Weave, Spin, Dye - Oh My

Baby Sweater Done

2011-12-13T18:39:00.000-08:00

Just finished baby sweater for a lady faculty member at work. It's made from worsted weight superwash from a free pattern from Ravelry called the Ribbed Baby Jacket. I worked like a banshee for the last few days and got finished last night at 8:30 (Dec 12, 2011).

2011-12-04T06:43:00.001-08:00

I'm finally getting around to posting pictures of some things. One is some jewelry I bought at a holiday fair yesterday. Now normally, I'm not really interested in the flatware jewelry or items that people sell. But these were so artfully done, I couldn't resist. And the bracelet is curved and fits around my wrist perfectly and will not get in the way while I'm typing. I loved the way the handle designs meet in the middle with a pretty bead. I also like the fact that they are turn of the century flatware and have the dates and the name of the pattern on the back. Nice details.

I also finished the February Lady sweater by E. Zimmerman (at least the baby sweater was hers, then someone modified it to fit big people (adults that is). I had purchased some pretty wooden heart buttons for it and attached two of them and then realized that I had lost one of the buttons around the house. So I took them off and put on some more buttons that I had bought at Yarn Dogs in Los Gatos. I like them but are not what I originally envisioned. I'm sure the heart button will turn up again and hopefully I won't lose the other two before I find the third.

Lastly I present to you the finished iteration of the Daryl jacket. I added some finishing details because it looked too plain as it was. I added some banding around the sleeves, on the front pockets and in back (to look like a belt). I then added some pretty contrasting buttons that I had bought at Yarn Dogs in Los Gatos. If the jacket still fits later, I may put in a lining. But at this juncture it's done. I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Has it really been that long?

2011-11-23T07:20:00.001-08:00

Apparently it has been almost three months since I've posted. Most likely the reason is frogged knitting and no weaving. I did just finish Elizabeth Zimmerman's February Lady sweater. I made it in Cascade 220, purple heather colorway. I can't tell you how pleased I am with the outcome. I have made multiple sweaters throughout the years and for one reason or another I most always hate them. Usually for the reason of them being ill fitting - too big mostly. I think the reason is lack of doing proper stitch gauge (with finishing and blocking). I always think that my gauge is spot on with the patterns but over the years my gauge has loosened quite a lot. Typically now to get a typical 5 stitches per inch, I'm having to go down to a size 6 needed where I used to be able to use an 8. But I'm reverting (diverting?). So hence, I don't knit for myself very much. But this swear seems to have come out spot on for sizing. The pictures of it on people in Ravelry don't hold a candle to the way it looks and feels in person. It has beautiful color depth due to the heathery colors and it feels substantial.

A couple days ago I bought some grosgrain ribbon to put underneath the buttons to hold the button band down and to have something to anchor the 1" wooden heart buttons down. I used tiny little invisible stitches to anchor the pretty dark pink grosgrain ribbon down and today I'll sew on the buttons. I'll probably try to find little buttons, in the button box, to place on the grosgrain ribbon side, underneath each button, to anchor it even more. I'll post pictures on here, Ravelry & Flickr when I'm done.

Yesterday I went to 3 Beads and a Button store in Cupertino to pick up one button to match the 5 round horn buttons I already have. I ran into Jasmin and Gigi of the Knitmore Girls podcast. I was across the room from them but thought I recognized Gigi's voice and look up and there they were, in person. Jasmin is the one who told me a week or more ago that this lovely little store is going out of business. It's really a nice little store. It's always sad to see nice little mom and pop stores going out of business. Anyway, I took the opportunity to go over and say hello and tell them I was a fan of their show and we began a conversation that probably lasted a half hour. It was a lot of fun to talk to them, they are fun gals.

OK, just because I haven't been weaving or finishing lots of knitted objects, doesn't mean I haven't been busy. Earlier this year, I took the first of two classes that was supposed to prepare us to 1) weave fabric and then 2) weave it. So in April, I took a workshop (through Blacksheep Guild in Woodside), for yarn and pattern selection for the fabric for the jacket, with Sharon Alderman. Then in September, we took a workshop with Daryl Lancaster, to put one of her Daryl jackets together using the handwoven fabric. I could never figure out what yarn I wanted to use for the fabric so in the end, I just purchased some from JoAnn's fabric and craft store. I didn't learn nearly as much as I would have, if I had woven the fabric but I did learn stuff and turned out a light weight unconstructed jacket, with Hong Kong seams inside (in 3 days). Since then, I've put together two more jackets, one for my friend Vicki and one for myself. They both turned out great. I'll post pictures when I get a chance.

I've also been doing a lot of dyeing of fiber in the last 3 months on the back patio outside. I've done pounds and pounds of fiber. I don't think I'll buy any more fleeces until I can see some noticeable reduction in the stash of fiber I own. I haven't really been spinning much in the last 2 or 3 months since it's probably taken me that long to knit the February Lady sweater. It really surprised me how long it took to knit it since I'm always hearing about people popping things off the needles right and left on my podcasts. Sorry, digressing again. Anyway, I think this blog post is long enough so I'll sign off now. Have a lovely Thanksgiving everyone!

