kitty:back to weaving again

Last year was the xmas of Orenburg shawls somehow I was able to churn out 7 of them before Christmas. This year I really hope to weave something for friends. We will see though. Weaving is a lot harder on the back and it has really been bothering me lately. Cotton Place mats woven with a thick and thin cotton threads.

Warp: Lime 8/4 Cotton & Lime 20/2 Cotton Weft: Lime 20/2 Cotton

Thanks Kirsten.... My new buttons that I purchased from Assemblage arrived. Audrey thinks they are perfect new play toys. She still has a few for sale on her etsy page. They are really lovely, particularly the timber ones.

kitty: I see weaving in my future - happy dance

Check out what a really good friend found at a yard sale two weeks ago!! My very own little 18 inch weave space table loom. She knew that I had been really looking for a floor loom and lamenting about the lack of space in the house. While hunting for treasures at yard sales she found this Lily Loom for $1.00. It is in amazingly good shape. I Just need to find a tool to act as a replacement for the cranks. Other than that it is in great shape and I am ready to go. I AM SO EXCITED... (Ok... I have other pieces of looms in the basement, but they are in completely broken down and who knows what parts have been lost.) Lily Looms were made from 1920 - 1975. So I really have no idea how old the loom is. I am guessing the 70's given the condition. I am so excited. I have been studying my weaving books and planning on my first projects. I also need to build a warping board, but that doesn't sound like it will be to hard to accomplish. Maybe people will get hand woven christmas gifts this year.... Maybe....

kitty: weave weave weave

There have been a few other craft related projects going on other than sock mania. I have continued with my weaving and just took off another project today. MG had a great idea when we were on the phone earlier. She suggested that my newly finished weaving project would make a great tea towel and I think she is right. I just fixed myself a cup of tea in the office and tried it out. The two together made me really happy. Now I just need to finish the edges so it can be washed and doesn't un-ravel. This was part of the sample that I threaded from the workshop I took a couple of weeks ago. I just finished weaving up what was left on the loom. So there is not a lot of yardage. The class dealt with 2-sided designs where the front and the back are completely different. It was woven out of 5/2 cotton and on a direct tie up on a 4-harness loom. (3-4, 2-4, 1-2, 2-4)

kitty: weaving silliness - I am so excited and so worried

There's a loom in my house, Dear Liza, dear Liza There's a loom in my house. Dear Liza, there's a loom.

Then warp it, dear Cilla, Dear Cilla, dear Cilla Then warp it, dear Cilla Dear Cilla, Warp it.

With what shall I warp it, Dear Liza, dear Liza? With what shall I warp it, Dear Liza, with what?

With green and black 5/2 cotton, dear Cilla, Dear Cilla, dear Cilla With green and black 5/2 cotton, dear Cilla, Dear Cilla, with green and black 5/2 cotton.

But the cotton is too long, Dear Liza, dear Liza But the cotton is too long, Dear Liza, too long

Then stripe it, dear Cilla, Dear Cilla, dear Cilla Then stripe it, dear Cilla, Dear Cilla, stripe it.

How long will it take, Dear Liza, dear Liza? How long will it take Dear Liza, how long?

All night , dear Cilla, Dear Cilla, dear Cilla All night, dear Cilla, Dear cilla, all night.

and I loved every minute of it. In all seriousness now. There was a lovely Schacht loom in my house all night and it was wonderful. Unfortunately it was a loaner from the weaving teacher, so it doesn't get to stay. I am so sad now. It just left a few minutes ago, but I do get to visit it tomorrow. I went to weaving class this week and it ended up two spots were open in the weekends weavers guild workshop. "Double Faced Weaving" with Robin Spady. I ended up calling M to check to make sure he could cover my work and I hopped on the opportunity to take the class. I am feeling really overwhelmed since I am really just a newbie weaver. Hopefully it will all work out. Even though it turns out that my loom is warped wrong.. nothing like starting class knowing that your loom is wrong. Though not my fault, my weaving teacher read the instructions wrong when she taught me what to do. Oh well... Keeps a teacher on her toes. I hate being the trouble maker. Wish me luck during my first weaving workshop the next two days.

kitty: a happy crafty weekend

With work, there hasn't been a lot of crafting going on, but I did have an absolutley amazing crafty weekend. I took some real time off for myself, something I seldom have the luxury of doing it seems these days. First off, a little weaving update, not a lot to report.

