wasn’t the last of it. You saw up to trial #4. There were more. I won’t give you tons of details now, but here’s GF sourdough #5. Decent.

Then I tried a different recipe from a different blogger. MISTAKE! Granted it was going to be a smaller loaf, but here it is from the top, with my potholder for size. This has an egg in it.

And here it is completely cooled and cut. Look at how gummy it is. It went straight into the compost.

Time was passing, and it was nearing my trip to my friend’s in WV. So I decided to make her one more loaf with Georgia’s now tried-and-true recipe. This time I added a few cloves of finely minced garlic and some Herbs de Provence, just for fun.

Then I realized that her non-GF hubby might feel left out, so I baked him a loaf of regular sourdough. His has more garlic than hers, and black olives (she hates olives, he loves them), and Italian Herb blend. Here they are side-by-side before being cut.

And cut in half, GF in the front.

If I was lived near them, I’d continue to make her more GF sourdough, and would try more things with seeds and nuts and other additions. But this was as far as I went.

I brought her the GF sourdough starter and all my remaining GF ingredients, as well as all the bread. I told her that if she wante we could make a loaf while I was there so that she got some experience with the process. As I expected, she declined, acknowledging that she was unlikely to actually do it. No problem. Made me even more glad that I’d brought her as many loaves as I did.

Then it was Easter. I wanted to make an egg braid to bring to my daughter’s. Haven’t made one in many years and was looking forward to it. Doesn’t this look nice?

Hah! It was not the moist and chewy delight I wanted at all. Instead it was dry IMHO. Sigh. Let’s leave the kitchen. 

I sewed bead bags for April and dropped them off at the Weaving Center.

Then my 7-year-old grandson called me on a Sunday morning and asked if he could set up a lemonade stand on my corner. Sure! It was the first really lovely spring day we’d had. I hauled out my garden umbrella for him and a folding table. He and his mom made and brought everything else.

Hand squeezed lemons, simple syrup, and just a touch of hand squeezed lime. Add ice and it was DELISH! The truth was even it had been made from a frozen concentrate he probably would have done as well at selling. Location, location, location. Add a really cute little kid and it’s a winning combo. Plus his mom texted a few friends who came by. Some cars driving by simply stopped and gave him a donation. Most of the lemonade purchasers gave him a large tip as well.

I had to be at the Weaving Center that afternoon, so he packed up and went home and set up in his driveway in their cul-de-sac They don’t get much traffic, but the kid was entrepreneurial. He went door to door and offered to deliver. Of course no one said no! He made a ton of cash that day.

Sticking with nature for a bit... 
No, I didn’t take this photo recently; it’s from mid-March. But I was fascinated with what I saw on my morning walk.

The shadow of the cable and power lines made a very definite and noticeable impact on the melting snow. Who’d have thought? Not me, obviously.

Last year I went to a plant sale of a local garden club and picked up a few gems. One of them was a small bit of kerria shrub. It’s blooming nicely in this, its first year at my house.

As it grows it should be one more thing to offer me some additional privacy in my backyard.

And I couldn’t resist taking this shot.

This is a little corner of my garden that both looks and smells wonderful! I picked up the bearded iris years ago from a woman who painstakingly made her own crosses, using a paintbrush and lots of attention and patience. Beautiful and fragrant! I have always loved poet’s narcissus for both their simple beauty and their fragrance. Not sure how they, or the single tulip, got planted among those iris rhizomes.

Ok, on to fiber. 

Here are those 8 Spring Flowers towels you saw all my trial and tribulations with in the last post. Only 2 are left in my Etsy store

Then I actually wove something for myself. A rare occurrence indeed. I saw something another weaver had done and it moved me to try my hand at it. My fabric is mostly cotton, with one of the warp yarns a rayon-cotton blend.

So I made my calculations and warped up the loom. I didn’t have quite as much yarn as I wanted so I made some last minute changes to my plan. And still, I played warp chicken. This is the back of the loom – couldn’t have gotten another inch out of this warp.

I also played weft chicken. This is ALL the weft yarn I had left at the end of weaving. (Note that the color is quite off in this photo It’s most red, not pink.)

Then I took the warp off the loom, washed it and dried it, and laid it out in my backyard. It obviously hasn’t been pressed here, nor have I yet dealt with all my thread ends.

In addition to cutting and sewing, I wanted to make button closure for the jacket. Trust me when I tell you that this Dorset button took me hours to make, as did the kumihimo braid I used for the tie to loop the button with.

