How The West Was Spun

Something Old(ish), Something New

Long-time readers may recall I wove a little cotton baby blanket a while back (something old-ish).

It's a simple pattern of stripes of naturally colored cottons (in a sage green and khaki) against a bed of creamy white.  VERY soft and cuddly. 

It's been sitting in one of my "finished projects" plastic bins - done all but the hemming and a final wash and dry (machine washable!!).  Last week, however, I had a very good opportunity to pull it out and get it finished-finished.

Introducing "something new" - born last Saturday, the 6th, and already at home and doing well with his mum, dad and big brother, our new nephew, Charlie.

Ain't he a cutie?  We feel sure nephew Will has already told Charlie everything there is know about horses.  He is the expert, after all, being best boyfriend to Hap, the wonder horse.

All for now......

HH FO for April

This is an early post for my April Holiday Headstart FO - and yes, it counts, since it's almost April already.

Da, if you are here reading either A) go away or B) do like you usually do and pretend to be surprised when this arrives at your house for Xmas, alrighty?

We were invited over to Pam and John's for dinner last week, so, since I had been incredibly unsuccessful at remembering to borrow their iron, I just took the table runner over to their house and got it steamed and the edges pressed under after dinner. The wool Harrisville yarns puffed up just a little bit and sort of pulled everything nicely together.

Here it is reclining on our table, an old cherry drop-leaf that has been around the block a time or two:

And a closer-up shot, showing the obverse and reverse of the pattern, for those with inquiring minds (who will want to know, I am sure!).

I am quite pleased with how this turned out, as it was my first foray into overshot, and the first time I used these thicker Harrisville wool yarns.  They all went nicely and docilely onto the loom and it was easy to get the tension right and keep it even without too much argueing.  This should fit very well into my parents' front room, on their serving buffet, for dinner parties and such.

All for now......

A Semi-FO..... Sorta

Just a brief almost-mid-week check in.  This week, I did get the overshot runner cut off the loom and washed and dried.  It looks great, but a bit sloppy, as I have not yet finished the ends, so there are loose threads dangling from it. 

Can you believe that I do not own an iron?  Nope, I don't, and I want to steam the wool a bit, and turn the edges under before I give you the "finished" version.  I have tried twice this week to remember to run over to Pam's house and borrow her iron (my mother was/is horrified A) that I don't own an iron and B) that I have a spare key to Pam's house for the purpose of borrowing an iron - pathetic, eh?).  However, I am getting more forgetful by the minute, and have forgotten twice to get said iron.

You'll have to wait and come back for the glam shots.

In other news, Digger's toes won honorable mention over at JenLa's blog contest.  He's not being told of the honor.  The horse has too high a sense of self-esteem as it stands right now anyway. He can just live in ignorant bliss.

And finally, D and I are booked into 3 fiber festivals this year, which we are gearing up for, trying to squirrel product away in storage bins.  He's almost got his spindle design to a point that he's happy with those, so we'll definitely have those in person at the festivals, as well as in the store.  We'll be vending at:

• Snake Fiber Fiber Festival in Idaho Falls, Idaho in May
• Big Sky Fiber Festival in Hamilton, Montana in June
• Great Basin Fiber Arts Fair right here in SLC.

If you are in the area, please plan on stopping by to say Howdy!

All for now....

Weaving Things

I switched my schedule at work around a little bit, so I'm now working what is essentially second shift on Mondays.  It's actually kind of nice, although I'm much more of a morning person. I get up, do barn chores, and then have designated an hour of nothing but "me time" to weave. 

I have only about half a repeat to finish up on the overshot runner I've been working on for a while.  I think I'll likely be able to have that off the loom in another week or so with no problem.

I had been waiting on the supplies (backordered) for the blanket I wanted to weave for my cousin's wedding.  I'm not sure exactly what colors he and his fiancee' have picked for their house, so I went with neutral colors, figuring they'd blend into most any decor. Anyhoo, the yarn finally arrived last week.

It's a mixture of a wool boucle in off-white, plus Harrisville wool in 2 grays, a "cream" (which is sort of light camel color), a yummy tweedy brown, and black.  The pattern is a simple windowpane check - the boucle outlines the square blocks of color. 

