Snowed In

So basically, I haven’t left my house since I got home from the gym on Friday.

  This is the part of our deck that is under the roof.
Since then, I’d estimate we’ve gotten at least six inches of snow. We took some time out this morning to shovel the driveway, but because there were plenty of reports of just how terrible the roads were, we decided to just not go anywhere.


A friend of mine went to church this morning with her family. Roughly a mile away from their house. It took them almost an hour to get home, so I think we made the right choice! Since I stayed indoors, I did a few small things in my weaving room that I’d been meaning to do for a while. The first was that I took the screen off of a side window in my weaving room and put up two pieces of stained glass that I got in Ireland last year.


I also got out my hammer, and hung a piece of art that came from my mom’s sewing room. It’s titled “She Works With Quills,” and the joke that the last word was “Quilts.” Mom was a quilter, which is what made me start. And I liked it, so I re-homed it.


And then, I got a warp under tension and started to weave.


It’s rep weave, so it’s weaving off very quickly. Which is great, because I have several more warps just waiting to jump on the loom. And since we’re looking to have more snow followed by Polar Vortex temperatures, more weaving is just what Old Man Winter ordered. I love it!

A New Year

So it’s January 1, and it’s been radio silence on the blog for quite a while.

I’d at least like to wrap up the projects that I finished in 2013, and then I’ll hopefully be back in the blogging groove! That’s a long list, and I’m chipping away at getting those posts in the bank.

But meanwhile, today is Wednesday. So let’s start off the year right, with a WiP Wednesday post!

My Swirl is still languishing in a corner. If I sat down and actually, y’know, worked on it, I’m pretty sure it could be finished in short order.

Instead, I’ve been working on a Leftie shawl, knit with a SpaceCadet Creations Leftie kit.


It had a false start when I decided that even though I was two leafs into a 1-5, 1-5 repeat (light to dark every time), it would be better if I went light-to-dark-to-light.

A Twitter-encouraged frogging of about two inches and a re-ordering of leaf colors, and I’m off to the races.


I wasted a perfectly good warp-the-loom day on Saturday, so I’m officially committing to my next weaving project. This really narrow warp will go on at my next opportunity, and will hopefully weave quickly.


It had better weave quickly. I have two tencel warps ready to roll waiting in line behind it!

WiP Thursday

As usual these days, I’m a day late and a dollar short.

There hasn’t been a ton of free time, but here’s where it has gone:


My Love Actually cowl is marching right along. Got about four rows into the third set of hearts. I’m so ready for this to be finished!


I got my doubleweave blanket sleyed into the reed. Next step is threading heddles. If I’m lucky, I’ll get that done on Sunday.

And, because that cowl is starting to make me twitch, I’ve swatched for my Dublin Tee. Oops.

WiP Wednesday

Ahh, another super-busy stretch with the part-time job. My regular job has re-started too, so there has been very little free time. Zoom!

But, between all of the crazy, there has been a little crafting here and there. I’ve gotten a little bit done on my Love Actually cowl. It’s a little hard to tell, but I’m into the third row of hearts!


The Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival was last weekend, and my cowl got to hang out at the SpaceCadet Creations booth while I was hanging out with the Hubster for his birthday on Saturday. So I busted out my Nittany Lions scarf and did some work on it. I’d say I’m awfully close to halfway through the second skein of each color.


In other news, I’ve been preparing a warp for the loom. I’m lucky to have lots of great extended family, but my Aunt and Uncle in Pasadena, Calif., have been fantastic about letting me crash at their house whenever I visit the left coast. So I’m making them a doubleweave blanket!


A little over a week ago, I caught a destash of a warping mill at a really great price, and I’ve used this project to make friends with it.


The warp is wound, and when I have a little time I can get it on the loom and start weaving. There are two chains, here’s the blue/green chain…


And all four colors together…


If you remember my blog post from my Doubleweave Blanket Class two years ago, this blanket is going to be very similar to the tweedy-looking blanket that Hedy made in class. The cobalt (royal blue) color is going to be the weft. I hope I can get it done quickly and it’s a big hit!

Runnin’

When I came home from Beginning Weaving Week at the Mannings way back in 2010, I took show-and-tell to my knitting groups. My dear friend Sara/CelticQueen (who is the designer of the super-awesome Knitty Surprise! pattern Love Actually) admired the twill sampler and thought it would be nice as a table runner for her kitchen. She picked the weft color, I ordered it from The Mannings, and it all sat around exactly like that for … a really, really long time.

I finally got a warp wound in April and had everything ready to weave before I left for the Women’s College World Series the day after Memorial Day. Eventually I started weaving, hemstitched the starting edge, and was off to start the marathon.


Marathon? Yeah. This thing sat on the loom for what seemed like forever. I just didn’t carve out a whole lot of weaving time last summer. I don’t know why that was, but I really want that to change!


