4 o'clock Turned Twill

I'm starting to feel a bit stifled by these bookmarks, but it's only taken me 3 months to get there!  Soon, I will be done and moving along back to my own things.  One of the things I want to make is this 4 o'clock design.  I have been eying it for awhile, and I decided I like it best in turned twill.  I tried writing the draft out in summer and winter, and I just didn't think it had the same impact.  Plus, I have officially never even attempted this kind of twill before, so this will be an adventure!

And besides, 4 o'clock is my favorite time of day.  Why?  It signals to me, I have made it through another day.  The kids go home from school and my day is over!  :-P

Mors Bags

kreativa commented on my blog that the bookmarks would make a great bag!

It was such a good idea, that it got me thinking.

I love this Mors bag pattern so much!!  And it's cool how they are trying to save the planet by reducing the amount of plastic in the environment.

They suggest that you use just plain cotton material.  But what would it look like with some woven fabric??  And maybe some inkle strap handles?? 

Just wonderful!  This is actually woven fabric from my rigid heddle loom, so it's a nice strong plain weave!  The yarn is something from a thrift store, it's brown and green variegated yarn.  I think it's 8/2.


My next step after these bookmarks is to make some colorful twill gamp fabric to experiment with, and this is something I want to do with it!  I think it would make some chipper shopping bags, and help save the planet all at the same time!!!

Have fun making your own woven bags!

Pieces of my closet

I have decided to go on a yarn and fiber fast, until I can get control of my closet again, and I want it to take about a year to get through it.  It's actually 2 closets now... and maybe a few shelves... but I will start with the worst of it all!

Maybe I should start like an AA meeting... but it can be a YA meeting (Yarnaholics Anonymous)

Hi, my name is Amanda and I'm a yarnaholic.  This is my closet:

A few weeks ago, it was looking pretty good.  In fact, it looked so good that my husband complimented me on it.

That was in March.

I don't know what happened... a little of this, a little of that... and this is what you get.  A culmination of clutter. 

So...

Before you rip into me about my clutter or my crazy challenge, let me assure you it's just this one area.  I have spent a lot of time and effort de-cluttering the whole house!  And it looks real good!

But this one closet.

Here is the color-coded tour:

• In light purple, we have my favorite 12/2 cottons... those will be preserved and saved!
• In light blue, we have some wool for scarves, same story as the 12/2 cotton!
• In light pink, we have one of those UFO projects that has been moved to 3 different housing areas.  Might be time to do something about it before it makes it to a 4th, which won't be for a long time... hence the reason it's time to do something about it!
• In baby blue, we have some rug yarn, so that needs to get used up.
• In red, we have some alpaca to spin.... LOTS AND LOTS OF IT!  In fact, I'm sure I could whip up 3 or 4 shawls from it!  I need to wash it first and then I can card it and spin it and then weave it!!
• In yellow, we have a mix of 8/2 and 8/4 cottons that will make great towels.
• Behind the spinning wheel is more rug yarn.
• In green, is my new cotton and linen I just got recently, and I'm not sure how to use it yet.
• In orange, I have my finished projects, they are being saved as gifts.  So when Christmas comes, look out family and friends!!

But as you can see, it IS time to do a yearly stash-reduction exercise and get through some of this stuff!  NO MORE BUYING until I can do some PROCESSING! 

And you know what?  This isn't all my stash.  No...

This closet doesn't even include the shelves...

Yes, THE shelves...

Ay, yi, yi!  Floor to ceiling of yarn, fluff to spin, and a few supplies...

Ugh.

It's almost overwhelming to have too much stuff.  I can power through this!

Goodies!

My mom and I were out and about over the weekend and we saw that
 our local yarn store is having a HUGE spring cleaning sale!

They are calling the huge bags of yarn "bundles of joy" and they are SO FULL!  You save an incredible amount of money!  

This was in the bag I picked out:

 

 

These were also in my bag and they are made of sea kelp:

The colors are just marvelous and match my style 100%!  I love blues and greens!

I also got these rolls of 20/2 wool for a scarf!  They will look great as a twill with white wool yarn!

And I picked up some bags of cotton/linen!  I'm so excited to weave a towel and use these as the weft.  It will be so luxurious! 