The Specs: Pattern: Striped Table Runner Yarn: Vintage Dry Spun Linen. Hand Spun Japanese Hemp, and Tsumugi Silk Loom: Macomber - 4-harness The weaving is coming along painfully slow. Part of the problem is I only get to weave once a week, I have been absent as well as the teacher, and the other problem is that the headles on the loom unfortunately are cutting the dry spun linen so that my back is beginning to look like a torcher device of broken strings. So any small advances of the loom require resetting up all the spindles and the spools to regain tension. Even with very careful set up, the tension is also beginning to get off. So the back of the loom now has a group of knitting needles holding threads on top.

Doesn't that look like a scary photo? I stopped this past week because two more threads were loosening up and I didn't feel like finding something to take up the slack.

So now on to the fun stuff. One of the girls in the weaving class was sweet enough to come up with a fiber day for any one who wanted to come this past weekend. L brought her amazing fleeces from this past springs cutting. They were the absolute nicest fleeces I think I have ever seen. They were clean, not greasy, and some of the prettiest colours. Here were two of her boy’s fleeces. All it did was make me really wish I could go pet a sheep and thank them for their beautiful fiber. L is truly a good mother to her sheep. I ended up buying one of the fleeces from her that was an amazing brown and fawn colour. Her name was Cathy, after "Chatty Cathy," since she is the loud one in the flock. I will post more photos when I try my hand at breaking apart the folds and washing it this spring. I just need to find some netting and safety pins. I cannot wait. It is destined for a lace shawl.

While there I spent the afternoon spinning and talking with friends. I finished up a ball of roving that I had started over the holidays and when I got home I was brave enough to try my hand at spinning hopefully sock weight for Mia. She sent me this roving at Christmas, so hopefully I can manage to spin her some sock yarn as a gift. It always amazes me to see how multi-colour roving spins up. You can never tell, or at least I cannot tell yet. The above is from one of Spunky Eclectic blends. I also started a mitten on Sunday night, but that will have to wait until there is a match for its debut before felting. L was sweet enough to bring me yarn, needles, and a pattern since she knew I always wanted to learn to knit mittens. Now my end product does look pretty funny. Have a great crafty week!

kitty: Weaving eye candy

Weaving is coming along. Through many trials and tribulations, re threading the loom completely, and numerous threads breaking every time I turn around I am back on track. It is a little narrower than the piece I was weaving before. I really love the colour and the combination of the silk, hemp, and dry spun linen. So here is my little eye candy for the day. The plan is to still knit a table runner but I am begriming to doubt whether or not the linen will hold up long enough to finish the project. Re threading the threads has not be kind to there condition.

kitty: weave, weave, weave

I signed up to take another weaving class this quarter. I am absolutely loving the class. Though I have run into a lot of problems with the loom I am using. I look at it this way, I am certainly learning a lot with people there who can help me vs. at home where I would just be crying. Lesson one that I learned the hard way, was make sure you wrap your back bar with heavy cardboard so that the tension isn't messed up by the strings that hold the bar to your threads. Or you will get to a point where you are unwinding and you loose all tension on your threads. Nothing like starting over mid project.

I ended up having to take off my first yard of fabric off the loom. Yes there are lots of imperfections and problems, but I love it. Dry Spun Linen with Tsumugi Silk. I have enough of the linen to do probably another 3 yards which is the plan. Lets hope the next yards don't have the tension problems I am running into with the first yard.