I finally finished the weaving in late August. I felt great when I cut it off the loom … until I unrolled the fabric off of the front beam. And realized that I’d forgotten to hemstitch the finishing edge. Crap.

So I contacted the Jedi Masters of Weaving at The Mannings, and Sara (different Sara) reassured me that I could do the hemstitching off the loom, it just would have been a little easier under tension.


It took until January for me to buckle down and do the hemstitching, then wet-finish the piece. I Scotch Guarded it for Sara and got it off to her in mid-January. Finally. It’s chock full of the mistakes of a beginning weaver, but hey. The more I weave, the better I’ll get. Just like quilting and knitting.

Table Runner for CQ 

Draft: Twill Sampler from Beginning Weaving Week at The Mannings 

Thread: 3/2 Perle Cotton

Sett: 15 EPI 

Started: 27 April 2012 

Finished: 14 January 2013

2012 In Review

Last year was nothing like I thought it would be, but what year ever turns out as expected?

 I intended to knit 12 pairs of socks. I knit four (five if you count the man-socks as one pair each). I knit a hat early in the year, some shawls/wraps, then didn’t finish much for quite a while. There were two sewing projects for SpaceCadet’s InterStellar Yarn Alliance. A pair of baby quilts. More weaving.

My mom died in August, and I didn’t knit another stitch for the rest of the year, although my knitting needles have gotten back into the action in the last month. In all of its less-than-expected glory, here are my finished projects from 2012

1. Dawn Gnot Socks, 2. Koolhaas Hat, 3. Sweet Tomato Foot Ovens, 4. Gaskell Shawl (name of shawl was changed from Cranford to Gaskell by designer), 5. I.B. Footsie, 6. Ginormous Man Socks, 7. SpaceCadet Notions Bags, 8. Northwestern Baby Quilts, 9. Wiggle Wrap, 10. Color Affection, 

11. Rag Rugs, 12. Rainbow Rep Weave Placemats, 13. Dad’s Doubleweave Blanket.

Christmas Crafting

Exactly one person got something handmade for Christmas this year. My dad. I decided in August that I wanted to make him a double weave blanket. Some time in September, I dropped off color cards for Harrisville Highland at his house and he gave me a little bit of direction to pick colors.

Again, the lovely and talented Sara at The Mannings helped me along with project planning. My notes from my Double Weave Blanket class were a little uh … lacking … so I guessed a little wrong on some dimensions, but it came out just fine in the end.


The warp was wound and chained by mid-November. And I went ahead and wound the first cone-worth of weft thread onto bobbins.


I sat down to start weaving on Sunday, December 2, and immediately stopped. Because I clearly had a problem.


See that great big gap in the fabric? Between the orange threads?


Oh yeah. I missed a dent. And, of course, it was squarely in the middle of the reed.

I un-wove the weft I’d already put into the blanket. Out came the knots on half of my warp, and I moved each thread over one hole in the reed. And then I sat down to start weaving again.


Crappers. Apparently, I got distracted before I totally finished the job. Stopped again, un-wove again, fixed. Again. At least then, it was off to the races.


The above craptastic photo was taken just before the blanket was wet-finished at my friend Dianne’s house. You can clearly see the fold line, running horizontally across the picture.

And, you can see a good look at the pre-washing fabric here.


Sadly, I’m a dork and forgot to take a fabric close-up after washing. Oops. Before the Harrisville Highland was washed, the spinning oils on the threads led to an extremely translucent fabric.


And, the last stop before the blanket hit water was in the repair shop.


In an effort to use as much of the warp as possible, I had a really crappy shed for much of the last few inches. Those gigantic toe-catchers were the result. Thankfully, my awesome teacher made sure I knew how to fix this before I left The Mannings two summers ago. No harm, no toe-catchers on the final blanket!

After a bath, the blanket was much less see-through…


The fabric fulled nicely and turned into a really great fabric that my Dad will hopefully enjoy for years.


I still enjoy double weave blankets, and I’m already plotting my next one!

Double Weave Blanket for Dad 

Thread: Harrisville Highland 

Colors (# of cones): #2 Red (1), #65 Poppy (1), #39 Russet (1), #66 Melon (1), 

#52 Toffee (weft, 2 cones) 

Width on Loom: 31” in reed (unfolded to roughly 60")  

EPI: 8

Better Late than Never

So. My dad asked for placemats for Christmas. Christmas 2011. I got them done for his December birthday. In 2012. Oops.

He wanted placemats for the big table at the Lake. That table sits eight, so eight placemats. The wonderful and talented Sara at The Mannings helped me project plan.

Then it just took for.ev.er for me to get them on the loom and woven. But I finally got them done!