More "to do" projects

When things start to calm down some here I can start focusing on some of my other projects I've been wanting to make.  Besides the rainbow wool I finished and have plans for, here are a few more projects I thought I would share:


This sheep pattern has been one of my favorites ever since I saw it here: http://www.weavingtoday.com/media/p/1851.aspx  This is Georgean Curran's Sheep Towels originally from March/April 1990 Handwoven Magazine, page 93, 85-86. 

Tim's Treadle Reducer

I definitely want to make some little hand towels using this sheep pattern, but I'm almost considering doing this pattern for my 2012 Christmas cards!  Wouldn't that be cute?!  It's never too early to get started, right?

I would like to share this pattern from the cs.arizona.edu website: http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/periodicals/dad_7.pdf  Scroll down to February 1965, and you will find this novelty checks pattern.  I have always liked this draft, and I thought it would make excellent dishtowels!  I would love to feel this texture:

Another project I have on my to do list is this:

And it just looks like so much fun because I would get to take my whole blues collection of yarn and mix it all together with my warping paddle.  I think it would look REALLY neat!  It looks a lot like the plans for the rainbow scarves, except I would use my favorite 12/2 cotton instead of perle cotton.  I still really haven't settled on a twill design yet.  I'm still working out the kinks on that one!  The main focus is using lots and lots of blues!

Another interest right now is shadow weave.  While weaving the lion skins, I became very interested in shadow weaves.  I also would love to weave some dishtowels!  I am thinking something from the Powell book called 1000+ patterns in 4,6, and 8 Harness Shadow Weaves.  I am really loving some of those 8-shaft patterns that she has in her book. 

This is 8-1-1, page 206:

Here's a few more repeats so you can enjoy the design that happens! I love the 3D look to it, the way it just pops out at you.  It's almost like you could reach out, touch it, and feel it!

Speaking of a to-do list, I saw this dot-dot tea towel pattern from http://spaceandstructure.blogspot.com/ last week and I really want to make one because the texture looks incredible!

Pic from http://spaceandstructure.blogspot.com/

After taking a minute to study the photo, this is what I've come up with for the pattern.

I also would like to copy Sharon's tea towels for a summertime project!  They are so beautiful!  She was kind enough to share the pattern with me and I can't wait to dig in!  Here is a picture of her finished towels:

The colors are AMAZING and it's all from 1 warp!!!

And there's always my rainbow yarn that I spun up last week.

And then there's always more zoo critters that call for my attention.  I'm not sure what will come after the lions!  There's so many to choose from...

Girl's Day Out!

Found these at JoAnn's during the Girl's Day Out with my mom... thought that they were PERFECT!  AND they were 60% off!!!

We also went to our favorite yarn store and I finally got my shuttles and a few extra bobbins!  And I finally bought some 10/2 perle cotton for a very special project for a very special someone that I am totally going to surprise!  I probably won't be able to get started until after Christmas, so the surprise really won't be a Christmas gift but rather a "just because" gift!  I will say no more because I don't want to ruin the surprise.  I am finding with my blog that it's hard to keep gifts secret!

I also found the perfect sized basket for all my essential weaving tools!

We ended it with an early dinner at
Texas Roadhouse and the movie The Help at my house!

It was a fun day out!! 

Samples are cool!

Now that I've finished up some major projects like P2P2 and the fair projects, I feel like I am bogged down with quite a few things that I want to try.  My to-do list is huge!  So I decided to start doing a few samples.  And now I'm totally sold on samples!  They are so quick and easy and fun!

This is a sample of Powell's shadow weave.  Remember this draft I was investigating?

Well, here it is all woven up in 12/2 cotton set at 20 epi.  I might need a slight closer set, because I had to add 2 more rows to each rotation.  I warped 96 threads at 2 yards. 

It might be small, but at least now we know it works! 

By the way, I will find something to use it for, trust me!

Next on my sampling list is some lace weaves and then M&O's.  I have been wanting to try a project again with each, but just haven't had the time to get through all that I want to do before adding more stuff!!  It's crazy... there is ALWAYS something to weave and experiment with!!  This hobby is going to drive me crazy!

Summer and Winter project revisited

Back in the summertime, I made dishtowels in yellow and rust using a profile draft.  As you probably recall, I set the epi way too high and the towels ended up really stretched out at first.













I ended up remedying the problem by cutting the summer and winter rotation in half.  So instead of 1a-2b-2a-1b, it was 1a-2b.  It was a little disappointed because it wasn't authentic.  It was missing some of the cool features that summer and winter weave offers.