No News (is good news?)

2011-09-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but it's been lazy days here at Casa de Sharolene all summer. I haven't done any weaving and only a bit of knitting. I've been getting stuff together for a Daryl Lancaster jacket making class next weekend - no small task. Many small parts and some trips to the local fabric store. I decided not to make the fabric for the jacket because the muslin I made from her last one day class was a bit small. Granted I was 15 pounds heaver when I actually made the muslin than when the pattern was made for me almost a year earlier. (Digressing: I really don't know how I can go up that much weight in that short of a time, since I don't binge eat. I just eat a little too much food every day and don't weigh. But that has come to an end. I'm tired of the yo-yo dieting thing and am determined to weigh a few times a week for the rest of my life so that doesn't happen any more.) Anyway, I bought some light weight jacket fabric which I hope will work. It's a bit lighter than she wanted but I'm basically using it as a muslin so I don't care very much. The jacket style is not something I'll wear much anyway, it's more the experience of the class that I want rather than the finished product. Several people in the class have made fabric for the jacket and I'm sure that their products will be fantastic. I envy them their confidence.

Crochet Jewelry

2011-06-21T11:17:00.001-07:00

I created this necklass in a Blacksheep Study Guild workshop a couple of weeks ago. I just thought to blog it. I found a box that exactly matches the color of the necklass, how unusual is that? Thank you Patt Shelton for teaching it.

It's very easy to make. Just some simple single crochet. You prestring the beads onto 32 gauge wire and then single crochet them together. The hardest part of this is trying to figure out how to make a necklass symetrical. Of course, leave it to me. I'm the only one in the group who tried to do a symetrical necklass. And, of course, my long center beads, were not centered in the version I made in the workshop. I had to go home, cut the necklass apart to reclaim the beads and then rework it the next day. Didn't take too long to do, maybe an hour while watching TV. To finish it, you put on a couple of jump rings on each side, attaching them with a very small crimping bead and then attaching the finishing hardware, which you can see in the photo. Quite a fun project, which I might repeat this weekend at a retreat house I'm going to with some friends.

$86 Worth of Textile Tools

2011-05-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

Jim and I went to a SF State textile department sale on Sunday. Usually trying to get him into San Francisco is impossible. He really hates everything about San Francisco. But due to the fact that he had the week off and because it was textile related (and because I couldn't find anyone to go with me), he acquiesed. We got up there very efficiently, even finding parking in the closest possible free area they had. Amazing in itself given that there were graduations happening all weekend. We even got there about 20 minutes before the sale started. We had some good conversations with people waiting in line and I saw a couple of people from the Blacksheep guild as well. There was lots of stuff in this 20x40 foot room that looked like a lab room without the lab equipment. People were grabbing stuff so fast, you hardly had time to look at it. The largest things they had seemed to be spinning wheels. I think there were three of them at about $100 each. I got probably 10 old Handwoven magazines for $1.00 each, about 25 pounds of heavy weight chenille (at $2.00 a pound) and some tools: rope maker, some small shuttles, a warping paddle and about 20 cardboard spools for $1.00 each (not a bargain but I didn't have to pay for shipping). When I'm doing a big spinning job, I like to wind off the yarn onto these kind of spools so that I came compare colors from yarn that is still tensioned. If you try to put them into balls, there is no tension and the yarn relaxes. Lately I haven't been plying my yarn because I would rather wait for that process in case I want to weave with it single ply. Once I ply it, that's it and I have no more yarn structure creative control over it.

Do you know what the 2nd picture is of? It's a tamping tool for either tapestry weaving or cut pile. I'll be using it for cut pile.

Waffle Weave Towels

2011-04-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

We just finished some waffle weavetowels. They were quite a challenge to warp - primarily because we did front to back warping. Don't get me wrong, we have mostly just done F2B warping. It is always messy but we have always been able to straighten them out, although at times they look like such a mess you'd never be able to straighten them out. This one was so bad that we thought we'd have to cut out the messy section and retie back on, 650 threads. I don't know if we saved any time by straightening it out thread by thread but at least we saved the warp and didn't have to tie on back all those threads.

Well the warp is off the loom and I'm in the process of hemming and finishing six towels. One of them has problems where the shafts weren't lifting correctly on the dobby loom, an issue we've had problems with since we bought the loom three years ago. We never seem to weave enough on it to work out the bugs. I will need to do some hand weaving to catch some threads so the towel is usable, at least by us.

Since these are waffle weave towels, there was considerable shrinking. The measurements were/are:

On Loom: 27"

Off Loom: 24" x 36"

After finishing: 18-12" x 26"

Handspun Silk & Camel

2010-09-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

At CNCH in April, I bought some wonderful fiber that I've been slowly spinning. To savor the feel of it and dream of while I'll do with it. I still don't have a project in mind because I just love the process of spinning. This yarn is a 3 ply silk and baby camel with a fine thread of shiny thread to hold it together and give a bit more shine. I think I must have over 500 yards. It was the most expensive fiber I ever bought at $12 an ounce.

