Wild Wool

Here's a wild combo for you wool lovers out there:
Wild Wool

This is a sheep vs. wolf game that combines Legos and shaving sheep for wool!  And it's very fun for the whole family!

You can have up to 4 players, each gets a little Lego sheep.  Aren't they so cute?!  The player rolls the dice, and each color means something different.  During your turn, 1 of 5 things might happen:
1. Grow wool
2.  Double their wool
3.  Swap sheep
4.  The wolf will take your wool
5.  Sheer your sheep



I can't get over these funny little Lego sheep.  They have such googly eyes!  The sheep below is "full" of wool.

I'm glad that someone was thinking of the wool lovers out there... 

What will they think of next?!

PS.  Speaking of animals, look what I got my hands on...  

Weaving a Zoo by Amy Preckshot!






There will be more of this to come soon!!!

Hopsack weave

I finished the hop-sack weave on the 4-shaft loom!  One of my favorite parts about this weave is the way it feels.  Not only does it have a soft feel, but it also is pliable and has a slight texture.  Because of it's pliability, it drapes nicely, too!  Some fabrics weave up so stiff, but not this one!

After making the baby blanket, I had enough left over in my warp for a nice long and wide hand towel for the guest bathroom.  The colors match the shower curtain and theme perfectly!!

In this warp, I mixed 12/2 with 16/2 cotton, and I was itching to see what twill would be like, so I reserved a few inches to try it out!  It was the smallest twill I've ever woven!  The sett is 32 e.p.i., and even the twill ended up being soft, pliable fabric.  I think it also would have made a lovely baby blanket and hand towel!

The stripes add a lot of artistic "tension" to the warp because they were not planned out.  I made it completely random, and even mixed some colors together for a heather look.  When I sewed the two panels together, they looked really nice because they were mirror images of each other.  But they were still a little unpredictable, which gave the eye interest.

I wish I had a loom that would weave blanket sized pieces so I wouldn't have to make a seam, but I'm just lucky I have a floor loom... so I don't complain!

Cold & snowy weekend=time to finish projects

As you can see, we've had quite the winter storm this weekend!  But the nice thing about winter storms is that it keeps us indoors and weaving!  Well, almost.  I do admit, Brian & I did go out and bike all 3 days... and it was quite a snowy ride!  Wow, that was fun!! 

Anyway, I'm glad to report that I did finish the blanket AND it got out into Saturday's mail!  But..
I forgot to take a picture of the baby blanket as a whole.  Can you believe it?!  I tried to remind myself, but fortunately I still have some warp left on my loom so I can weave it up and take pictures of it soon!!  In the mean time, enjoy this up close shot of the hop-sack weave.  I love hop-sack!  It was loose enough to be soft and flexible, and it also had a neat overall texture.  All the colors worked so well together on this one.  I'm glad I have a little leftover for me!




I did get these little hats and scarves all finished and washed!  I have them all wrapped up ready to ship as well!  I really like how the 3 colors mixed together turned out!  I want to explore this a little bit more later.  I have quite the to-do list going on right now!


So here is my "to do" list:
1.  Show you my 8-shaft project I started on Thanksgiving... (I know, there's been so much to blog about that it kind of got skipped over!)
2.  Finish weaving the 4-shaft project off the loom and maybe make a long hand towel for the bathroom.
3.  Make a pink and white pinwheel scarf for a small friend of mine, hopefully before winter ends!
4.  Make a table runner.
5.  Weave curtains for my living room.

That's all I can think of to add to the list, but it is very full!  Good thing Christmas break is right around the corner!

Quick weaving project

It's not that this project is quick and easy, because you know weaving... the setting up process takes forever!  I just have to weave this one really quick because it's for a baby that is due this month!!!  I tried to match the colors as best as possible, and I think I did well according to the picture.  I am doing a 4-shaft hopsack weave because I thought it would be nice and pliable and also very soft.  I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's done!  I have some neat stripes in the pattern, just random and when I sew the two panels together I think it will look really neat.  This baby is due mid-December... so I best be hurrying!!!  I want to get this into the mail TODAY!!!

The UW project

I have secretly been weaving this project for my three brother-in-laws.  It originated as a high school graduation gift for the youngest, but all of my husband's brothers have been or are going to University of Washington.  So I decided to make a dishtowel with some school spirit.  I wanted to include the school colors and also something having a "W" in it because it's referred to as "U-Dub" a lot.  I also decided a 4-shaft twill would be fun to do again, something nice and straight forward!

