This and that

Spring is absolutely my favorite season. I LOVE seeing all the new little plants poke their noses through the soil, watching the colors of the spring blooms, the cooler temperatures of spring vs. summer, and I even like doing the spring garden cleanup. Tha last item does take time, however, even when I did a bunch of garden clean up in the fall. So that’s my excuse for why I haven’t blogged in 3 weeks.

I’ve moved some plants, making a new garden area. That’s always hard work and takes time. I’ve prepared the soil and planted seeds. I’ve weeded most of the garden and areas and mulched. Here’s just one pic that I like (I should take more).

This is a silver dollar plant. Also called money plant and honesty plant. And those 3 common names are why I learned the Latin names of lots of plants. So this is a lunaria. After these lovely purple flowers it’ll make seeds, with pods that look like silver dolla and work beautifully in fall arrangements.

I had to take a photo of this house. During Monday’s wind, virtually all the blossoms on their tree blew down, carpeting their law and driveway in a vibrant pink.

I believe the tree is a double-flowered crab. And then there’s this:

For Mother’s Day my sweet and talented son made me a planting table. He’d heard me whine about how the multitude of bunnies eat all the young plants I put in the ground and decided to do something about it. This table is 2′ wide x 6′ long. And it FOLDS so I can reasonably store it in my garage over the winter!

In the pots I’ve put a summer squash and zucchini, yellow wax beans, sugar snap peas, lettuce, and my favorite sweet pepper, Carmen. Then, just for fun I put in a pot each of green and red/purple sweet potato vine and a red-orange lantana. I stuck some nasturtium seeds in with those non-food pots, too.

Back in the house, I finished what I call my happy socks. I knit these from the sock blank I dyed in March.

Don’t they make you smile?
Here’s the ball I’m using for my next socks. I didn’t dye this but like the color shifts.

As I was nearing the end of my 3rd warp of the Ukraine support towels, in my head I was planning what I’d do for the May wove hugs. But I wasn’t in any rush, as I still had 2 of the April hugs in my hands. (Only 1 left now.) That feeling – no rush – felt good.

Then, OH NO!! I remembered that I had promised to weave a shawl for the upcoming Alzheimer’s Association fundraising auction. Preferably in purple, which is their signature color. I looked up the date of the auction – May 20!!! It was already May 12 when I remembered, so there was no time to lose!

I knew I could always give them a piece I’d already woven if I had to, but it wouldn’t be purple. I went to my stash of Tencel yarn I didn’t have what I consider to be a clear/straight purple, but I had lots of red-violet, so that would be the majority of the shawl. I threw in some random stripes of yarns that I had tiny amounts of to finish up those cones/bobbins, and set to work.

Unlike my usual practice of warping for at least 3 pieces, I warped for only 1. Gotta get this onto and off of the loom quickly.

I auditioned at least 6 different wefts for this one, and was surprised at how ‘fussy’ the warp was. Few of those weft colors looke great with it. I ultimately chose a medium blue, trying to shift the overall away from the red a bit and toward the blue. Then weave, cut off the loom, twist the fringe, wash, dry, & hard press.

Someone is coming to pick it up momentarily, so I snapped some shots quickly.

And this morning I dropped off my 10 bead bags for May at the Weaving Center.

May 18th, 2022 |

Moving forward

If you’re visiting hoping to see photos of the gifts I made for Christmas, you’ll have to wait and come back. My visit with my frien got postponed so I’m still not sharing those and spoiling her surprise. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to show you!

I’ve continued to knit for donating to people who need things. Just one hat-and I probably won’t knit more unless they are requested-and 3 pairs of mittens. Two are for primary-aged kids, one for toddlers. More mittens on my needles, this time for elementary-aged kids or adults with small hands. I’ll keep knitting mittens until the weather warms up dramatically.

I’ve also done a fair bit of work preparing for my 2022 Christmas cards. I spent a bunch of time deciding on a weave structure, planning it out for the number of ends I need and centering the design. Just 185 ends. Wanting to stick to my stash yarns, I decided on 20/2 mercerized cotton, sett at 36 ends per inch. Doesn’t take long to measure out the warp or get it on the loom.

I downloaded an audiobook, planning to listen while I wove. Well. Since this design is weave-as-drawn-in, that also means 185 picks. It therefore requires far more concentration than I can achieve while listening to a book, or even listening to music that wi

tempt me to sing along. So I stick with NPR. Still, I learn that I can’t weave more than 3 cards at one sitting or I lose my focus. N biggie; I don’t need these for 10 months. Although of course they can’t tie up my loom that long.

Now it’s time to start auditioning wefts, again sticking with the colors of 20/2 cotton in my stash. I started with a light-ish blue. No enough contrast. Plus I wasn’t beating hard enough so the design was elongated and unclear for that reason as well. Next I wen to a very dark purple. Both too dark and beat too firmly.

Moving on. Here’s a nice Christmas red, beat to just about square. Yep, this’ll work. I wove 5 of these.

I didn’t want to weave 30+ cards exactly the same, as it would be even more challenging for me to maintain sufficient focus. So dug out a Christmas green. That worked, too, so I wove 5 green.

Then I found a slightly darker blue, although it’s slightly thicker at roughly 6,000 yards per pound compared to the 7,200 yards per pound of the 20/2. So I couldn’t get this color quite square, but I was okay with that. And although it’s not my favorite color combo, I wove 5 blue.

Woah! I found a small spool of gold metallic, so wound a bobbin with that and the gold 20/2 and checked it out. I liked it so wove 5 of these, as well. You can’t really see the metallic in the straight-on photo, so I took one at an angle, too. I also couldn’t get thi design square as the gold & metal together are thicker than 20/2, but again was okay with that.

