Stocking... check!

David's stocking is complete, and if he were awake, I would set him next to it for a picture!  I'll save it for tomorrow because you never wake a sleeping baby!  :)

The inner liner is handwoven pinwheels made of perle cotton.  It's nice and soft for little hands to go digging into this stocking!

What a fun project!

Finished projects

I finally took the time to finish 3 different projects!  I had to do it over several days during David's naptimes!

The pastel towels are done, and hemmed.  I just turned the edges over on these ones because I don't have any white thread that works well in my serger.  

I ended up using 3 different designs.

 

The blue echo project is also done.  I ended up making 3 baby burp clothes for a friend having a boy in the spring.  

 

I also made 2 gigantic towels out of the zigzags... they are so big, I could probably use one as a blanket for David on our chilly morning walks!  :)

And I turned my first echo weave sample into a handtowel for the bathroom!  It's nice and thick because of the tight epi!

 

Finally done

Towels are all washed and sewn!  Finally, I'm done with these pinkless towels!

I love the way they turned out... each and every one of them!
I like them more now that they are done and not on the loom... sometimes it happens that way.

My friend really wanted the one on the far left, the striped one.  What a good choice!

Off the loom

 I finally cut the towels off the loom.  I'm actually glad to be done with these ones!

What did I do with the edges of the very colorful ones?  Well, I just cut off the threads and left it.  Turn your head away if you must... 

But I figured that there is enough weaving with each color that it will hold together well enough.  And if I'm wrong?  Well, I'm wrong and I'll know for next time!!

Look at the goodie that came in the mail last week!!  I'm so excited to get started!!

The last towel

For this last towel, I decided to go back and do another pinwheel, because it overall was my very favorite design.

This time, instead of changing colors every row, I decided to do groups of colors.  I am doing a few rows of the same light yarn and the same dark yarn, and when it runs out, then I change it.

I like it the best of all! 

The edges are much cleaner and you can still have the fun pinwheel look, but without all those color changes.

This time, it's actually relaxing to do these pinwheels!  I was so tired of the color changes, and I'm still not sure what the best method is to fix the edges of the first 3 towels!

If the color ends somewhere in the row, then that's ok!  I just pick up where I left off and keep going!  I think it looks neat!

Celebrate the stripes

 Forget the weft color changes this time around!

 

It's so nice just to weave with one color!

I like the flow I can get into! 

This is one of my most favorite 4-shaft weaves.  I love this texture!  I discovered it 5 years ago when I first got my loom.  I wove a very small ending piece and I have loved it ever since!  I loved how nicely it washed up, and it's something different.  The texture is always so nice with this one!

I decided to use natural colored weft so that no one color would stand out.  Here is the pattern for 8-shafts, but it's originally a 4-shaft pattern.

These warp stripes make this towel look like so much fun!

These color changes...

... are driving me crazy!  What I really want to do is just weave a one shuttle weave right now!  I am getting tired of stopping to change colors after every 8 treadles.  Ugh!!

However, while I was weaving, here are some other delightful combinations I came up with, not that I'm chomping at the bit to get started on these or anything!  But I am tucking these away for future reference!

#1: red, orange, red, orange, yellow, green, yellow, green, blue, purple, blue, purple:

#2: red, orange, red, orange, yellow, orange, yellow, orange, yellow, green, yellow, green, blue, green, blue, green, blue, purple, blue, purple, red, purple, red, purple

I liked this idea I came up with for the above combinations, so I thought since I was getting tired of the color changes anyway, I would try something like it on this latest towel.  I used several colors in a row before changing them out.  It made for less floats on the sides, AND I could weave through the rest of this one towel so much faster.  Here is what it looks like:

You can hardly tell I cheated on this very last section!  And it got me through it.

I think I might do a one shuttle weave next... and if I run out of warp, that is fine by me!  I'm getting tired of this one anyway!  :)

Experiment 2

I decided to start with experiment #2, which looks like this:

So far, I love it!  It's neat to weave something you created... well, as far as I know I created this.  Who knows, maybe I am just re-inventing the wheel!  It's hard to tell with weaving because it's been around for so long and so many great brains are thinking things up all the time!

 

I really love the texture!  It's really neat!  

One side of this weave has an emphasis on the warp, and the other side emphases the weft.  It almost reminds me of a lace weave, but not quite.

And we'll wrap things up with a little bit o'David!

Concentration

Trying out the new tie-up and it's closer.

The colors are a lot more concentrated.

Lucky 13 shuttles

I decided to utilize ALL the shuttles I had on hand, which added up to be 13.  I divided it almost in half of dark and light yarn and then I have been randomly using rotating through the darks and lights.  I think it looks better with more colors!  There are more pinwheels popping out.

I tried following the colors in a specific order, starting at the right but it didn't seem to make a difference one way or another.  I think the thing that makes it look better is the amount of colors available to rotate through.  I still want to try the original pattern that my friend used though.  I'll get this part long enough to call it a towel after it's been washed and then I will re-tie up the treadles.  Or maybe I'll aim for more of the half way point because I do like what I'm seeing now!  Here's the other pattern I want to try:

This other pattern allows less "plain weave" in-between the pinwheels that exist in the pattern I'm using now.  I think that might make a difference because the colors are chunked together in a more solid form.  I still like the original project more though!  I think I might just be getting a bit tired of my usual colors.

close, closer, and closest

 Good news!  The more I weave, the more I like these towels!

They play tricks on your eyes.  Sometimes you can't always see a pinwheel, but if you look at it differently, like closer or further away, you can see them.  They kind of pop out after awhile!  It's pretty neat.  And colorful!  I have to admit, I like the original pattern I saw more, but this isn't bad for just using what I had on hand.  I'm not one to go out and buy a bunch of yarns for a project... right now anyway.  Maybe someday!