Knitted Jewelry?

2010-09-12T18:39:00.001-07:00

OK. I never would have imagined that one could knit attractive jewelry. I took a little 2 hour workshop a few weeks ago in the summer schedule of the Blacksheep Guild offshoot called Beginning Weaver's Group. In the summer, the weavers delve into different things than they normally would get into. I had no idea this necklace would come out so pretty. I wore it to the dentist's office the other day and got lots of comments from the ladies in the office about it. Even the dentist asked some questions about how I made it.

Crazy Daze Around the Household

2010-05-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

It has been crazy around the household in recent weeks. Even more than usual. Two weeks ago, Jim and I wound up making an unexpected quick trip to Brookings, Oregon to pick up an 8-shaft Baby Wolf loom. It is in pristine condition and was relatively cheap. I have been wanting to have a smallish loom to attach my Schacht Commby unit to. The Commby unit lifts all 8-shafts and works great on it. It seems that a lot of my weaving can be done on a smaller loom. The Commby has a few problems because it only works on Windows 98 with an old version of Weave It. It also can't seem to see our server at home. It will reach the outside though so we were able to attach a .wif file to hotmail and retrieve it on the computer. I think this old Toshiba is pre-usb ports so you can't stick a thumb drive in it.

I also sold the Mighty Wolf this weekend. That sale was unexpected as well. I didn't even have to advertise to get rid of it. I had put an ad at KBB-Spin saying if anyone knew anyone who was selling an 8-shaft Baby Wolf to let me know and some lady sent me an email saying that if anyone contacted me saying they had a Mighty Wolf, she was looking for one. So when I decided I would sell it, I emailed her back and she picked it up this weekend. A total lark, that one.

This last weekend was filled with guild activities. Saturday was spent at the History Park in San Jose at the Serendipity Spinners meeting. Spinning outside under an ancient oak tree. It can't get much better than that.

Sunday was spent with my Fiber Artisans group. We had a field trip to Mt. Hamilton to visit Lotus and Keith. Keith is a telescope technician and Lotus give tours and sets up the summer concert programs at Lick Observatory. I have had some really fun and interesting tours of the telescopes with them over the last few years. We ate lunch out on the deck that overlooks the back mountains (away from San Jose - on the other side). It was a lovely day and we all worked on w.i.p.'s. I did some spindle spinning - some beautiful camel and tussah silk I bought at CNCH, Sandy was putting a lining into a leather jacket and Lotus, Frank and Phyllis did Sprang. Lunches were courtesy of Lee's Sandwiches, Sandy brought brownies and Lotus made a lemon pie that was very reminescent of lemon bars and quite yummy. We took our time driving back down the hill in the afternoon and stopped to enjoy and pick some wild flowers on the way down. I picked up a little hitch hiker tick that Phyllis picked off me and threw out the window. Upon getting home, I got a through once over to make sure there weren't any other hitch hikers coming along on my clothing or skin. I was pest free thank goodness.

Here are a couple pictures of some of the beautiful wild flowers that we picked. The colors were much more vibrant in their natural setting under the sun. But this will give you an idea.

Amazing Collapse Weave Workshop with Ann Field

2010-04-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

Kimberly and I were in an amazing workshop with Ann Field the last couple of days. It was so cool! We had the looms prewarped so we were ready to start weaving right away. Collapse weave is so neat because when you cut your weaving off the loom and put it in warm water, it transforms into this amazing cloth. So fun!

And this is what it looks like after it's cut off the loom and swished into warm soapy water.

Words cannot describe the texture or illusive transparency that can be acquired with this technique. The long and the short of it is that the loom is warped with alternating sizes of wool across the warp. Both yarns are 100% wool but one is so fine that it looks like thread and the other looks to be about lace weight wool. They are put into the reed differently. The larger wool is put into the reed 2 per dent and the finer one is put into the reed as 1,1,2. The rest is standard warping. The rest of the magic is accomplished in the weft with really fine lycra and alternating bands of other kinds of larger yarns with and without lycra in them.

I know I promised pictures but . . .

2010-04-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

life just got in the way this weekend. I had the grand kids over on Thursday and Friday, I had them until 11:00am on Saturday, then a spinning guild meeting from 11:30 - 1:30, then home to warp the loom for a collapse weave 2 day workshop with Ann Fields tomorrow in Palo Alto. I warped the loom from about 2:00pm, until the evening. It shouldn't have taken that long but she wanted us to do back to front warping which we have only done maybe once. So we were having to read how to do it from reference material and it was slow going. But we did get the warp on with the threads hanging loose on the front of the loom on Saturday night by about 7:00 or 8:00pm. Yesterday morning (Sunday) I went out early to get some errands done. But it was a crazy beautiful day outside and people were out in droves. It was hard to get around, there were so many people on the road and in Orchard Supply Hardware. So the afternoon yesterday was spent threading the heddles and lastly sleying the reed and tieing on. Which is now finished except for checking and spreading the warp - which I will do tonight. I'll also get all the little gadgets together that Ann requests us to bring which includes 3 shuttles. I did find a threading error last night late but it was very near the end of the warp so it was fairly painless to correct (no repair heddles needed - yay!). Talk soon . . .