This will be on the project list for end of March and into April.  I think I can make the mid-June deadline for this without a problem, since it will be a fast weave with the larger yarns.

I also got some more colorways up in The Shop this morning.  I'm working on a palette of Utah colors for the sock kit that will be introduced next week for preorders.  I think I've gotten the Sagebrush colorway set, and possibly the Red Rock, but I'm still working on River, so that'll be my task over the next couple of days.

All for now.....

Weaving Overshot

Subtitled "Or possibly More Than You Care to Know About Weaving Overshot".  I claim to be no expert, but for anyone interested, bear with me through this post, and you'll know about as much as I do now (which is just the tip of the iceberg).

Overshot is comprised of two different thread weights.  One is lightweight, is used for the warp (the threads that you start with on the loom), plus half of the weft (the threads you pass back and forth through the warp on the loom) and forms the structure that holds the cloth together.  The structure is comprised of what you'd probably think of as the simplest of weaving structures - one thread up, one thread down, repeat to end. The second thread used for this type of weave is heavier, proportionately, to the ground thread, and it is what forms the pattern.  Because you have a nice, solid, interlocked weave structure, you can use this heavier thread to do long floats (think carrying a color across the back of a Fair Isle knit and you've got the main concept here).

To produce this, you alternate the 2 threads back and forth across the warp threads.  So - for weft pass #1, I would use my lightweight yarn and do a simple one thread up, one thread down that looks like this:

On the next pass, I would use the heavier thread and only lift certain strings in the warp up, so the heavier thread floats across some, and goes under some, according to the pattern.  Like so:

Alternating the lightweight (always in the one up/one down threading pattern) and the heavier-weight threads (according to the floats indicated by the weaving draft), you eventually wind up with a structure where the two are interlocked, which looks something like:

See how the white threads are encapsulating and sort of "hugging" the thicker blue threads into place?  That's the basis of overshot.

This pattern is reversed on the opposite side, where what are the little squares of blue wool on the right-side picture, above, now are seen as the longer floats on the "wrong"-side.

I'm making a lot of progress on this.  I have 65 inches total to weave, and I'm just under the 30-inch mark. 

For those of you keeping score (and who have slogged this far in this post), I found the AWOL bobbins this weekend.  Diggs and I had a chat about them while he was having dinner the other night, and he suggested I look in the least likely place I would think to put them. I found them lying in plain view (albeit still in the plastic bag from the Three Wishes shop) on top of the small end table in the guest bedroom.  I have no recollection of them having been put there, but whatever - they were lost and now are found.

All for now.....

It's not easy being blonde

I swear, sometimes I am not sure whether to chalk it up to having a senior moment or just the nature of my hair color.  When Diggs and I ride trails, I always make sure he looks at the map before we leave, as both of us simply cannot be blonde at the same time, and since I have more blonde moments than he does, I leave him in charge of the directions to get us home. 

I wish I had thought to show him my package of bobbins for my large shuttle, because I cannot find the dayum things now.  I know they were in my woven basket when we left the shop on Saturday, but they aren't in my car or in the basket, or anyplace I have been able to think of to look yet.  Piffle.

Despite that setback, I got my loom warped for another Holiday Headstart project and decided to forge on ahead with the older shuttle I've got, which isn't half as nice, but is still quite serviceable. 

I haven't worked with a wool warp before.  It was a bit sticky to get threaded and beamed, but I definitely like how quickly this project is progressing.  I'm used to working with 470 threads or more for cotton towels, and this runner only has 275 ends to deal with.  I expect to make some good progress on that when I am off on Friday.

I have also started my Snowflake Eyelet Sock from the 2007 club I joined.  I absolutely love this merino/angora yarn and the colors are very soft and subtle.

I haven't been happy with one portion of the pattern in the Schaeffer Anne socks I had started.  After letting those percolate for a few days, I think I've decided to frog back to the ribbing and change the twisted pattern to an actual cable.  I'm still waffling a bit on which of 2 cable patterns to use, so that concept may ferment for a bit longer. 