And here I am modeling the finished jacket. Although this type of weaving is, as a general rule, very 

much outside my comfort zone, I am really pleased with the jacket.

I want to make a few improvements and try something along these lines for sale. We’ll see how that works.

May 13th, 2023 | 

More woven skylines

I found enough off-white rayon chenille to warp my loom for 2 more clasped weft skyline scarves. My plan was to weave both as carefully as I could, and trust that one of them would be good enough for the jury.

I wove about 5′′ on the first scarf and then wanted to do a peaked roof. After trying, I realized that I was likely to have the same issues as I did last time – an inability to get those roofs completely symmetrical. So I left the loom and sat in my chair for a few minutes to think about what might help me. I decided I’d make some peak templates with paper, some triangles of different sizes and angles. I’d pin them under the warp and use them as guides, just as I’d been taught in the pick up workshop.

Back to the loom with my paper cut outs. Nope. Pinning them under the warp doesn’t work – the rayon chenille is too fuzzy and densely sett for it to work.

Pin the paper on top of the warp...nope. Can’t see what I’m doing. Go back to the chair and think some more.

Aha! A brainstorm. Buy a washable fabric marking pen and draw on the warp! This takes a few days, since Joann Fabrics is about 40 minutes away from me and I don’t want to make a special trip just for the pen. So my loom sits and waits.

Once I get the pen I’m back at the loom. It is the best alternative, but less than perfect. The line it makes is thicker, and because of the chenille, fuzzier than I’d anticipated or wanted. Still, it’s much better than trying to count threads and/or follow a warp line across the weaving. So I finished weaving cityscape scarf #2.

Then I decided to go back to my computer for a few minutes and grab a few black & white graphic images of city skylines. I wanted to get Buffalo, the city where I lived from age 3 to 24, and another city that I thought was reasonable for my weaving purpose. As it happened, I picked Houston. I printed them both on an 8.5′′ x 11′′ sheet of paper and brought them back to the loom for inspiration.

I decided that I wasn’t in love with the scale of my buildings in skyline #2. Like the buildings in skyline #1, they were wide and to my mind, not as aesthetically pleasing as they might be. So my buildings for skyline #3 would be narrower, and using Buffalo an Houston as inspirations, they would also have more variability in their height.

Making the building narrower would also make it easier to deal with the symmetry issue. I could much more easily count and/or follow a warp thread for a narrow building.

As I wove along, I was really happy with the scarf. Even though as I got near the end of the warp I wasn’t going to be able to make it as long as I usually do. I wasn’t at all concerned with that since it would definitely be long enough for the jury.

I finished, cut the scarves off the loom, took them upstairs and ran my lines of machine stitching, came back downstairs, and did the hand hemming while I watched the red carpet for the Screen Actors Guild.

This morning I tossed them in the washer and dryer. After the dryer I was very disheartened to see that one of the ends of scarf #3 was in trouble. I obviously had cut through the machine stitching before I hemmed. DAMN!! My experience told me that hemming rayon chenille after wet finishing was problematic.

Apprehensively I took out the hand hemming, took the scarf back upstairs, ran twolines of machine stitching, came back down, and cut off the bad part. I carefully hand hemmed again, and am happy with the result. YAY!!! This is a good scarf for the jury!

January 19th, 2014 | 

Twill clasped weft

 I finally got some decent pictures of that cayenne baby wrap. Natural light is what it’s all about, for sure, especially with some colors and designs.

Here’s the wrap, showing both sides of it.

Again, I wove a different design on the ends. I’m less enthusiastic about these than I was about the zig zags on the green diamonds, but they’re okay.

Moving on, I mentioned that I wove two clasped weft scarves with a natural ecru baby alpaca weft. After I got the loom warped and wove a bit to look at things, I decided I liked the look of straight twill with the alpaca instead of tabby like the rayon chenille.

For the first scarf I paired the ecru with a periwinkle alpaca-silk weft, and clasped the weft at random points across the width of the scarf.

Here’s a close up of it.

I decided to actually braid the fringes of this scarf instead of my usual double twisting.

After I’d woven this scarf I decided that I’d do another variation. This time I used a variegated unmercerized cotton. Using a poin treadling, I created what I thought of as hills but my friend saw as trees. Either way, I’m happy with this scarf, too.

Here’s a close up of that one.

I’m off to those 8 harness silk shawls on the Macomber now.

