Pandemic brain

 Let me just start by saying I am not sick. I do not have COVID-19 or any other disease. I feel fine, other my usual age-related aches and pains.

But...

I clearly have what I’m calling pandemic brain. IMHO it’s related to pregnancy brain for women going through that. One’s norma mental processes are not functioning properly. Thinking isn’t always rational. Counting skills go out the window.

I would never want to imply that I don’t make mistakes. I sure do. But it’s highly unusual that I’ll make mistakes 4 out of 5 projects in a row. And that is what has happened.

It started in mid-March. I planned a beautiful skein-painted project, intending to make one shawl and weave yardage to make something else – a vest, perhaps. The weaving went fine, but I hadn’t done my calculations correctly, not wound enough warp ends, so the fabric isn’t as wide as I’d intended. Fine for the shawl, but for the yardage? I’ll have to find a different pattern than the one I had planned on. I’m confident I can do that at some point, but not yet inspired to do so.

Next up was my Safe At Home towels. I do love them, and the mistake wasn’t a big one – winding 62 turquoise ends instead of 72 as I was winding the warp. So I had to hang 10 ends over the warp beam and hope I could maintain tension. It all worked ou fine but caused me a small amount of anxiety as I wove.

After that was my Comfort At Home towels. They went off without a hitch.

Then my Spring At Home towels. As noted, I didn’t pay attention to my math and initially wound skeins only half the size I needed for my wefts. Again, a problem fixed easily enough by winding and dyeing more skeins, but a silly, if simple, mistake.

Now I’m working on another batch of Safe At Home towels. I looked through my stash and found colors that I thought worked well together.

The turquoise is obviously a commercially dyed yarn. The magenta and green are skeins I dyed back in 2016 for a project but didn’t use. I dyed the yellow and orange skeins specifically for this project. The dark blue-violet is some hand dyed yarn I’ve had for years, dyed by someone else, that I thought was just what this warp needed. In fact, I have 2 of the towels on this warp already spoken for, just from those warp colors and the Safe At Home weaving plan.

I got the threads measured out and beamed.

All heddles and reed threaded, time to tie on to the front apron. I had some difficulty in the beginning, and ended up doing my lashing on twice to get my tension right. Ok, that’s a pain in the butt, but whatever.

Then I started weaving. I was having difficulty maintaining tension and couldn’t figure out why, but said to myself, you just need to keep going. It will get better. But it wasn’t getting better; it was getting worse. All of sudden the lightbulb went off. I got up, looked at my yarn labels, and closed my eyes and moaned. That lovely dark blue-violet wasn’t an 8/2 yarn – 3,360 yards per pound. It was twice as thick – only 1,680 yards per pound. I thought it felt a bit different when I was measuring it, but as this yarn is also more loosely spun, I attributed it to that and kept going. BIG MISTAKE!

There’s only one way to fix this. Start by removing the weft.

Here I’ve got half of that done.

Next insert lease sticks to retain the cross.

Go back through the stash and see if I have something else that will look good for warp. Nope. Tomorrow I will wind another skein and dye it, hoping for something similar to that blue-violet.

Then I will go back to the loom. I will carefully unwind all of the warp, pulling it back through the reed and heddles so that it’s all at the front of the loom. (If needed, I will unthread the reed and the heddles, but I’m hoping I don’t have to.) I will attempt to save the 84 ends of the blue-violet yarn, as it is a lovely color and is almost 9 yards long, but if I have to toss it, I do.

Once the newly-dyed skein is dry, I’ll measure that out, put it on the lease sticks, and beam it along with the other 5 colors. Sigh I just HOPE that I DO NOT keep making mistakes. This is a royal pain. And not like me.

May 3rd, 2020 | 

Spring at home towels

The reaction to my Safe At Home towels was so strong and so swift, I knew I needed to weave at least one more warp of colorfu towels. I planned and prepared for this batch, Spring At Home, while I was weaving the Comfort At Home towels.