All for now.......

Some Further HH Projects

I used some Xmas gifts to order the yarns I needed for my planned weaving projects for the Holiday Headstart sheebang.  Those came today and I'm actually winding the wool warp this afternoon.

Two weights of Harrisville yarns:  White wool for the warp and tabby weft, and a slightly heavier "Wedgewood blue" wool for the pattern weft, for a runner my mum requested.  I've picked a traditional overshot pattern "Trailing Vine" for this one.

Five colors of 8/2 cotton for the Ms and Os towels out of Handwoven magazine Jan/Feb 2006.  The colors are a little more "southwest" than the primaries they look to be in this picture.  The "red" is actually a burnt orange/red-rock country red and the "blues" are actually steel grays. 

I also had a wee bit of extra time on the spinning wheel this weekend, and I spun up 1-ounce sample of the "Saturn" colorway roving I got back from the mill.  This little sample was either at the very beginning or very end of the run, because it has a lot more blue/purple in it than the rest of the batches.  I just straight-plyed this into a 2-ply, but I think I might spin up another ounce or so, and chain ply it to see how that looks.  I suspect I'll like it better, but I won't make a final decision until I knit up swatches and mull those over for a bit.

All for now.....

Finished Towels

I am woefully behind on Xmas things this year.  I absolutely need to get boxes in the mail for the east coast in the next 5 days.  With that in mind, I sat at the loom and finished up the final towel I am weaving as a present for my MIL.  She has a wonderful kitchen in her house in South Carolina - the wallpaper is a navy blue and white stripe, and the walls are navy blue, but because the room is bright and sunny (and has lots of light with water reflecting off the marsh outside their back deck), it is not a dark room at all.

I don't think she reads my blog regularly (if at all), but Pam, if you are here - look away.

These are the tesselating star towels from a past Handwoven issue, done in navy blue and white cotton.  I have a set of four for her, and they are very soft and thirsty, having had a bath and a dry on high heat to shrink the fibers a bit. I got them cut off the loom and hemmed them yesterday afternoon, so they are ready to roll.

We have the first of what seems like about 25 Xmas parties to attend tonight.  I, however, am unfortunately under the weather a bit - is it possible to catch something online, because I think I am hatching Cathy's flu from last week.  Blech.

All this hustle and bustle of the season has made Emma very tired.  She may have to have another nap with me this afternoon since she is obviously such a pro at it.

Have a great weekend everyone!

All for now.....

More Projects and Updates

Ok - so I've got a lot going on right now in the fiber world.  I have finished the front and back, and one sleeve on my Plain and Simple/Te Rosado sweater.  It's a very quick knit.  I need to get the final sleeve done and then this needs a good blocking to make the ribbed lace pattern open up.  No pictures on that as it looks .....well... basically the same as it did in my "Startitis" post. 

Remember how I also mentioned I got my loom warped?  I started and am about 5/6s of the way through saddle blanket #1 I have budgeted for this warp.  I loosely designed it after the saddle blanket Robert Duval's horse uses in the TNT movie Broken Trail.  (Anyone else watch that?  Great scenery in that one.)  Large forest green stripes broken with a band of wider white/narrower black stripes.

I finished spinning a 2-ounce skein of the lighter gray CVM roving I was working on.  It was definitely neppy, but the larger ones picked out pretty easily, and the smaller ones didn't seem to affect the overall yarn size.  It just wasn't as smooth as I like my yarn to be, but I suspect it will be just fine knit up.

Finally, we are off for a long weekend to the Pinedale/Bondurant area of Wyoming on Friday.  We are taking the horses and staying in a cabin on a ranch where we can either ride their 2000 or so acres (which we will probably do Friday afternoon), or trailer up into one of the many trails that lead into the Jim Bridger Wilderness area or the Gros Ventre mountain ranges (our plan for Saturday).  So, even though I am not an official Trek-Along member, I did start a very portable project out of Trekking sock yarn (color 109 for those of you keeping score) which Susan gifted me for my birthday last year.

These are the Retro Rib Socks from IK Winter 2004 issue.  I love the colors and they will be great to work on in the truck.

All for now......