What insomnia can lead to!

 A couple of weeks ago I had a very bad case of insomnia.  I was not able to fall asleep, so rather than the torture of tossing and turning, I got up and went wandering around on the web.

I have a number of friends who cross-stitch and although I really enjoy stitching temari, I never thought that cross-stitch would catch my fancy.  Boy, was I wrong!  I prefer geometric designs, and in my mind's eye I always see cross-stitch as samplers with letters and numbers and figures that I just do not care for.  In my wandering while not being able to sleep, I came across blackwork, and better yet, modern blackwork!

I ended up on the website called Peppermint Purple and here I found patterns combining cross-stitch and blackwork in modern designs.  I like Zentangles, but I have not had a lot of success drawing them, but these patterns reminded me of them, so why not stitch them instead of drawing.

I proceeded to do some research on how to stitch both cross-stitch and blackwork, then did a bunch of research on stitching frames.  A friend of mine stitches in-hand, but that did not appeal to me.  I settled on Q-snaps as the way to go.

I went back to Peppermint Purple and found a free Stitch Along (SAL) that was combining both cross-stitch and blackwork.  I joined.  The irony is that it is the same SAL a friend in Texas has been doing and posting pictures.  She also stitched last years.  Once I took a close look at the pattern, I realized it was the one that B was doing.

All this happened the night of no sleep, and I knew I was going to go down to Black Cat Stitchery once they opened and get myself set up for the SAL.  Black Cat is a wonderful shop in Winthrop Harbor, IL, and it is only about a 20 minute drive from my home.  It is great having a really nice stitchery so close at hand.  I like being able to look at all the colors in person, and the shop has a very wide selection of threads, fabric, and material.

Knowing I was going to buy an 11" x 11" Q-snap, I pulled out some leftover linen fabric from a dress I made awhile ago and made a grime guard for it.  Once it was late enough for the store to be open, I went down and bought thread, Aida 16ct fabric in Icelandic Grey, and an 11" x 11" Q-snap.  I came home and started stitching.  Here is Peppermint Purple's SAL through week 7.  This SAL will go through to November with a weekly fill being released every Wednesday.

I was having so much fun with the SAL that I did not like waiting a week for something to stitch, so I went back out to Peppermint Purple and purchased the pattern "Reflections".  I was planning on meeting a friend down at Black Cat a couple of days after I bought the items for the SAL, so I got what I needed for the new pattern.  This is the one that really brings Zentangles to mind for me.  Here it is so far:

It sure is a fun thing to stitch, and I had to make another grime guard.  It sure is handy having way too much fabric in my stash!

Now out on Ravelry, on the forum Weaver's who knit...., one of the members posted a link to another really cool SAL.  This one is comprised of 36 tiles of folk designs from around the world.  Well, I just couldn't resist that!  I am starting this one about 19 weeks behind, so it's just been catch up for me.

It is upside down on the stitching stand.  It is easier for me to stitch that way.  It is going to be really pretty when it's done.  This one is from Cliffside Stitches, there is also a blackwork SAL available as well.  Both of the SAL's that I am doing are provided from the designers for free.  That is a mighty fabulous thing.

I stitched for a couple of weeks holding the frames in my left hand and just stitching with my right.  I decided that I wanted a stand and so I ordered one on Sunday and it came Wednesday.  I think that it is going to really work well for my needs.  I sit in my recliner when I stitch so I wanted a stand that would work with the foot rest up or down, and this one does the trick.  It is well made, nicely finished, and very adjustable.  I am now learning to stitch with 2 hands, my right hand keeps wanting to come up from underneath, but it is getting better.

A stitching friend recommended using a laying tool to keep the threads parallel when creating the crosses with more than one thread.  Since I was ordering stuff left and right anyway, I ordered a Trolley needle.  It does what it's supposed to do, but I feel like Edward Scissorshand ✂️ using it!  LOL  Also I am using small rare earth magnets to hold the cloth rolled up and as a needle minder and when my hand gets too close, the magnets grab my finger.  Makes for interesting stitching sessions.

So that is pretty much what I have been up to for the last couple of weeks.  I am still working on the mosaic blanket, I am about 2/3 done there but stitching seems to have me in its thrall.