To start, I had to measure out the warp so I could weave eight towels. I’d recently gotten a big cone of undyed yarn that was 55% hemp and 45% organic cotton and wanted to use that. Although I would usually wind this warp in two bouts, I decided to wind this in three bouts because odd numbers are usually more pleasing to our eyes.

Once the warps were scoured and soaked I mixed up chartreuse, fuchsia, lavender, and ice blue dyes and set to work. I had a written plan about how to dye each bout, with each color only used twice.

Hmmmm. Ice blue and lavender dyes look remarkably similar, at least wet. Will they look the same dry? I don’t know. So I changed the plan somewhat.

I also wanted to dye the wefts for this batch of towels, so I wound skeins and prepared dyes for them, too: golden yellow, grape, avocado, and turquoise. But at the last minute I decided to dump the leftover ice blue, lavender, and fuschia dyes into the turquoise bucket.

Here are the final warps and my planned wefts.

I beamed the warp, and as long-time readers know, one of my favorite shots is a painted warp going around the back beam.

I started weaving with the yellow weft and loved it. But wait...why am I going through the weft faster than planned?

Back to my notes and Geez! Once again I hadn’t paid enough attention to the numbers. My math told me I needed about 2.5 ounces of yarn for weft per towel. So although I wanted to weave two towels of each weft color, I only made my skeins about 2.5 ounces each!

So I only had enough weft for four towels, not eight. I had to dye more yarn. And I didn’t have enough of that hemp-cotton blend so had to go in my stash for more undyed 8/2 unmercerized cotton, and fortunately had some. Wind more skeins and go back down to the basement to dye them. I decided as long as I was dyeing more yarn, I’d make each towel a slightly different color. This time I mixed up tangerine, celery, turquoise (with no additions), and red-violet. Here are the 8 wefts all together.

Back to the loom. Weave all eight towels, wet finish, and hem them, and here you go.

I divided the towels into two batches for the photos, and decided to label them for posting both here and on Facebook. The first four have that hemp-cotton yarn for both warp and weft.

And the next four have the same warp, but 100% cotton weft.

I won’t post on Facebook for sale until tomorrow, and I anticipate they’ll go quickly. So if you want one of these Spring At Home towels, contact me to make purchase and delivery arrangements.

April 30th, 2020 | 

Comfort at home

We all need to do things that bring us comfort while we’re staying home. For me, too often that’s baking. Here’s today effort – a luscious lemon cornmeal pound cake. Made with 1 bowl.

I ate a few slices, then sliced up the rest and put it in the freezer. Safer there.

On the weaving front, this is my next batch of towels. I’m calling them Comfort At Home. Why? Because these towels are so oatmeal-like. And what’s more comforting than oatmeal? (Readers of a certain age will remember the Wilford Brimley commercials.) Add the soft wave structure, and you’ve got a comforting towel.

In fact, although the warp of 7 towels is called Comfort At Home, each towel (or pair of towels) has an oatmeal name. Here you go, along with the info about each weft. The warp is a softly plied 8/2 barber pole cotton.

The first two towels below are Oatmeal & Brown Sugar. The weft is a 3/2 organic colorgrown FoxFibre in khaki. Since this is a fairly heavy and loosely plied weft, the towels are a bit thicker and rougher than some of the others below. If you look closely, yo can see that my hemming has shown one towel ‘right side up’ and the other ‘upside down.’ It’s not uncommon that I can’t decide which side should be up when I hem.

The next towels, Plain Oatmeal, are also 3/2 organic colorgrown FoxFibre cotton, this time in oatmeal. (How fitting a yarn color name!)

Next up are Oatmeal & Honey. This is an 8/2 Brassard cotton, color name...you guessed it...honey. It adds a soft golden glow to the towels.

The last towel, Oatmeal & Cream, has an undyed 7/2 hemp-cotton weft. The yarn is 55% hemp, 45% organic cotton. An unusua size, it’s really not noticeably different from 8/2. Only one of these.