CNCH - 2010

2010-04-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

We had a rip roaring good time at CNCH last weekend. It was three days of classes, spinning corral, market, Saturday night dinner and lots of fun. Friday, I took a class from Daryl Lancaster called "Warp Fast". It seemed to be mostly about warping with a paddle which Daryl demonstrated how to do. She had a very comprehensive slide show that showed all the tools that she didn't have room to bring in her luggage including the AVL warping wheel. I thought I'd be able to go home early that night and spend some time with my honey but I found out that the fashion show was Friday night. So I hung around and went to that. It was fabulous. They all did an amazing job.

Saturday I had a class all day with Daryl Lancaster called "Custom Fit & Fabulous". It was a class on how to make a custom fitted jacket pattern. As usual, Daryl was fabulous, she's a wonderful teacher and so much fun! I squeezed in a few minutes to go to the market on lunch break and bought some yarn. Saturday night was the big dinner, presentations and speeches. It lasted until about 9:30pm. Syne Mitchell was our keynote speaker and she did a fabulous job. Her talk was called "Weaving the Web". She talked about how the web has helped spread the word of weaving to many weavers that might not have known about it. The web also helps us weavers stay connected with each other to find out what is going on out in the weaving world. It's also a great place to pick up techniques , used weaving equipment and yarns for weaving.

Sunday was a half day of classes from 8:30-11:30. I took a class from Robyn Spady called "Weaving TNT". It was 3 hours of hints and weaving tricks. There were some amazingly helpful hints & tricks here. The only bad thing (if there is one) is that there were no photos or drawings of the things she talks about. The reason, I believe, is because she wants to sell a monograph booklet at the end of the year with photos of these things. It would have been really good if she had that booklet available for the class to buy so that we could write notes in the book and take it home right there.

So on Saturday night I was talking to one of my weaving buddies and heard that she was selling her Roberta electric spinning wheel for a song. I had been looking at them for a while and had been considering buying one and was a bit dismayed that I had missed this opportunity to pick one up. She said that she was using the proceeds from the Roberta to apply to an electric wheel that they were selling at the show called a Hansen electric wheel. It's only 4 pounds and is so light that you can put it into your suitcase when travelling. So, since I got a fairly hefty tax refund I wasn't expecting, I used part of it to buy the wheel. I also got a Woolee Winder on it, extra bobbins & a portable battery. It spins like a dream and I'm so happy I bought it.

I also bought a boat load of yarn from this guy who is at all the shows. He sells yarn for wholesale pricing. I bought 2 large bags of yarn. I'll post photos of all this booty later when I have time to take picture of it.

Columbia River Drive

2010-04-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

These two photos were taken from the car as we were whizzing by. I'm surprised they came out as good as they did. I have no idea what mountain this was. It was very cold outside though.

These photos were taken after Hood River and before Washougal. Brrrrrrrrr!

Earth Boxes

2010-04-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

We don't have much viable land to plant a garden in the back yard. We have a 9' triangle in one corner that is the primary growing area. However, tomatoes don't like to be planted in the same space for more than a couple of years. This year, we came up with an alternative - earth boxes. They are a container growing system that comes with special fertilizer and a package of dolomite (calcium). It's supposed to help you grow amazing plants and vegetables. This is what they look like now:

We planted the corn as seeds the day before we left for Washington. They have grown about 3" in that one week - although we heard that the weather wasn't that great a lot of that time. This corn looks very close together but this is the recommended distance apart, that the manufacturer of the earth boxes recommends. The package says they should be spaced about a foot apart. I guess we'll find out which is best - won't we :o).

Last week of March 2010 in Washington State

2010-04-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

We went to see Jim's son and his family including our glorious grandchild Ella Jacqueline Wolf. What a love she is. She was 9 weeks old when we were there and was getting a personality. She was just starting to talk and smile.

While we were there, we took the opportunity to do 3 mill tours that we (I) had been wanting to do: The two Pendleton factories (1 in Pendleton OR and 1 in Waushougal, WA) and the Bob's Redmill Factory and Grain Store in Portland. People at work can't figure out why I'd want to go to these places :o). I guess they aren't weavers :o).

The Pendleton factory in Pendleton OR is the place where they make the indian blankets and it is also where they have the electronic jacquard looms. They look like normal large wide electronic looms but because they are jacquards, which means that each thread is controlled individually across hundreds of threads. They are extremely expensive looms and cost probably twice as much as a normal loom. They are absolutely amazing to watch. The shuttles go faster than the eye can see. The tour was only about 20 minutes long but was fun nonetheless.