Because I liked that, I tried using that metallic thread with the red yarn. I definitely preferred the red on its own, but wove 2 cards with the red & gold because I’d wound a bobbin with that much thread.

Then, since I like the gold with the metallic, I figured I should try the gold on its own. Meh.

So I wove an additional 4 (so far) cards in just red.

If you’re counting, that’s up to 27 cards. I don’t need many more. But it’s clear that I have A LOT of warp left. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll keep weaving this design or just cut it off and toss the remaining warp. It’ll depend on where I am mood-wise when get to that point. I’ll weave one more red, then I want to try one with just metallic, then...we’ll see.

It’s a real change for me not to worry at all about the fact that my selvedges are sort of ugly. They won’t be seen.

January 16th, 2022 | 

Towels & tootsies

I got 8 towels woven. Natural (unbleached & undyed) cotton threaded in point twill, 4 different tie ups, 2 of each weave pattern.

First I wove what I call a flower pattern. Wasn’t my favorite in real life, nor did I like dark that yarn – which was very cool on the cone – as much as I thought I would.

Next I wove snowflakes. Started with a traditional blue, then went to some handpainted bamboo-cotton blend I’ve had hanging around for far too long. I was very happy to use up some stash yarn in small amounts, so went with more of that handpainted bamboo cotton for the next 4 towels.

For the 3rd pair I used a simple V weave structure. The warp is 8/2 cotton, and red-purple yarn is thicker than that. The green- purple yarn is the same weight, but the lighter colors don’t show the weave pattern as well.

Last up was some Xs. I wasn’t at all sure about this, since I had used the draft once when I was doing baby wraps and wasn’t crazy about it, but in fact I really liked it for the towels. Again, the pattern shows up better with the darker color, but I really like th stripes on the yellow one.

Two of these towels will go to my friend, the rest into stock.

Now I wish I had more of that natural cotton. I can see something like that end-striped-towel in several colors, and by using a natural warp I can use up lots of odds and ends of nice hand painted yarn. The only downside is that the handpainted yarn (I didn’t dye it, I bought it) has a tendency to bleed in the wash. Could I wash all the yarn before I used it? I could, but I know myse well enough to know that I won’t. Anyhow, I don’t have much natural cotton left. Might pick up some at the Guild’s annual stash- reduction sale next month. We’ll see what people bring in.

On the needles, Friday night I finished a pair of socks I’d been working on. (Don’t tell me I don’t know how to have a good time on Friday night!) They look perfect with some of my favorite leggings.

Finally, Cindie over at Eweniquely Ewe inspired me. Yesterday I got all the rest of the pre-accountant work done for my taxes. Ugh. But it’s done – yay! Just waiting on a few things to arrive in the mail.

Now I’m off to the warping mill to start working on this month’s weaving goal.

February 4th, 2018 | 

Dyeing experiments

I’ve heard about dyeing with koolaid but hadn’t tried it. Then I read Karen’s post about speckle dyeing, and figured I’d try it on something small first. I’d recently finished knitting these socks. Very nice, but all white.

So I read a bunch of online how-tos, then went to the store and got 3 packages of koolaid. Sprinkled it on from a spoon.

Wasn’t crazy about how it looked in the pan, but had hopes I’d like them when it was all done. At least one of the sites I read sa that it had to sit for 2 days. So in the meantime I read more directions about speckle dyeing yarn and measured out a cotton warp for 3 scarves. Learned my lesson about dyeing outside so am set up in my basement.

Meanwhile I spoke to my dyeing teacher who strongly recommended I not do it with the dye powder for safety reasons, so I use the eye dropper technique I’d seen here. As suggested, I left plenty of white areas.

Then it’s a 2 day process from here, too. Batching overnight till the next day, then sitting in water for another day.

So I figured I’d do some immersion dyeing of weft yarns for the speckle-dyed warp. First time I’ve done this, too, except for with Rit dyes. Here are the 3 skeins in their individual dye vats.

They only had to sit in the dye bath for about an hour, than overnight in water. Here they are at the end of that overnight sit.

And an unlovely picture of some really lovely yarns. Very solid colors, lots of depth of color – much more than I’d intended, actually, but I love each of them.

By now I could go back to the socks. Ugh. I didn’t like them at all. Looks like something from a horror movie.

So I figured I’d overdye them with the blue koolaid. Even worse! Now they look ugly and dirty!

Back online I went. The ‘real’ dyes I have are meant for plant-based fibers (cotton, rayon, silk), not protein based fibers like my wool socks. But I read how to dye wool with these dyes, and figured nothing could make them any uglier. Again into blue, this time real dye and a relatively dark blue.

Here’s an unlovely picture of beautiful socks (ok, sock-singular)! You can barely see the koolaid splotches, which is just fine with me.

Now back to the speckle dyed warp. Oh no! There are no longer ANY undyed areas. Everything that was white is now pinky- lavender.

Not what I had in mind at all. Sigh. Would I overdye this yarn? After thinking about it for a few days I decided I’d warp it. If I hate it when it went on the loom, I could always take it off dye it then. Or I could cut my losses and just toss it out. Or give it to someone as a prepared warp. So here it is going on the loom.

I don’t hate it anywhere near as much as I did in the skein, so decided I’d try weaving with it. Instead of using my beautiful immersion-dyed skeins, though, I chose a lavender cotton that would almost match the lavender in the warp, hoping it would mute everything out a bit.

And it does. Looks like it’d make a nice baby wrap. Will it make a scarf anyone likes? I can’t tell yet. But I can always choose to overdye it after it’s woven, now, can’t I?

October 18th, 2016 |