I got eight full-sized placemats out of my 6.5-yard warp, then a shrimp of a ninth mat. I just wove until I couldn't get a shed, then I stopped. Camera lens-cap included for scale. I figure it’ll be good for the napkin holder and salt/pepper in the center of the table.


Because we have a small human who spends a lot of time at the Lake, I figured that ScotchGuarding the placemats would be a smart plan of attack. We had a dry sunny day (Cold, but dry and sunny), so I spread everything out on the driveway and went to work. The reason I did it on the driveway?


The marks are already gone from the driveway. Yay, snow and shoveling!

Dad got the finished set of eight placemats for his birthday, and seemed really pleased. Here’s hoping they have a long stay on the big table up at the Lake!

Rainbow Placemats 

Thread: 3/2 Perle Cotton 

EPI: 32 

Reed: 8-dent 

Ends: 480 

Width in reed: 15” 

Length per full-sized placemat: 24” 

Warp Length: 6.5 yards 

Quantity: 8 full placemats, small 9th mat

Rag Rugs, Part 2

As you saw in yesterday’s post, the “warm” and “cool” warps blend into the background pretty easily, letting the rags shine.

Before class, my Aunt Suzie and I had been going through my mom’s quilting room, and I selected mostly her fabrics to wash and bring with me to The Mannings. From the wide variety of fabrics that I took with me, Tom helped me pick five to rip for weft, then I wove one rug on each “flavor” of warp. The first rug started with these strips:


I had more of the purple and less of the blue, so I counted strips, did a little math, and figured out how to stagger the blue among the purple. And this is what I wound up with:


Even as the warp stripes change, the fabric is still the star in this rug.


Despite the new technique, I think I did a decent job on my selvedges. They are pretty even!


I was really pleased with the final result


The second set of strips was a yellow batik, an orange batik, and a really large cut of a batik that looked like a bruise in various stages of healing. I picked that hunk of fabric for this class because I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to sew with it.


I basically had the same number of strips for each of the three fabrics. The bruise fabric was significantly longer than the orange and yellow, but I joined the three together to form one “super-strip,” divided that pile in half, threw the extra yellow in the center, and reversed order for the second half of the rug.


Yeah, I know you can’t really tell in the picture. But that’s what I did! I swear!


Again, my selvedges were pretty good. You can se some of the lumps where I joined strips, but I’m fine with it. I may join strips with my sewing machine in the future, but the fold technique we learned in class works just fine for something that will be walked on regularly.

It seemed like the warm warp/bruise fabric rug was significantly shorter than the cool/purple rug, but that wasn’t really the case at the end of the day.


Although the difference is a bit more obvious when one end is aligned.


All in all, I really love both rugs and have a good idea where each one will live. I think. We’ll see.


Regardless, this class was awesome. Another purely perfect Mannings experience!!!

Rag Rugs, Part 1

One of the big things I learned in 2012 is to never mess around about signing up for classes at The Mannings, one of my favorite places on earth. I didn’t jump when the first half of the year’s classes were posted, so when I they posted classes for the second half of the year, I jumped.

I signed up for “Beginning Rag Rugs,” a class taking place on the last two days of October. As I was getting my act together to leave town on Monday, October 29, Carol called from The Mannings to tell me that the forecast for Hurricane Sandy in their area was scary. They’d try to reschedule later in the week, but for now, class wasn’t happening.


Fortunately, Sandy took it easy on East Berlin, Pa., and its surrounding areas, so I headed east on Halloween to start my class on November 1. This class provides pre-warped looms, and is set for six students. Three looms had a “warm” warp.


And three looms had a “cool” warp.


I was indecisive, and fortunate that I had a classmate who was also interested in trying both warps, so Janet and I swapped looms after we finished our first rug. Janet brought thrift-store sheets for her rugs, and because she did not like the small lump caused by the suggested joining method and had some very short strips, she chose to make very small rugs.

Her first one was on the “warm” warp.



And her second rug was on the “cool” warp.


I don’t remember where/how she was planning to use her rugs. That’s a casualty of not blogging until nearly two months after the class. Oops.

Meanwhile, Joyce had essentially two full bolts of very similar brown leaf-print batik, and she was able to weave two long rugs on her warm-warp loom.




Sondra had some really cool coverlet remnants that she had dyed with natural dyes in her home studio (which sounds REALLY cool and includes several family heirloom large rug looms!)


It was an unusual weft and a bit of a challenge to work with, but she wound up with a really awesome rug with all kinds of texture.


And then, there was Judith. A truly lovely person who retired to the area just so she could be closer to The Mannings! How cool is that?!?!?!!! She came in with a bolt of purple batik and a bolt of fuschia batik and came up with some awesome rugs on her cool-warped loom.






I helped her tear some of her strips. Fun!






This post is already ginormous, so I’ll show you my two rugs tomorrow!