The towels are very beautiful, don't get me wrong.  They will make lovely gifts and they are of wonderful materials.  But I wanted to revisit this project and find out what went wrong and maybe try it again.








 

Winter side:

 

Summer side:

After doing some self-studying on summer and winter, I realized my mistake was simply having the epi set too high.  I don't know what I was thinking, but for some reason I set the epi at 30, which would be perfect to make a twill with my 12/2 cotton.  What I needed to do instead is set the epi at 20.  This also allows me to change my reed to a #10 and free up my #15 reed for another project!

I decided to try this out with just a small sample on my loom.  I measured out 160 pink threads at 2 yards on my warp board.  It didn't take very long, nor did it take long to thread them in the reed or the heddles!  It was actually so fast that it's tempting to do more sampling on my loom in the future.  I usually try to avoid sampling, and that is why I tend to run into these problems every now and then.  I think I will reconsider this issue in the future, even though I have been pretty lucky so far.






I used 12/2 cotton for both the warp and the weft.  And I used one of the unusual treadling repeats of 1a-2b-2a-1b.  I like this one a lot!!

I also made a sample using purple as the pattern thread. 








It turned out so girly!  I am sending it to Brian's grandma to use as a very small table runner.

I also tried treadling the original way of 1a-2b-1a-2b.  I do like it, but my favorite is the other treadling because of the pretty XOXO pattern.

What I really want to do with this summer and winter weaving, is make a checkerboard out of this profile draft I created for my 4 nephews and 1 niece!  I want to make it a travel set, with maybe a little bag to fold it up and put it in.  I was even thinking of Velcro pieces so you could stop right in the middle of a game.  I am planning on making it nice a big, like the whole width of my loom.  The pieces will be crochet circles, even though I'm not really fond of crochet, nor am I really that good at it.  And the best part about all of this, I could choose whatever colors I wanted!  Here is the profile draft.  Each 1 square really represents 3 repeats of summer and winter, or 12 threads total.  So this draft would be 480 threads, and at 20 epi it would weave up to be 24", just perfect!

I know I can't make it in time for birthdays this year, but maybe for Christmas?

It's another thing on my long to-do list! 

Goodies waiting for me!

I have some summer goodies I put away for later when I go back to work next month and things slow down for me.

 Lately I haven't been spinning much on my wheel because I have something very challenging on it.  So the first goodie I am saving for later is this souvenir from our recent trip to Washington state. I really wanted a no-brainer spinning wool, so when we went to Paradise Fibers, I picked out this lovely dark roving to play with.  It should be a nice, easy spin!  I have 2 lbs, enough for a cozy winter shawl!

I got this beautiful blue spinning dream from my local yarn store.  I think the color is gorgeous and the different bits of texture are super interesting!  I can't wait to see it all spun up!  It's a small batt, so it might make a lovely little scarf.  I think I'll use it as a weft.

 This one is super exciting!  It's cotton, rayon, and flax!  I couldn't easily capture the bits of flax sticking out throughout, but it's there and it's both interesting looking and feeling!  I'm not sure what it wants to be yet, one person suggested napkins.  That might be fun!  But I'm always a sucker for dishtowels or placemats!

Love it!

Love this color combo!  Now I need to think of a good pattern....

A Handwoven steal...

I love going to my local yarn shop and thumbing through the old Handwoven magazines.  They sell their old magazines for really cheap.  I love getting a few every time I go!  Last week when my mom and I went to the yearn store they had a whole bunch to chose from and it was hard to narrow it down to just a few.  I'm so excited to dig into these new old magazines!

I also got 2 balls of wacky colors to work with.  They were in the sale bin and were super cheap!  (I don't even think it was the price in the tag... )  I want to use these for some bright overshot.  Maybe one of Bertha Gray Hayes' patterns.  I can't wait to get these on the loom!

Great ideas!

I love this idea to make a bag!  I'm going to add this to my "to do" list!

I also found this project that would be fun to do, especially with kids!

Houndstooth pulled thread scarf

I am trying to make a houndstooth project for my sister.  She LOVES this pattern:

 

My sis wants a black and white scarf someday with only a few threads pulled tight so it ruffles.  Kind of like this:

I got the idea from this book:

I think it will look really cute in the end.  She's been wanting it for awhile now!

Handtowel Projects I admire...

 I love to scan the internet and look at other weavers' work.  I always get ideas no matter where I go.  Here are some dishtowels from this site that I want to make someday.

This is one from this person on Etsy.