The next day, as we were going back to Portland, as we were going right by there anyway, we stopped in Waushougal, WA at the big (primary) Pendleton factory. This factory has regular looms and makes plain weave, stripes and plaids. This place was huge. It looked like the size of a couple of football fields. We had a nice long hour tour and everything was explained in detail. They would not let me take pictures though - I suppose because of some proprietary designs that they were creating. It was really fun to watch the weavers. They actually do a lot of the work by hand still and it is very labor intensive.

The next day, the day we were leaving, we took the opportunity in Portland to go through the Bob's Redmill factory and store. That tour was lots of fun. They kept us outside of the food areas though, behind glass, presumably to keep things clean in there. Everyone who worked in those areas wore their hair in nets - whether it be the face or their heads for sanitation.

It was a great trip.

Rug off loom

2009-11-16T08:41:00.000-08:00

I finished a rug from Weaverscraft magazine this weekend. It's a rug made from strips of polyester fleece. The weft has areas where you pull up floats and then cut them every few inches. It's quite fiddley and I don't think I would weave anymore of these rugs. I was very thankful to be done with it this weekend. But I like the results. The rug is a present for a newborn's room.

This is the front side on the left and the backside on the right.

Mule Fleece

2009-10-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

Well, now I've figured this out. What I was at first spinning was not Scottish Mule fleece, it was white mohair. I think about 4 ozs. of white mohair got accidentally put into the Scottish Mule fleece pile. I wondered why it felt so much like mohair. When I finally did get to the mule fleece, it felt entirely different - much more like a soft corriedale than mohair. Not sure what I'll do with that bobbin of mohair. I'll probably ply it with something softer and just put it in the stash for now - labelling appropriately.

Here is a picture of the bath mats that I pulled off the loom a week ago. Notice the huge error in the back towel. We put this pattern into WeaveIt and didn't notice that the 2nd section of blues was not the appropriate length. I was going to give these as a set to someone but guess I'll just get some matching towels for the one that doesn't have a huge error. Sigh . . . The cotton bolls are finally starting to pop open. Only a couple of opened so far. They say that the bolls can stay on the plants until the first frost. That shouldn't be until January or so for us on the west coast.

These are some gloves that I've made for the grandchildren for christmas. I'm remaking the red pair because I didn't like the acrylic feel of them. I'm making them in some really yummy alpaca/polwarth that I had professionally processed. I've dyed the yarn a Jacquard scarlet color that is really beautiful. I think she will really love wearing them - so soft. It's a deeper red than the ones picture. Almost kind of heathery looking because they dyed a bit unevenly. It makes them that much prettier though.

These are some gloves that I've made for the grandchildren for christmas. I'm remaking the red pair because I didn't like the acrylic feel of them. I'm making them in some really yummy alpaca/polwarth that I had professionally processed. I've dyed the yarn a Jacquard scarlet color that is really beautiful. I think she will really love wearing them - so soft. It's a deeper red than the ones picture. Almost kind of heathery looking because they dyed a bit unevenly. It makes them that much prettier though.

Scottish Mule Fleece

2009-10-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

O.K. It occurred to me this morning when I was spinning this fleece that I know what it reminds me of - it feels and looks exactly like adult mohair. I don't know why it took me almost a whole bobbin to figure this out. It is very white, shiny and kind of slippery like mohair. It has a little bit of the coarseness of adult mohair. It would be wonderful as an add in blend to some softer fibers. It would add shine and a halo, just like mohair.

Bad bad girl

2009-10-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

Yes, it has been a while since I've blogged. It's not that I haven't been busy with crafty stuff, because I have. I just pulled off some cotton chenille bath mats off the Weavebird last weekend. I discovered that I made a grievous error on one of them and I'm a little disgusted with myself at the moment. I'll post pictures later.

I also dyed some lovely alpaca/polwarth professionally processed handspun. I dyed it a beautiful deep pink color for a new baby girl. I will knit up some extremely soft booties, hat and mittens with it. It is Jacquard dye from Dharma Trading and is called just 'pink'. I suspect that if you used the dye lightly, it would be a light pink but I wanted a deep color. I 3 plied it because they live in a rather harsh climate. Pictures later.

I'm knitting mittens for the U.K. grandkids and have finished one pair for an 8 year old boy in natural gray, one pair in baby blue for an 11 year old girl and I'm working on a pair for a five year old girl in red. This last pair is made from my handspun from the alpaca/polwarth. It is such a pleasure to knit with - feels like buttah in my hands. I could almost eat it, it feels so good.