Almost on one track....

 I have been mostly just working on the Queen blanket.  That is surprising for me because I am generally all over the place, working on a very large variety of projects.  The blanket has really grabbed my attention and the interest in it doesn't seem to be waning.  I am a little over half done with it, starting to repeat the color bands in reverse.

This is not to say that I have not been playing with other things, I am just not a monogamous crafter😀 LoveCrafts had the small 25gr skeins of Sheepjes Catona on sale last week, so I ordered a nice selection of colors to play with.

I have been wanting to try making a mandala, and many of the patterns on Ravelry call for this yarn.  I had thought of using Maysville 8/4 carpet warp, but I really wanted a mercerized yarn.  The carpet warp would have been very matte looking even though I have a lot in my stash.

I started a mandala the day the yarn came, actually set the blanket aside😀 I told myself that I was only going to do a couple of rows a day and set it aside.  The next day I picked it up and essentially finished it!  So much for a couple of rows a day.  I  ran over to Joann Fabrics, so nice that it is close by, and picked up a couple of brass hoops.  I wasn't sure which size I would need so I grabbed a 10" & 12" hoop.

I had read to clip the mandala to the hoop with stitch markers to hold it in place while attaching it to the hoop.  That worked like a charm!

Once the 12" hoop was clipped on, I just crocheted the last row and attaching it to the hoop as I went.  Instead of doing a ch2 I sc around the hoop.  Then I pulled out my lucet, used 2 of the colors to make a hanging cord and the finished mandala is now hanging on my front door.  My camera behaved bizarrely, the colors look really faded and different hanging on the door then laying on the table.  I don't know if this is because I have a yellow wall in my hall, or because of the lighting by my doorway.  Regardless, it is done and hanging and I am overall pleased with it.  

Another little quick project was making another crochet hook roll.  A friend ordered a set of the Clover Amour hooks and I think she will need a case for it.  I put a 39-end band on the Good Wood mini inkle, and popped the band out in a couple of hours.  

The colors are quiet outside my regular color wheel, but they ended up working well with the fabric that I chose.  The 2 darker colors are Lunatic Fringe 10/2, and the hot pink was in my stash.  I have no idea where that came from, but it worked well for this band.

I did monogram the hook sized on the pockets like I did for my roll.  The monogrammer behaved much nicer this time around, none of the cams gave me grief.  The roll itself gave me loads of trouble.  Silly me did not write down how I made the first roll, so I was just kind of working through it all.  I sewed it together, discovered that I sewed the band on in the wrong direction, sewed the cover flap on wrong too.  I had to take it all apart, trim the edges, and reassemble.  I did get it to come together but it was a bigger PITA than I had planned.

I also created a Bingo card of crafting for this year.  It has on it some projects that I am working on, projects that have stalled on me, and projects that I would like to make in the future.  I want to use it as a guild line for my crafting this year.  It will be interesting to see if I get any Bingos!

Stay tuned to see how this goes!  LOL

Crochet has taken over!

 In my typical method of doing things, I am now obsessed with crocheting.  It is just nuts as I have not done serious crocheting in years and now I cannot seem to put the hooks down😀

I picked up another skein of clothesline that was a bit smaller in diameter, 3/16" (4.8mm) for another basket.  I crocheted it using a 3 color rotation I learned knitting what are called helix hats.  It was as fun as the first basket!  The smaller cord has better coverage, I still used the Village Yarn Craft Cotton that I used on the first basket.  I like the yarn, it has a great feel and the colors are wonderful.

Since that was so much fun, I started another - surprise, surprise!  This one has a larger base, I went up to an 11 stitch increase.  I started this while waiting for the yarn to come for a blanket that I decided to do.

Well I met up with my friend, who had ordered the kit from Wool Warehouse in the UK.  The yarn came surprisingly fast and they have very reasonable shipping considering it is coming across the pond.  So needless to say, this basket has been set aside because I had to play with my new yarn and a new pattern.  I also will run out of cord partway up this basket and I need to figure out a good join.

Here is so far, it will be a pretty thing!  I also now know I have to work the handles longer.  I brought the helix basket to my moms, and found that the handles are just too tight and short.