The magic of that first row for any new craft. My first couple of rows ever weaving with scrap yarns to get the hang of it.

kitty: weave, weave, weave

In an ideal world, there would be: Time to Weave Time to Spin Time to Knit Time to Dye Time to learn Time to travel the world to explore new crafts ...... The harsh reality is there are never enough hours in the day to explore every dream one has. Though I am certainly glad that I have started to weave. I have definitely deiced that there is a loom in my future. I am not sure I am ready to invest in a new one, but my weaving teacher is keeping the eyes out for me for a good used one. There is something magical about the fact that by just setting at a loom you can make fabric. I don't think anyone who weaves will ever look at a bolt of fabric the same way. To see groups of strings being lifted and dropped and a piece of cloth is being born before your eyes. Ahhhhh..Fabric..... weave, weave, weave...

Not the most exciting weave structure in the world. Just a simple plain weave that has twill woven stripes. I wanted to start with something really simple so I could really concentrate on learning the fundamentals, but using amazing fibers. Two more photo links for you: Click Here - Click Here Updated: As Mia pointed out, M is getting me a loom For Christmas. It was going to be a surprise, but I kind of ended up finding out about it. :) So there definitely will be a loom in my future, I just have to be patient. Unless I can find room for 45"*37" in my office.

kitty: oh no.......

So it is true, another knit/spinning blogger has bit the bullet and started weaving. For the last 2 weeks I have been carefully setting up the threading of my loom for my first project. So the picture up above really isn't much to look at. I just need to finish the other half of the beater and I am ready to start. All my headles are strung. I am using an old dry spun Irish Linen that from what the teacher guesses was probably from the 40's or 50's. The studio that I am studding at has a quiet old candy room where there is yarn on spools dating back until the 30's. As you can imagine the room is quiet magical, but quiet dirty and dusty as well. I am just amazed that the facility has had a rebirth the last two years. Before that it had just sat dormant for many years. For the weft, I am really thinking about using some of the Habu silk that I have in my collection. I have a brown and a pumpkin orange. I really haven't decided on the weave structure, but I have been reading a lot about the design philosophy of Anni Albers. There is something really magical about her and her husband's work. "A longing for excitement can be satisfied without external means, within oneself; for creating is the most intense excitement one can come to know." -Anni Albers What is amazing is how many of her designs we really take for granite as part of our mainstream textile designs. She taught at Bauhaus for many years and then moved to the United States and lectured at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. “the thread should speak for itself, that somehow the hand of the artist, the hand of the craftsperson, the hand of the weaver wasn’t going to interfere with how the thread wanted to be seen,” - Matilda McQuaid, a Cooper-Hewitt curator for the Anni Albers works. I have been finding a lot of resources about her weaving and textile designs. Here are a few: Analysis of Anni Albers 3-ply Tapestry A diagram for one of her tapestry Ancient Writing at the Smithsonian American Art Museum - The piece reminds one of a rosetta stone of an unknown languagee. On Weaving (Dover Craft Books) by Anni Albers Publisher Information: Dover Publications 2003 (My nighttime reading as of late)       Anni Albers by Anni Albers, Nicholas Fox Weber, Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; New Ed edition (July 2003) (My nighttime reading as of late) Anni Albers and Ancient American Textiles: From Bauhaus to Black Mountain by Virginia Gardner Troy Publisher: Ashgate Publishing (August 1, 2002) (trying to get inter-library loan)       Anni Albers by Nicholas Weber, Nicholas Fox Weber (Editor), Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi (Editor) Cover Image Pub. Date: October 1999 (trying to get inter-library loan) Woven and Graphic Art of Anni Albers: Essays by Nicholas Fox Weber, Mary Jane Jacob, and Richard S. Field by Nicholas Fox Weber Pub. Date: May 1985 (trying to get inter-library loan)   I can only imagine how magical it would have been to take a class with her in NC. I really want to do one of her simple 4 harness designs, we will see if I can do it. Maybe it is only a newbies dream, but we will see. I could really fall in love with weaving I fear. I do have a couple of looms in the basement so that doesn't help at all with the looming fear.