I'm also continuing to spin the polwarth alpaca. Oh, I'm also spinning some Scottish mule fleece. I'm not sure where I got this lady's name - maybe on Ravelry. I was a bit dismayed at first because there was quite a bit of scurf in it (in layman's terms: dandruff). Ewwww! No one on Ravelry (or on the Yahoo Groups lists) had much help for me on how to get rid of it. I carded it a few times a much of it seemed to come out. However, the area around the carded was littered with loose flakes. Yuk. There was a Spin-Off Magazine article on Scottish Mule fleece in the mid-year magazine. It was an interesting article where the lady who reviewed it spun the fleece in at least 3 different ways, and knitted samples from each one to do a really good comparison on the final product. I just spun it kind of semi-worsted. It's rather hairy, probably because I didn't take care when carding it to make sure all the tips faced in the same direction. I also put the fleece into the carder sideways as Judith MacKenzie-McCuin recommends to get a nice woolen product. It's coming out very white and looks and feels a bit coarse and might be very good for socks if they aren't too hairy.

I also recently sent for some beautiful brown alpaca from two girls I met at the Dixon Lambtown fiber fair. My friend Phyllis Karsten was doing sheep dog trials but I couldn't wait for her turn. It was a bit hot with no shade, even in October in the full sun. Anyway, there was an alpaca show also there that day and a couple of young women had just started raising alpacas the year before. They had never sold any as yet. They sent me a packet in the mail with samples and I sent for one of the fleeces. It seems to be quite lovely stuff. It will need to be mixed with wool so that the resulting product will have some bounce. I don't think I have anything to mix with it at the moment that will go with the grown. I don't know what will happen if I mix white wool with the brown. I think I'll do a little experimenting this weekend.

The boles on my cotton plants are beginning to open. Two of the couple of dozen bolls are open. I'm quite unreasonably excited about that and go out there most days to see if any more have opened. October seems to be the month that they open, from what I've heard. If they don't open by the first frost, I'll put them in a food dehydrator to open them. But I hope it won't come to that.

That's it for now. I'll try to remember to take some pictures this weekend. Chow!

I got a new Prius with the Cash for Clunkers Program!

2009-08-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

I am so happy! I should say I'm still so happy. I've had the new car for about 3-4 weeks now and I'm still on cloud 9. I got a Prius V model in a pearl white color. It's so beautiful. There were a

couple of things I was a bit disappointed about though. 1) none of the dealerships in my area had either one of the two models with the latest technology. One was the one with the moonroof. The other one was the one with the High Technology package. The high technology package consisted of a lane assist feature where if you drifted out of your lane it would beep at you or if you got too close to another solid object it would beep at you. Each of those features were on a different model so you couldn't get both things on the same model. I was very surprised to learn that none of the dealerships thought these models would sell, so they didn't order any. There would have been a 2-3 month wait for one. I didn't have time. The cash for clunkers program had already run out of money once and I had a short window of time to get one. But after looking at three dealerships, I found a pearl white one in the highest level model they had. And it's a beauty with back-up camera, satellite radio, blue tooth hands free cell phone service and a lot more. Well this isn't an actual picture of MY car but it looks exactly like mine.

Mind The Gap!

2009-06-29T14:34:00.001-07:00

O.K. I thought of another weird U.K.ism. When you use the underground (or tube as they call it there), sometimes there is a space between the car and the platform. That space is called the 'gap' and there used to be signs everywhere saying 'Mind the Gap'. They had T-shirts for tourists too. I wish I had bought one at the time. There are much fewer 'Mind the Gap' signs now. I wonder if they fixed the gaps now? Curious. . .

More interesting things about England . . .

2009-06-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

Stop lights in the U.S. are green to 'go' but and a yellow to warn you it's going to go to red. In England the stop signs warn you when you are to go. So they are red, then yellow, then green. Is that not a little weird? Why do you need to be warned that the light is going to turn green.

If you drive into London, you get an automatic $14 pound traffic ticket. If you don't pay it within 24 or 48 hours, it doubles or triples. So a $14 pound ticket (which would be about $20 U.S.) could conceivably wind up being $40 or $80 if not paid efficiently.

They have these cool chip embedded credit cards in Europe now. When you pay for a purchase, the credit card goes into a special chip reading slot on the card reader where the owner of the card then puts in a pin number. No signature is required. This is so much safer than our system with signature required. No one can fake your signature and there would be much less credit card fraud. Why hasn't the U.S. adopted this very sensible system?

I know I thought of a couple more things but can't think of them right now. I'll get back with you later . . .

Ryland Sheep Breed - England

2009-06-18T04:44:00.000-07:00

For two weeks before I went to England, I tried with various emails to get in touch with a spinning guild near my daughter's house in England. I had no luck at all. It seemed that every time I got near, it turned into a dead end. Three days before I left America, I got an email back from a spinner who lived 8 miles away from Hyde Heath. Hallelujah! Her name is Beverley Thompson. And what a contact she was. She is an avid spinner and she took me to a guild meeting in Amersham, England. Very cool. The guild meeting had a speaker that day who had written a wonderful book called Creative Spinning by Alison Daykin (which I bought). The book talks about the creative spinning process and how you get where you want to go with your spinning. We have talked about this in our fiber guild meetings and this was a photo tutorial on how to access the creative spinning side of your brain.