Now onto a new blanket!  I am going to be making a mosaic patterned blanket from Tinna Thórudóttir.  It is her Queen CAL that she did a couple of years ago.  Wool Warehouse has the kits, and I bought the Ruby color way.

The colors are so rich and pretty.  It is a lot of fun having these bags of yarn sit on my couch just tempting me to crochet faster so I can get to the next color.  This will have 9 colors plus cream as the pattern yarn.

Tinna has the pattern set up to do in a number of different ways and sizes.  At first, I was going to crochet it vertically so that the color bands went side to side, from dark to light to dark again.  I did start it that way and as the pattern grew, I decided that the motifs will not look as nice side to side, so I ripped out everything that I did and started it over working from the bottom up.  The colors will not be as I would have liked, but the pattern itself will look so much nicer.

This is first time that I have tried mosaic crocheting.  It is making a really dense, thick, and squishy fabric.  I really like it!  I had originally planned this blanket for going on the foot of my bed, but the colors are going to look wonderful in my living room, so its going to be my new cuddle blanket and my old one will go into my bedroom.  Fun times!

The Weeks Recap

 I managed to finish up a few things this week.  Some were more challenging than I needed them to be, but that is the way things go.

I have been working on spinning up 4 braids of fiber for a sweater.  I finally finished spinning the dyed braids and plied one of the bobbins.  I am chain-plying all of the braids, they are coming out as a fingering weight yarn.  So I wound off the plied bobbin onto my skein winder and gave the skein a bath.  One of the choke ties came off when I pulled the yarn from the water!  What a mess!  I have never had that happen before.  Fortunately one of the ties held, so I was able to hang the skein to dry.  This morning I put it on the umbrella swift and wound it into a nice cake.  It was not the big tangled mess that I was worried about it being, so that was good!  

I just need to finish plying the other braid/bobbin of this color way and all of the yarn with be spun.

I also finished mom's mittens.  I just love the Knit Picks Galileo yarn that I used for the lining.  It is just a beautiful yarn to knit and the color was just gorgeous.  Mom liked them too😀

The other day I was wandering around looking at patterns that a particular designer had available on Ravalry.  I found a really great one for making crocheted rope baskets.  I ordered some cotton craft yarn and picked up a package of cotton braided clothesline and made a basket!

It was really fun to do.  The designer is Tinna Thórudóttir and she has a great You-Tube tutorial on how to make a basket and it works and works well!

I will be making more since this one is now holding the skeins of craft cotton that I used to make the basket!  I need to get another 100' of cotton braided clothesline to make another of this size.  I used about 63' for the one above, and I like the size.  I used a 10qt utility bucket as the form.

The basket proved to me that my old Boye aluminum crochet hooks are just not fun to use!  I ordered the 10 hook set of Clover Amour hooks and they came today.  I knew that they did not come in a nice case or roll, so I made one.  

First I wove a quick band on the Good Wood mini inkle loom out of Lunatic Fringe 10/2 perle cotton.  The colors are so fun to use.  I then used 2 coordinated fat quarters for the case itself.  I knew the handles would be down in the slot on the case, so I used the embroidery monogrammer attachment on the Singer 401a to mark each slot with the hook size.  Overall it came out pretty nice.  I put the flap on the top to keep the hooks from falling out if the case is picked up upside down, plus it will protect the hook end.

A couple of the letter cams on the attachment just would not work correctly, so I did have to just kind of free hand a couple along with the number "7" with a satin stitch.  It will be really nice not to have keep pulling hooks to get to the size I need.

So that was a pretty good week - finished some stuff and found a new tunnel in Fiberland's rabbit-hole with crocheted baskets.  Fun times!

A bit of a knitting frenzy

 So last week or so, I finally finished a pair of lined wool mittens for myself that I started back in 2019.  What pushed me to finish was taking a walk while wearing gloves and my fingers got cold.  And I thought to myself, finish those darn mittens, they will be great for walking.  I always planned for them to be my snowshoe mittens, but fortunately for my procrastination on finishing them, we have not had a lot of snow the last few years.