This is an 8-shaft draft. I originally got it from Handweaving.net, but it wasn’t quite symmetrical so I made some adjustments to both threading and treadling. Then I centered it for the width of my towels.

I’m going to post these on Facebook tomorrow. The last batch of towels I posted sold in a few days, so if you want one of these, contact me and we’ll arrange payment and shipping.

I also did a bit of dyeing. Back in February of 2019 I snow dyed some cotton leggings. But I got carried away with colors and the ended up like a cross between the 1960s and a clown.

I knew I wouldn’t wear them like that, so I overdyed, again a snow dye technique, with just red.

They were much better, but I only wore them a few times as they were still too flashy for me.

Yesterday I put them on and said, “Nope.” Even though I’m not going anywhere, I wasn’t happy with them. It was time to do something about that. Overdye again, this time in a dark color and immersion dyeing.

Yes. I can wear these out in public without attracting stares of disbelief.
I have another warp of towels on the loom now, but I’m going to take a few days off weaving to make face masks to donate.

April 20th, 2020 | 

Easter

I finished those colorful Safe At Home towels, and in fact have already sold 3 of them.

I did another warp in between, but don’t have photos yet.

Although colorful towels were a real hit, I decided to take this warp in an entirely different direction. I’m calling them Calm At Home. The warp is an 8/3 barberpole soft cotton that I’ve had a long time.

For weft I’m using yarn I’ve also had a long time. This is a Foxfibre 3/2 colorgrown cotton. If you’ve never heard of it, or of its inventor, Sally Fox, you’ll want to read about her and the yarn. The cotton will get deeper in color when I wash it in hot water.

They are calming, don’t you think?
I’m going back outside now to enjoy the BEAUTIFUL weather in my back yard. HAPPY EASTER!

April 12th, 2020 |

Calm, cool, and collected

Or maybe I’m not what the title of this post says, but at least I’m trying. And the colors I’m working with are reinforcing that.

I started knitting these socks months ago. Although I pretty much always have socks on my needles, this pair took much longer than usual due to my thumb tendonitis. I did absolutely no knitting for about 2 months, and since then have dramatically reduced the amount of time I knit in an evening. Sometimes not at all, sometimes 10-15 minutes, max of about 1/2 hour. So it took me a long time to finish these socks.

They are YUMMY!! I bought this yarn from the Humble Bumble Fibers Co. It is hand dyed, was a pleasure to work with, and is VERY soft and comfy. Hopefully they wear as well as the commercial yarn I usually use.

In my last post I showed you some fiber I dyed in preparation for weaving. Much progress has happened since then. Here are the skeins dried and shown together with the commercially-dyed cone of turquoise I’ll use with them.

After that I wound them into the appropriate length on my warping mill. Here they are chained and ready for the loom.

Looks pretty different than in the skeins, doesn’t it? And then here it is going on my back beam. Different yet again.

Although I haven’t had as much time as I’d like – or that you’d think I’d have since I’m not going anywhere – to weave, the loom is threaded and I’ve woven about 25′′. I’m weaving about 4 yards of fabric to be cut and sewn into an interesting vest. There’s also enough length for a shawl.

All yarn, both warp and weft, is 10/2 cotton. Since I’m planning to cut and sew with this, I wanted to do a simple weave structure This is just an 8-shaft straight twill. Here’s a closeup so you can see how much the structure shows up in a relatively ‘busy’ colo section and a relatively calm color section. (The color is much more accurate in the picture of the whole warp.)

My external commitments (yes, they’re all virtual, but have taken many hours of my time in the past few days) should be ending in the next 36-48 hours, so I’m hoping for more time at the loom. But you know, (wo)man plans and god laughs. So time will tell.

Meantime, stay home, stay creative, stay well, and WASH THOSE HANDS!

March 17th, 2020 | 

Honey Berries

That silk warp that I dyed, shown in the last post, was definitely much more pink than I intended. No idea what happened to the purple. Although I was inspired by the Honey Pie photo I showed, the pink in mine had me change the name to Honey & Berries Still I liked it well enough, so beamed it and started weaving. I used draft 22076 from Handweaving.net.