Beverley also arranged for the two of us to have lunch at a guild member's house who is a fiber artist who was participating in their local open studios. She made a lovely lunch for us and gave us a tour of her studio. I was so impressed. What a nice lady. How many of us would go to that much trouble for someone they had never met from another country?

Beverley also put me in touch with a local farmer who raised Ryland and Black Welsh Mountain sheep. He was quite willing to allow me to buy a fleece from him although he had to go to some amount of trouble to do so. He had his fleeces all wrapped up to sell and had to break into the bundle to pull out the wool. What a nice man: Alec Moir. He gave us a tour of his farm and introduced us to the two sheep he had on premises. He had about 100 more head of sheep located on a remote piece of property nearby. So, I took the sheep back to my daughter's house and over the next few days, began to wash it. It was lots of fun. I gave most of the fleece to the spinning guild over there. The Ryland fleece is a bit coarse and I don't think I will have a use for it but it was a lot of fun cleaning it and giving it to the guild. He did give me some of the Black Welsh Mountain fleece as well but it was very short and seemed quite soft. I think it may have
already been felted as it felt quite solid. I should have tried to take some of it out and spin with it before cleaning it to see if it was felted. But when I washed and dried it, I could see that it was hopelessly felted. I, unfortunately, had to just toss it. Such a shame. I would loved to have brought back a sample of it.

Beverley also sent to my daughter's house a largish package of samples of spun wool on several cones from Jamieson & Smith and lots of bits of different kinds of top to play with. She also arranged for a store called Colourmart to send me samples of their yarns.

Back from England

2009-06-13T12:11:00.000-07:00

I have so much to share about England but not enough energy to share it all right now. The last full day in England, my daughter and I had tickets to see Wicked in London. When we got up on Wednesday morning, my daughter asked me if I knew there was a transit strike that started that morning. There hadn't been a transit strike in a long time but it had to be on a day when we needed to get to London. The underground (tube) is the least expensive way to get into London. If you drive your car into London, there is a $15 penalty which quadruples if you don't pay it within 48 hours, so driving into London really isn't an option. But there are so many public transit options that we were bound and determined to get into London. Here's how we did it: we took a cab to the local train station and took a regular train into London. We then found that not all lines of the underground were striking so we found one that got us within a mile or so we where we want to go, then we took another cab. Not too bad. When we left to go back home, the lines we needed to get home were open so we took 3 trains but got within 5 miles of home and then took another cab to get to the house. whew.

Wicked was fabulous! I loved it. One little hitch was we got tickets in row E but there were two row E's. One row E in the nosebleed section in the balcony and a row in in orchestra. Our's was in the nosebleed E. So we went to the box office and asked if we could upgrade our tickets. Long story short, they allowed us to buy cheap tickets in row H orchestra sheets for cheap. cool! We were in the 8th row center! The best theater tickets I've ever had.

What I love about England . . .

2009-06-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

I'm on holiday in England right now and it occured to me to write about the things that I find facinating here that I don't find at home in California:

1. Aga. An aga is this great big heavy kitchen stove. The right side of it stays hot all the time. Not the outside part of the doors or the top of the stove but the two grills on top and 3 ovens. Anytime you want to cook something, you really don't need anything but the aga. But for those periods that are too warm seasonally, the aga gets turned off and the family uses the left side which is a traditional stove top and two independently controlled ovens. The aga tends to keep the entire lower floor warm because it constantly emits heat. Each one of the aga ovens on the right side has a specific heat range from not very hot, to med hot, to very hot. Hotest on the top right. The two round grills on the top right are heat sources to be used like burners. The left one is super hot and the right one is medium hot.

2. Tube Station Escalators. These steep escalators are amazing to ride on. They are like a very steep, moving tunnel. The signs on the right side say to stand on the right if not moving. That leaves the left side for people in a hurry who want to pass.

3. Narrow door ways. I've seen this phenomenen in many places around Europe. The first place I saw it was in Amsterdam. Someone told us in Amsterdam that hundreds of years ago, when the buildings were built, the government taxed according to how large the doorways were. So people built houses with extremely small doors. I saw one of these doors in London and took a photo of it. This door looks to be about 18" wide (maybe 24" but not more). Keep in mind that this is not common.

4. Medievel castles. It's amazing to walk into a building that is over 1000 years old. Many are even older.

5. Beautiful gardens. The English take exceptional pride in their gardens. And they have absolutely lovely gardens. But let's be fair here. It rains ALOT and it's incredibly green here, everywhere you look. I could even be a good gardener here. I live in a semi-desert area which is in a drought right now. I have to go out and hand water every day in the summer to keep the plants alive.

6. Georgeous train stations. Look at this lovely glassed in train station.

7. Old churches and grave yards. I'm just facinated by them. I love walking around looking at the ancient headstones from the 17 & 1800s.

8. Old headstones are amazing to me. This one was interesting because it appears that many people in the family were buried in the same grave.