January 11th, 2014 | 

Woven skyline

I’m going to start by saying that I am happy with this clasped weft scarf, but not happy enough to send it to the Roycroft jury. I plan to make another, going even slower and more carefully. I do think it’s a great concept, and I am definitely not done with clasped weft. (I wove 2 clasped weft scarf with baby alpaca after this. Both much quicker and easier to get right, neither my ultimate show piece for the jury. I’ll probably show you these later.)

Without further ado, here’s the entire length of Skyline #1. I took this shot before wet finishing.

After wet finishing, I decided you might like to see details. I’m showing you from one end to the other, but you’ll notice it’s backwards from the full-length view; I wasn’t careful for the photo set up and laid it out the other way for the photos.

I purposely ‘overlapped’ the images by one building so you can see how it all fits together. Here goes.

You might notice that I hadn’t yet hemmed the scarf when I took the photos. This was a mistake. I should have done the hemming prior to washing and drying. I am not happy with the hem, even though I did each end twice, cutting off and running another machine stitch when I didn’t like it the first time. Again, good enough to sell for sure, not good enough for the hands-on Roycroft jury.

January 4th, 2014 | 

Clasping rainbows

 At this time of year I am thinking about 2014, about the shows I’ll apply to and the work I’ll submit with my applications. Most shows want images from the last two years, so I don’t HAVE to take new photos this year for most shows, but I still want to get some new ones.

To retain my status as a Roycroft Artisan, I do have to submit new photos annually, and to have actual work juried, too. Last year I didn’t give enough consideration to the work I’d submit for hands-on jurying, and I don’t want to make that mistake again.

So I’ve been thinking about what I will submit...all of which needs to have been created within the past year, and which must show that I continue to grow in my skills. I’ve decided that I want to submit a clasped weft piece, and that I wanted to do a take- off of my rainbow shawls, something that was reminiscent of them, but in a scarf and using clasped weft.

I prepared a warp for three black rayon chenille scarves.

For the first scarf, I used the same technique as I had for those last clasped weft scarves, throwing two picks of black between every clasped weft pick. I used 10 colors, with 7-9′′ of each color.

It turned out well, but I thought I wanted more color, so I wove the second with every pick being clasped weft and the picks ‘connecting’ to form graph-like shapes.

This one turned out well, too, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to repeat it for the third scarf, so I did a morph of the two. I did clasped weft every pick, but used more of a ‘line’ technique for the adjacent picks instead of the ‘graph-like’ technique. I also did a doubl rainbow, with about 4.25′′ of each color up to purple in the middle and then reversing the colors.

I like this one, too.

Here’s the thing...for wearing, I like the middle one best — the colors show up the most. For looking at for jurying, I like the last one best – EXCEPT there’s a problem with it. The pale green I used in the first half ran out about 3/4 of the way through that section of the second half. DAMN!! I unwove those 3+ inches and used the closest color I had, but it’s not identical. I think that will be noticeable enough to the RALA jury that I shouldn’t submit it; I should weave another one with this pattern. DOUBLE DAMN!!

I also am inspired to try a black & white scarf, weaving in what I’ll call a cityscape scene. The buildings won’t be able to have an windows in them (they’ll be solid black or solid white) but I think it will look good. I never know until I sit at my loom & try. Watch with me as this clasped weft adventure proceeds.

November 8th, 2013 | 

More of this and more of that

I’m still weaving with rayon chenille. I love it for the wintertime, and so do my customers. Since all the rest of my shows will be in the cool or cold weather, I thought I really needed to beef up my stock in this area.

I used Tammy’s gorgeous Ocean Waves to weave three scarves. This colorway is always popular, regardless of the fiber.

Then I wove the scarves that my maple tree inspired. On the left is a butterscotch weft and on the right a brown weft.

Next I really wanted to try another clasped weft that would show off the technique. I googled the term to see what I could see from other weavers that might inspire me. I’m definitely going to do my own take on some of the other things I saw, but this warp of two scarves was a direct take-off of work done over at Dust Bunnies.

I like this one — it’s black rayon chenille with the leftovers of one of Tammy’s balls of handpainted yarn – Dreamcatcher.

I like it just fine. But I LOVE the second one. Again with the end of a ball of Tammy’s yarn, this time in Seaweed.

THESE are the effects I wanted! I will DEFINITELY be doing more clasped weft, both in rayon chenille and in other fibers.

All that being said, I’ll be interested to see my customers’ reactions at next weekend’s show — often what I love isn’t the biggest hit with shoppers.

October 8th, 2013 |