After auditioning a few different weft colors, I set off with a tan-ish color that I’m calling cafe latte. It worked well with all the warp colors, creating a more subtle overall look.

Next, in keeping with my ‘must-use-stash’ mantra, I went to the shelf where I had a few small cones of very fine cashmere-silk blend – roughly 9,000 yards per pound. I knew from experience that I couldn’t use this as warp, so weft it would be. I used double strands of this yarn, and at 4,500 yards per pound it was still thinner than the 20/2 silk. First I used a natural weft. Definitely toned everything down, but in a way I liked.

Back to that shelf of cashmere & silk, I chose black for the third scarf. As it always does, the black both popped the colors and darkened the overall look.

I usually have a definite favorite when I weave 3 pieces with different wefts. This time it’s a toss up for me between the natural and the black.

After I finished weaving with the black I had more warp left than I usually do, more than I wanted to just cut off and toss. So I used 2 strands of undyed 30/2 silk for the weft. This made the fabric a bit stiffer, and while I was weaving I could see this as a back yoke for a yet-to-be-planned garment. I’m not sure this will ever happen. Maybe it’ll turn into something else, maybe it will simply hang around and not get a ‘purpose.’

February 15th, 2020 | 

Planning ahead

I usually plan ahead, mentally working on the next warp while I’m still at the loom on the last one. This planning and activity wasn’t really anything like that. I was looking 11 months out. But it wasn’t my weaving.

After I’d made a bunch of Christmas presents (oh yeah, you still need to see them; next time...if I remember) I was very much in the Christmas spirit. I’d recently been to an evening meeting of the Weavers’ Guild, one where we all were quilling, something I haven’t done for 40 years or so. I got inspired to make a bunch of cards for Christmas 2020. I’m showing them here, figuring by next year the intended recipients will have forgotten about them.

I started by quilling 240 little ‘light bulbs’ while I watched TV.

Then I ordered the card stock and envelopes I needed, and set them up on my kitchen table, gluing lengths of green cotton to the cards to represent wire.

Still working at the table, I glued on the lights, and decided I had to make little ‘plugs’ of black. Although the plugs look sort of like little cat heads, it was the best I could do. I made 20 cards; here’s a sampling of them.

Simultaneously to quilling those light bulbs in the evening, I was also working in the studio during the day, setting up triaxial ribbon weaving for a different kind of card. The totally traditional Christmas colors of pink and black uses 3/8′′ ribbon, the rest is 1/4′′ ribbon.

After it was all woven and pinned to the bulletin board, I taped the segments off with craft tape and took it to my sewing machine to stabilize all the places where I would cut.

In addition to ordering the cardstock and envelopes for the quilled cards, I also ordered window cards for the triaxial weaving. I have 6 of the pink and black and 3 each of the green/white/red and blue/white/red.

So next year I can send out 32 handmade cards. Wonder who will get these versus some store-bought ones.

I haven’t woven anything since mid-December, giving my thumb tendonitis a rest. I wondered why I wasn’t dyeing fibers like ma so I’d have plenty to do once I was back at weaving, but somehow I just wasn’t inspired to do so. Then the other day on Facebook I saw this posting. The dyeing was done by Blazing Shuttles, the work of Kathryn Weber, whose work I admire.

I loved the look of that warp and wanted to do my own version, adding substantially more purples. I wound 3 narrow bouts of 20/2 silk and went down to the basement. Here’s what I ended up with.

The purples are more pink than I’d had in mind, but I’m happy with the way it turned out. Now I have to decide on the weave structure, whether I’ll offset these bouts with some solids, and then what I’ll use for weft to keep the loveliness of the colors.

Now, because Kathrin called her colorway Honey Pie I’ve had this earworm for days. Here you go.

You’re welcome.

February 2nd, 2020 |