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

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!

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!

...and on to September

I am amazed that the end of August is here already.  This summer just flew by for me.  Looking back on this month, I really did not finish too many projects.  It seems I did more sewing than anything.  Those sewing projects were not even things that I had intended to do or had previously started and did not finish.

I am hoping that September will be more productive.  I would like to finish up a lot of projects that have been lingering around for too long and to learn some new spinning techniques.

I am going to be participating in the Fall Weave-along on Ravelry's Warped Weaver's.   I have 4 projects that have been started but not finished for too long.

Clockwise starting in the top left is a pick-up band on the mini Wave,  a warp-faced band on the GBL, a leash on the core-braiding stand,  and an oblique braid on the takadai.  It is time to give them all some attention.

I am also participating in a month-long spin-along on Allons-Y-Fiber Art also on Ravelry.  Its a spin-along for New Zealand half-bred Haunui fiber.  This is an absolute gorgeous fiber to spin.  I am spinning it on the Lendrum and am planning to do a 4-ply cable.  This is not something that I have done before - new stuff, should be fun:-)

It is a beautiful, autumn colored braid.  Bethanne's colors are always so gorgeous.

Still on spinning, I am going to pick up some cotton sliver at WI Sheep and Wool festival next weekend.  I am enjoying spinning a lot, but I just do not care to weave with wool,  so I am going to give cotton a try.  I received Joan Ruane's Beginning Cotton Spinning on a Wheel and it looks doable.  I am also receiving a quill head for the Lendrum.  I am thinking that will work well with cotton.  The shorter fiber length needs the fast, high twist that I should get from the quill head.  More fun times:-)

I also want to weave off the pieces that are on the Glimåkra Standards.

The top piece will be upholstery fabric to recover my spinning chair and the bottom piece is just really fun polka-dots.   I have not quite decided what I am going to do with that fabric.  It makes me smile everytime I see it, so I would like to do something cool with it.

There are also what seems like a zillion crochet and knitting pieces started.  The nice thing about those is they are portable,  so they come to work with me and I work on them over my lunch period.

So, it should be interesting to see what actually gets done in September.

Time for a little catch up...

I have not been keeping up with writing here, so I am going to try to rectify that.  I am still actively playing with thread and yarns.  I will have to admit that when it comes to projects, sometimes I have the attention span of a gnat.

I have not touched my big looms in weeks.  I go up to the loft for something and I give them a caress as I walk by but I have not been throwing shuttles.  Actually the 120cm Glimakra Standard has been nekked since I cut the first drawloom warp off of it, but I will come back to that.

I have been working on small looms, I have a lovely band on the Gilmore mini wave on complementary warp pickup that has been a joy to weave.  The grand plan is for that band to be straps on a bag made with drawloom fabric.

I also participated in Tour de Fleece 2019.  I finished spinning up a braid of Haunui NZ Halfbred/silk, plied it and started another braid of Cheviot.   I primarily buy my fiber from an indy dyer that I found on Ravelry.   Allons-y-fiber arts has such spectacular colored braids and the fiber prep is just top-notch.  It just flows out of my fingers as I spin, there are not mats or neps, just beautifully prepared and dyed fiber.  Here is what is on the Lendrum right now:  the color called Autumn on Cheviot

I am spinning it as a 3-ply and hoping that it doesn't get all muddy because of my inexperience in spinning.  I am hoping to get a pair of shorty socks and a pair of fingerless gloves from it.

A few weeks ago I had gone antiquing with a friend and we came across a bucket full of Paternayan tapestry yarn,  so I grabbed quite a few skeins and pulled out the Hokett tapestry loom.   I am experimenting with Wedge-weave which really caught my eye when I went to Convergence a number of years ago.  The plans are for a series of small tapestries to hang on the wall outside of the staircase going up to the loft.  It is a large, plain looking space and the tapestries would give it some interest.  These are the yarns that are being used:

There is a good selection to play with and it weaves fairly quickly being that it is on the little Hokett loom.

I have taken up hand knitting and crocheting as well.  I have done some knitting with my handspun yarns and it is a kick using them.  I do not care all that much to weave with wool, so knitting it is.  I am still working out what type of needles I am most comfortable using.  There is a sweater on circlular needles, a pair of socks on 6" dpn's, a vest on 9.75" dpn's using a knitting belt, and a pair of mittens on dpn's as well.  All of the needles are wood or bamboo, I know I prefer that over aluminum or any metals.