Also, it's good to note that the original design was woven in a slightly different pinwheel pattern.  Once I finish this particular pattern, I might try the same pattern my friend tried.  It might make all the difference and I might be even closer to matching it.  Also, the original design weft followed the same warp color order.... which also might make a difference, but that's an awful lot of thought to put towards it. I'm kind of enjoying this "winging it" thing.  But, if I don't follow the "rules" then I can't complain, right?

But for now, I'm certainly enjoying these towels in this pattern and these colors!

Everything but the sink... I mean pink

So far, I'm not putting much thought into the color rotations, mainly because the baby has sucked my brains dry right now, and I just don't want to put a lot of thought into it anyway.  I just like the whole free-range weaving theory... just let it go.  "Light, dark, light, dark" is all I'm working about right now!  It's summer-time weaving... my favorite season!  Although I'm not sure I told you the good news yet!  I'm going back part-time next school year.  I am going to job share with another teacher who also had a son 6 days before me, and she too named her son David!  What a small world!  We also went to the exact same university at the exact same time!  She's also from Arizona, and her mom and my mom have the same first names.  I'm sure there's more, but we'll have to discover it as we go along.  Anyway, I will work 2 days, and she'll work 2 days.  It will be WONDERFUL!  I can already tell by my stress levels being so much lower than usual.  And if it works well this year, we might be able to pull it off again next year if we want to!

 
I can't say I have fallen in love with it at first sight like I do with some of my other weaving, but it's neat looking and I do like it!  It's just not quite what I thought it would look like at this pint, but it will probably grow on me after I get going in my color rotations. For starters, I only wound 6 bobbins to get going, but if I had all 18 colors, things would probably be different.

For right now, I'm starting and stopping the colors at the edges.  For lights, it's on the left and for darks, it's on the right.  I'm leaving tails, and it's not because I know what I'm going to do with them yet, but because I don't want to tuck them in and have my weaving grow more on the sides and less in the middle.  With this many color changes, the weaving could quickly grow U-shaped if I tuck in each end at the start and stop. I'm thinking I can either weave them in by hand later, or cut them off completely, or serge all 4 sides and turn them under, or serge all 4 sides and sew on a light binding.  For now, I figure there's plenty of time to worry about it later!

Published again!

This is from the Sept/Oct 2014 Handwoven magazine!  I love getting articles in it!

It's on pg 20 and 21!  Enjoy!

Chores first, fun second

One thing I learned right away when utilizing nap time is this: always put chores first and then fun second.  And when putting chores first, that means washing all the dirty bottles before doing any other chore to get them ready for the next feeding... because it could be any second!  And at this age, it seems as if it's hourly during the day.  So bottles first, then other chores, THEN the fun!

And we're having some fun today!  I am at the jumping off point... that fun point right at the beginning where you're not quite sure if this is going to work or not, where you're hoping for the best, but bracing yourself for the worst, and also that point where you are so excited you don't have a single ounce of being tired of the project yet!  That's where I am right now...

  

18 colors

You know me, I love colors!!!

I'm a color mixer!  I have a hard time settling for just a few!

Completely pinkless dishtowels

A friend of mine contacted me and asked me if I wanted some of her baby things from her baby boy.  She was done having kids and her son is now 3.  I said sure!  She came over and filled my living room with goodies!  I have clothes for little David from now until he is 3 years old!  And all the clothes are in such great condition and look hardly worn.  She also brought toys and little jumpers and walkers for David to sit in!  It was like Christmas in summer!  To think my friend, I wanted to make her some dishtowels and I knew that she liked colors, but she told me that she absolutely, positively, without a shadow of doubt hates, despises, and avoids the color pink and any shade of pink what-so-ever in every situation.  Well, it was a good thing I asked because I almost gave her that pink scarf I just made that has all those shades of pink in them!! 

Awhile back, a friend on ravelry posted this project on ravelry.  When I saw it, I was taken back by how colors and wonderful it was!  Several years later, I have never forgotten it either!  I messaged her on ravelry and asked her for some tips and hints.  She basically just took lights and darks and made stirpes in her warp.  I thought to myself, that simple?!  And you know me, I pretty much just work from my stash, so all the colors I have picked are from things I have in 12/2 cotton.  To me, the mesh of colors never looks that great together at first, but it always works out in the end.  There are several projects I have done that used all these same colors and they all look good eventually when the weft comes in!  Someday when I run out of yarn (will that ever happen?!) I'm not sure what I'll do without my usual colors!

Pinks!!!

 oooooh!  aaahhh!!

The experiment of 2/2 twill hounds tooth woven in worsted weight polyester yarn worked out so well!  The weave is so incredibly stable!

I think I will do it as a blanket in doubleweave...  in black and white!

Now I just need to figure out the doubleweave pattern!

Lucious Hounds Tooth

  I really love the way this hounds tooth turned out!

   
I tried something new to try to make my weaving better.  I wound a towel onto the beam as the warp first wound on. I have noticed that my weaving often ends up with a U-shape because the nylon cords change the shape of the weave once it hits that area.  This towel really worked wonders!  I like how square my weaving ends up being.

On this warp I also made the edges different colors.  One side has black and one side has white.  Usually I make them both the same.  The reason why I did it differently this time though was because I ran the black yarn up the black side and the white yarn up the white side.  It really made it look better, not be too bulky, and not be too bright by having the opposite color.  I'll have to remember this for next time.

Time to wash.

Next time I'll cut and serge, and sew the edges!