I used 12/2 cotton, with 30 epi.  I only wanted a few towels so it is just a 4 yard warp.  The hardest part was figuring out how many threads of each color I needed to warp without having any leftovers or being short.  So, I decided I would shoot for about a 20" towel, which is about 30 repeats of this pattern.  I wanted to begin and end with a purple and white stripe rotation.  So in warping terms, it was 17 whites, 68 purples, and 214.5 yellows around the warp board.  It ends up being about 600 threads total.  Thanks to Scout for helping me keep track of my notes!







Honestly, I do admit I am not head-over-heels about this particular color combination, but I love the design!

I really like how I'm really practicing weaving now.  I can quickly get a design in my head and get it down on paper exactly how I want it and know exactly what to do to get there in just a matter of minutes.  It's becoming so familiar.  I love it!

Another pillow for my dad

I don't want to make my dad seem too feminine with all these pillow requests.  I mean, he is a macho guy.  But it just seems that lately he's had a lot of pillow-needs.  I made the honeycomb pillow for him back in March, and he loves to use it while watching TV.  But his pillow needs were still left unmet.  You see, my dad is SO tall that no lawn chair really fits him just right.  And we found some really neat lawn chairs on a special trip to Texas last summer.  They're fun to use during family picnics, however his REALLY long legs are always hanging over the edge and he feels uncomfortable.  So he put in his request for an ankle pillow.  Like the last one, I wanted to make it special with something handwoven. 


I always like to weave to the end of my warps and try and find some use for the fabric somewhere.  On the Huichol blanket, I knew that this little leftover piece would be just what I was looking for.  So I saved it for this occasion.  But  I wanted a new look to it.  Instead of switching colors for the weft, I just used the electric blue.





Here is the cloth fresh from the dryer.  It has a very neat look to it and it's different enough from the original draft:















I wove an inkle band for the straps to tie onto the chair.

With a little sewing, it all came together nicely! I put two bands on the back to tie to the foot bottom and when I tested it out, it turned upside down so I decided it needed more stabilizers.  I sewed two more bands up towards the top to tie to the side bars.

And the final project:

 Happy Father's Day, dad!  Now you can really enjoy your lounge chair with comfy ankles!

Humanitarian Weaving

A friend at work lost her grandmother last week.  I decided that I wanted to giver her a dishtowel, but I wanted it to be more than just that.  So I found this really cute basket to line it with and made some REALLY GOOD banana muffin!  The texture was incredible, but I think it's because I used my Blendtec Total blender, which REALLY IS the World's Best Blender.

Here's the recipe:
1 egg
1/2 olive oil
1/2 tsp vanilla
2-3 bananas
1 tsp cinnamon
dash nutmeg
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1.5 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt

Optional adds: chocolate chips and/or 3 tbs cocoa powder, nuts, raisins

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.  Place ingredients in blender jar in order as listed and secure the lid.  Press the button until mixed.  Pour into muffin tins and bake 25 minutes.  Or 4.5"x8.5" loaf pan for 60 minutes.  Remove, cool, and EAT lots.

*** PS. The friend loved the dishtowel!  ***

A closer look at the color and weave dishtowel experiment from March

Here is a closer look at my dishtowels from the warp that used different colors and textures.  This is the same set that I wove at the end of March, I'm just posting more details of each towel.  I wanted a good comparison picture of both the fronts and backs of each.

 

These are made of 12/2 cotton, 30 epi.  I warped an 8 yard warp with 2 strands of color at one time, green and brown.  It is a point twill threading on 4 shafts, sometimes I treadled it as a waffle weave, sometimes as a twill, and for a few I just made it up!  I played a lot with colors on both to see what kinds of cool things I could make.   

This started as just an experiment, but I feel like I want to dig deeper into what different color combinations do on the loom.  They were a lot of fun and full of surprises!

WAFFLE WEAVE:

 

 

RANDOM TEXTURE EXPERIMENTS:

 

  

TWILL EXPERIMENTS:

Earthy towels

Made 9 of these towels! I love the colors! This was total play time project... I warped the loom and let my imagination soar.

Stats: 12/2 unmercerized cotton, 9 yard warp
4 waffle weave, 2 textured, and 3 twill