I am also crocheting a cross-body bag.  I was looking at a website that sells Omega Sinfonia cotton yarns and a couple of bag patterns caught my eye.  It is been years since I crocheted, so long I had to Google a couple of stitches😃

The sewing machines have not been being neglected either.  I found a fast & fun mug rug pattern that comes out great.  I made my mom a new set the other day:

All from fabrics in the stash which is always satisfying to do.

I know I will get back to the big looms on of these days, but I am having so much fun with all of the little projects in the living room:-)

The Ups and Down of Playing with Fiber

The last 10 days or so have been just a rollercoaster of success and fails while playing with yarn and fiber.

First of all, I decided to try pickup on the mini Wave.  I took a pattern from Around the Baltic Sea, Notebook #4, Lithuania 2 by Hilegund Hergenhan.  I have a number of her bandweaving pattern books and they are a delight.  I can so appreciated all of the time and effort she put into these publications and find them to be a real treasure trove of Baltic band designs.

So I broke out my graph paper and colored pencils and modified one of the designs.  I found the Singer 301 cardtable a great place to sit and design:-)

I wound the warp and dressed the loom and tried to weave.  There were little warning bells🔔 going off in the back of my mind as I threaded, but I ignored it.  I start to weave and realize that I did not wind enough background threads - grrrrr!  Another warp trashed.  I recalculated how many ends were needed, wound, dressed, and started weaving.  Great, the pattern threads are not showing up as I would like.  In disgust, I have set the loom aside.  I need to decide to continue weaving as pickup, or just weave it off as plain weave.

Next problem, I pulled some 2/9 wools in blues that I have had for years to weave a wool pad for my ironing board.  I have read in various places how a wool pad really helps when steam pressing and people buy wool blankets at thrift stores and cut to fit.  I figured I have wool, so weave one.

This was an opportunity to use the triangle pulleys on the 110cm Glimakra.   I have been wanting to play with them and I have been so enamored with twills lately that it was a perfect time to weave a 3-shaft twill.  It went really well, weaving with the loom set up as counterbalance was great!  Good sheds and easy treadling. The shaft bars looked cattywampus, but everything went well.

 Well it went well until I cut the fabric from the loom and laid it out on my ironing board.  Duh!  I forgot to include loom waste when I wound the warp.  What is that all about?  I have been weaving over 15 years and I forget loom waste!?!  Now I will have to piece it after full it -geez!

Yep, that fabric is too short.

Now for the straw that almost broke my back.  I am participating in Tour de Fleece with team Warped Weaver's and years ago I wove spinning lap towel.  I decided to

weave one as a prize for our team.  Again, wound the warp, wove the towel, sewed it all up and it is some of the worst weaving I have done in years. I cannot believe how bad it looks.  Terrible selvages, obvious tension issues, it looks like a 3 year old wove it. So, back to winding, dressing, and weaving - again!  When I put myself on a yarn moratorium it was not my plan to trash so many warps as a way of reducing my stash.

Now, the actual spinning is going great!  I am spinning a number of bumps of mixed fibers.  All of the balls are a mix of wool, angora, alpaca,  and llama in natural colors that I had bought years ago to try lockerhooking but never did that.  I have been using the bumps to teach myself to spin.

I spun up 2 bumps that were a combo of greys and browns and finished plying them this morning.  I have a full jumbo bobbin of 2-ply that I have to skein.

Up to this point, I had only plied handspun a couple of times before.  Last night when I started to ply, I was just using the Lendrum lazy kate and did not care for how it was going just having one yarn guide.  I left the bobbins on the kate and threaded each single through a yarn guide on my winding stand and it really worked well for me.

It looks like I am doing better making yarn than using yarn😃

Tonight I totally trashed the warp on the mini Wave.  I tried to outsmart myself and that never works.  I had a 2 ends dangling that were missed while winding the warp and I thought I could just wind all the warp forward, attach the 2 missed ends, and wind it back on.  Very wrong!  The tension and length of warp ends is all messed up.  I am afraid this one is for the trash can.

I set that mess aside, and went back to weaving of the floor inkle loom.  This one is not giving me any grief so far.

This is a band of dark and lights of each of the colors I have been using.  I really love this Bockens 16/2 linen.