So here are the finished mittens:  

The pattern is called Northman Mittens by David Schulz.  The pattern is available on Ravelry which is where I originally saw it when one of the weavers on Warped Weavers posted her finished mittens.  When they were done, I took them for a walk with my mom.  She eyed them and I asked if she would like a pair and she said yes.  When I came home from the walk I went through one of the tubs of wool and found a couple of skeins of knitting wool that will work well.  

Mom is not crazy about wool next to her skin, so I ordered some Rowan Cotton Glacé for the lining.  I picked up all the stitches and started knitting with the cotton and decided I just did not like the way was knitting or feeling.  I then went and ordered a couple of skeins of Galileo Merino/viscose from KnitPicks.  I think that the blend should be okay, plus its not like she will be wearing them for hours on end.

These are mom's mittens, the green is a needle cozy holding the DPN's that have the cuff stitches picked up on.  

Since I was waiting for the KnitPicks yarn to come and I was in knitting mode, I pulled out the leftover yarn from the outside of both pairs of mittens and knit a scrappy hat.  That went really fast, so I knit another, and another from some other bits of yarn.  They all had to be washed and blocked, and since I was doing that, I finished weaving in the ends of a vest and washed and blocked that as well.

So here is the results off a weeks long frenzy with knitting needles:  the vest finished, 3 hats knit, and the outside of mom's mittens.  The vest and hats are for WoolAid, I just need to package it all up and send it in.  There is also another vest on needles, so once that is finished I will send it all off.

I wove some holiday towels again this year, and also made some holiday temari.  This morning I finished stitching the 3rd temari, so it is nice to have that all finished up.  Temari are so fun to do so I am glad that I have another blank all ready for stitching.  I just have to decide on the pattern and colors.

There was a thread about sizing a warp out on Warped Weavers on Ravelry that really had me thinking.  For quite a while, I had been messing around with some fine hemp yarn and Romney singles that I had spun.  I finally decided on a draft and the number of ends and so forth, and wound the warp.  I sized it using Sta-Flo liquid laundry starch and dressed the loom.

When I started to weave, I was having broken ends all of the place.  It seemed that with every pass of the shuttle an end broke.  I was not going to deal with something like that, so I just cut it all off and tossed and chalked it up to a bad experience.  Now after reading the sizing thread, I realized I over starched the warp making it very stiff and brittle.  No wonder I was having the issues that I did.  This was a wonderful thing to figure out because I really wanted to use this yarn in this project.  I am planning on refiguring the weaving draft and wind a new warp and give it another shot.  Time will tell!

Back to it.....again

 Well I am back.  I cannot believe how long its been since I posted here.  Let's see if I can actually stick with it for a while.  Looking back I have not posted since November of 2019.  A lot has happened since then!

I am still weaving, lately not as much as I once did, but the looms are still in action.  I retired from work as of August 1, 2020 and I have mostly just been playing in Fiberland ever since.  It is a real pleasure to be able to do what I want, when I want to but the downside is that I have little to no structure in my life.

I have learned a few more art forms that I find fun and fascinating.  In January of this year, I started to learn to play ukulele.  I have never played a musical instrument before, so it has been an interesting and sometimes very frustrating, and sometimes very satisfying thing to do.  Unfortunately I found with ukulele, they are a lot like looms and vintage sewing machine, way too easy to accumulate them.  I probably have a few more than I really should, but it is just so darn fun and they all sound different.  

When my oldest brother learned that I was messing about with stringed instruments he gave me a McNally Strumstick and a mountain dulcimer kit to build.  I did actually build the mountain dulcimer.  It was an interesting and different experience and while it was okay to do, I do not need to do it again.  It really does not have a very sweet sound and it is hard to keep in tune.....which led me to ordering a beautiful Ron Gibson cherry mountain dulcimer.  I also wove a very cool strap for it on the Gilmore Mini Wave using a pattern from one of Laverne Waddington's wonderful backstrap pattern books.

It is a lovely, sweet sounding instrument that I really need to play more often than I have been.  There is an online class offered in January that I am kicking around the idea of taking.

