Wolf trap!!!

I got it...

... and I love it!!!!

I think Sleepy Zip wishes it was a little kitty hammock... sorry buddy, you're too big for my new baby wolf trap!

Good News and Pumpkin Bread

I'll start off with the really great news that we received yesterday!  My husband is a former helicopter pilot and has been unemployed for the last 18 months, but he has spent the last 6 months training to become a certified flight instructor for airplanes.  Yesterday Brian finally passed the flight instructor test for airplanes!  Yay!  We are so excited to be moving in a forward direction again!  Sometimes the only thing that got me through these hard times has been weaving! (Thank goodness for weaving!!!  In fact, the name of my blog "weave-away" refers to these hard times that I am weaving through and weaving away.  I always feel better after a good weaving session!)  We are so happy to have made it through these hard times.  And we can't wait to see what the next year brings for us!

And now, onto the pumpkin bread...  My mom has been making this recipe for years and years and years!  It's super moist and tasty.  I have noticed it's much darker and tastier than most pumpkin bread recipes out there.  Give it a try!

Pumpkin Bread

2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp allspice

1 large can pumpkin
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup oil

optional ingredients:
2 cups nuts
2 cups raisins

Mix dry ingredients in large bowl.  Mix wet ingredients in bowl, add to dry ingredients.  Mix well.  Add nuts and/or raisins.  Grease 3 loaf pans.  Poor batter into these and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour, until done.  Cool slightly and remove from pans.

Trees are done!

I have made it in time for the craft show, thanks to the swiftness of the shuttles.   I was on fire when I was weaving with those things!!  They made the work go SO FAST that it's almost scary!  I'm thinking of putting on larger warps than 6 yards now because the warping time vs. weaving time just wasn't balanced enough.



Thanks trusty shuttles!!  My LYS was kind enough to let me borrow a few smaller sizes to try.  My favorite is the 11" boat shuttle because you can grip it well with your thumbs at each end of  the pass.  It was also a bit shorter so it fit under my shed easily.  The bottom is solid so you can't accidentally flip it upside down.  And it glides so nicely!








And now, for the tree towels....








We have two towels completely covered in trees, and when it's hung on a towel rack, all the trees are right-side up because I wove 4 trees standing up and 4 trees upside down on each one.















On these four towels, only the bottoms have trees and the middle is all plain weave.  I especially like the brown towel with the green tree stripe!














This is the same towel as above, but stretched out for viewing.  I really like that green stripe with the trees!!  I should have made more of those!














And I'm officially ready for the craft fair!  I have 23 hand woven towels to sell, some pot holders (remember the Dominoes?), a few knitted things, and some apple pie jam and applesauce.

It feels good to be done with this!  

Now... onto the next projects.

I really need to tackle those Christmas cards!!!

Snow!!!

 Brian, my husband, took these pictures after our snow Monday morning!  It was exciting to see our first snow so early in the year!  It was all thanks to a cold front that came raging through this weekend.  Boy, the wind was SO bad!!!

 

 

Yesterday would have been THE PERFECT day to stay home, stay warm, and just weave it all away!

Scarf photo challenge

I had another fun and challenging photo opportunity from my LYS.  I got to use Matilda, the model, to take some scarf pictures for them to put online.  I felt very inspired by our chilly, fall-ish weather.  We had some snow on the mountains AND the trees are still changing colors!!  It was so pretty!

Here are my top 10 pictures from our photo shoot with Matilda.

Making progress

There are a few major things on my mind right now, and I'm just so thankful to have my weaving to keep me sane.

And these trees look GREAT!  

I love the safety of my weaving world!!!!

Tree Mistakes

These tree weaves were supposed to be fast and easy!  But no... they had to have some complications....

First of all, I made a mistake in the tie-up and skipped an entire section of 5 threads.  I thought it was strange when I was done putting the threads in the heddles and had a few left over, but didn't think much of it.  I thought that it could just be a warping error.  But no... it took awhile to fix, but it wasn't hard, just tedious.  When I found the error, I knew I couldn't just squeeze in 5 threads, so I used the method of threading from back to front to fix it and it was kind of nice!  The other 5 threads that I needed I added at the end and wound onto a thick piece of wood and put it in a bag with rocks so it would be weighted.  At first, the kitties showed a lot of interest in the baggie of rocks and yarn, but they are now leaving it alone.  It's no different than the floating salvages, but... to a cat, anything that swings and is attached to string demands attention.

The second problem happened once I started weaving.  The first skeleton tie-up I figured out ended up being wrong.  I think I must have put it into the computer wrong.  It almost feels like these towels are doomed!  So here is the correct skeleton tie-up for the Christmas trees:

 

On the bright side, I have discovered the boat shuttle on this weave.  It's so nice to use and it makes such quick work of the weaving!  Wow!!  Up to this point, I have been using stick shuttles because I felt like I had more control, but now that I have discovered boat shuttles, I'm completely insanely addicted to "throwing the shuttle" from one side to the other and watching it glide across.  I just wasn't ready for this before because it felt like it was flying out of control.  But it's awesome now!!!  (And it only ends up on the floor every now and then...)

So now everything is weaving up nicely.  Now that I worked out all the kinks, I can just sit and enjoy the weaving part!  Some warps sometimes aren't as fun or get started smoothly, and this was a perfect example!  I've had too much luck lately, so I guess I was doomed to have this slow and problematic warp eventually!!

But I still have to hurry up and get these woven in time for the craft show next weekend!

Huck trees

The tree towels are on their way to being woven!  The warp is all measured and loaded into the reed, the heddles are all threaded, and we are ready to rock and roll!

I decided to go with a stone colored warp, and make the weft on each one different.  I plan on making about 6 towels, one of  which I will cut up for Christmas cards (if I have the heart to do so... I'm kind of liking these towels already... oops... that wasn't supposed to happen!)  I think I'm going to do a towel only in the stone color, one with a warp of brown, green, yellow, and I'm not sure on the last two yet.  Maybe a nice spruce blue and another brown or green.

Here are the stats:
56 threads total in each repeat
Set at 25 epi on 15 dent reed, so threaded 1-2-2
6 yard warp
approx. 20" across, so the design is repeated 9 times
504 threads


Here's the design again (from the Sept/Oct 1995 Handwoven magazine) and the skeleton tie-up I plan to use:

I want to get these tree towels ready in time for a Christmas craft show that one of my friends is doing in their home.  I hope I can sell a few of my handwoven towels!  I'm also going to put in some zen towels and a few other random ones I have on hand.

Thanksgiving 2010 placemats

I love going back and looking at my old weaving projects.  I actually made these placemats a year ago this month, in 2010.  It was one of the first major projects I made on my floor loom!  I was so proud of these, and yet I feel like now I have come such a long way since I made these this time last year.  I really enjoyed this project though, and it made 7 placemats!  I used an 8/4 cotton carpet yarn, so they turned out so super thick!  We have been using them all the time in the last year!

I can't wait to see what the next year brings in my weaving adventures!

These are the two treadling patterns I used for the placemats.  It's called Jewell and I got the pattern from page 45 in A Handweaver's Pattern Book.

Zen towels are done!!

And I love them!!!  Here are some fresh from the loom pictures:

After washing and cutting apart, which is one of my favorite steps!!

 

I find these colors both refreshing and energizing!