A couple of years ago, I learned to stitch temari.  Temari is a form of Japanese embroidery on a sphere.  One actually makes the ball, which is a multiple step process and stitches a design on it.  I have been using DMC Perle 5 for the design threads, so that meant adding a new yarn stash....sigh.....  I now have 4 floss boxes full of various colors of DMC.  I tried using the 5/2 perle cotton that is in my weaving stash, but the twist is different and does not lay the same way that the DMC does.

Here are a few I wove last December for the holidays along with the holiday run of towels.  It's been fun weaving towels to go with temari and vice versa.

I also learned to shuttle tat.  I have known how to crochet lace, but never learned to tat.  I just couldn't resist those cute little shuttles!  And believe it or not, my favorite shuttles are some of the most reasonable, the Clover tatting shuttles that can be picked up at Joanne's in a 2-pack.  This also led to another type of yarn stash - because of course the twist on both the DMC perle and the weaving cotton is not right for tying a zillion little knots.  Crochet cotton is quite different from weaving cotton.

And as crazy as this sounds, playing with tatting cotton had me dyeing tatting cotton!  I always said I would not go down the yarn/fiber dyeing rabbit hole, and there I was this summer with bottles of dye and little skeins of cotton.  Here is a bracelet and anklet that I tatted from yarn that I dyed.  I have lost my mind!

I am also still knitting and spinning.  I actually finished a pair of wool mittens for myself that I started in January of 2019.  I also knit for Wool Aid, mostly hats, vests, and mittens.  One of the weavers I know from Ravelry weaves and knits for Wool Aid and I found it to be a good organization to become involved with.  I like to knit, but I do not really need a lot of knitted goods, so this is just a win/win for me.

It is amazing all of the different fiber pursuits that I am involved with.  I just bop from one to another to something else.  I guess that is why I feel I have no structure but I do not seem to be in a big hurry to do anything about it.  It satisfies a creative need in me that I never realized I had or that it was so strong.  Making things, either with fiber, music, or even in the kitchen just is so pleasurable.  Now to see if I can make blogging a part of my creative outlets.

Learning new techniques...

I have been doing a lot of different styles of band weaving lately, and it seems like there is always more to learn.  I have to love that!  Last weekend, with the help of a fellow Raveler, I learned to weave a Moraband.

When I first started weaving bands, a wonderful woman on a forum called All Fiber Arts taught me to weave Baltic pick-up.  This was probably the first year I was weaving and All Fiber Arts was the first on-line forum I was ever on.  Baltic bands are generally setup with 2 background ends between each pattern end, and the pattern ends alternate being heddled and unheddled.  Usually the pattern threads are twice the grist of the background threads.  These are some bookmarks that I wove when I first learned Baltic pick-up.

Morabands have three background ends and all of the pattern ends are unheddled.  You tie up leashes to the pattern ends in the order of the pattern picks, so you have leashes on the top and bottom of the warp.  The book Moraband by Barbo Wallin is written in Swedish, which I still have issues translating.  Fortunately there are great photos in the book, and a fellow Raveler had translated the basics and passed that information to me.

I set the GBL (Glimakra band loom) up as an inkle loom by disconnecting the treadles and removing the shafts.  I also did not have the right sized wool to use, so I plied 3 strands together on one of my spinning wheels to get the grist that I needed.  The background and border ends are perle cotton, so is the weft.  I used the texsolv heddles from the GBL and started weaving.  It was mostly successful,  but I felt that the heddles were too short.

Here you can see the band in progress and all of the colored strings hanging on the right side are the pattern leashes.  I found out today that the heddles should be longer, so I cut what I had woven off the loom ...

and tied new heddles using the inkle pegs as a template ...

I wound a new warp and dressed the loom using the new heddles and it seems to be working well ...

It is just the start, and this band I am using worsted wool instead of woolen and it is not quite as sticky when opening sheds.  I am going to weave a sampler of 15 end patterns.  It is nice to be able to see the backside and see how many floats are on the back.  I do not like using a pattern that has long floats for bag handles and my game plan is to weave handles for handwoven bags.

Setting up the GBL is keeping it in my possession for a bit longer.  I do not care to weave standard inkle bands on this loom.  I am just not comfortable sitting sideways at it for that kind of weaving.  I still like my regular inkle looms for that kind of weaving.

So it is just bandorama around here and it is fun!