9. My daughter's house. It's in Buckinhamshire in a town called Hyde Heath. It's called DeFontenay.

10. Victoria & Albert Museum. This museum focuses on textiles but there are so many other amazing things here. They have a cast room where copies of famous sculptures reside. Michaelangelo's 'David' in it's exact replica, including size, is there. The most famous Persian rug in the world is residing in the museum right now (in the Islamic gallery) in a ginormous glass case. It's only lit for 10 minutes on the hour and half hour to retain the brightness of it's colors. Rafael's cartoon's have their own very large room. Cartoon's by definition were drawings or paintings of a rug or tapestries to be woven from. So these are huge paintings that were painted onto strips of cloth or paper that were glued together. You could get lost in the marble sculpture area. The V&A has a room full of samples of textiles. Unfortunately, the room is dimly lit to retain the colors of the fabrics and it's a bit hard to see the colors very well. But there must be absolutely thousands of pull out drawers.

England - Hyde Heath - Buckinghamshire

2009-05-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

May 22, 2009

I'm in England today. I got in yesterday afternoon, May 21st. I did really well on the sleep thing. Due to the lack of sleep on the plane ride over, staying awake until bedtime on the first day is problematic. But I had a couple cups of coffee space over the day and a couple of gin and tonics last night and I slept all night. I woke up at the normal 6:00am ready to start the day. Cool!

My daughter's house (I say my daughter for short even though it belongs to she and her husband and 3 children for short), is really amazing. It's really an estate on several acres. The house is 100 years old but has been newly redone. We watched a movie in the home theater last night in the basement. It was amazing. O.K. please forgive me if I say amazing too many times here :-). They have a huge family kitchen with an agha. If you don't know what an agha is, I'll tell you. It's a huge stove thing that stays on all the time. It has a little burner going inside it and this whole thing stays warm, hot really, all the time. It keeps this immense kitchen warm - well that and the radiant heating in the floors. You never have to turn on a burner because there are these big griddles on it that stay hot all the time. You only have to put your pan on an already hot griddle. You would never be able to use something like this in California but it's wonderful here.

The kids went swimming yesterday in their incredible indoor pool (see - I can say words other than amazing). I plan on getting some exercise swimming while I'm here. At least that's the plan.

My room in England is in the guest suite. It has a sitting area, complete with couch and a lovely bathroom with clawfoot tub and separate shower. The claw feet on the tub are copper as well as the spigots (I guess that's what they call them). Also, the sink is a matching copper as well as the cabinet hardware. The tiles in the floor are all 1" glass tiles which shine in the light. Very pretty.

A weird fact about England? They don't have electrical outlets in the bathrooms. If you want to use your curling iron or hair dryer, it has to be done somewhere in the bedroom. And there aren't always mirrors near the electrical outlets so it's interesting trying to see what you're doing.

I'll post some pictures of the house soon.

Deb's Spinning Wheel

2009-05-12T10:05:00.001-07:00

My friend Deb is an artist. I'm an artist too but Deb is an ARTIST. She incorporates her artistic talent in almost everything she does and doesn't do anything in a small way. She has decorated her Majacraft Suzie Pro wheel in her typical magical way. Here it is - ta da!

This is a three dimensional design with feathers, leaves and sparkles. When it goes round it sparkles and shines, it's mezmerizing. Click on the picture to get a closeup of the design.

CNCH Sonoma - 2009

2009-05-01T10:34:00.001-07:00

Well CNCH Sonoma was fabulous. We had a great time. We spent Friday night in a B&B in an old Victorian one story house with a wine bar on Friday night and a continental breakfast on Saturday morning. Saturday and Sunday nights were spent at the Sonoma Valley Inn. It was a lovely stay with jacuzzi & swimming pool and quiet nights.

The conference itself was wonderful as well. It was very well organized. We had a finger food and champagne get together and bag exchange on Saturday night. The classrooms were all very spacious and most people had plenty of elbow room and light.

My 2-1/2 day class was on irridescent weaving with Bobbi Irwin. It was the class that everyone seemed to want to be in for some reason. Luckily I got in. I made some grevious errors. In my defense, I had never taken a weaving class at conference or a weaving workshop anywhere. I didn't realize that one should bring a workshop tool kit when away from home. I also didn't spread the warp and check the threading before I left. (Don't ask me why, I guess I just lost my mind.) I was so pleased with myself to have gotten warping accomplished 2 months early that I just put the loom away and never gave it another thought. I do think, however, that workshop teachers should remind people of these things. They shouldn't assume that everyone has thought of everything to bring to workshop. I do have a list of things for next time. There are about 10 essential items to put on this list and in my workshop tool kit next time. I was one of those annoying people who wind up borrowing things from the people sitting next to them in workshop. Luckily, I was sitting next to a very sweet nice lady who didn't seem at all annoyed with me asking to borrow stuff. I did try to not be too anoying though.

If you want to see pictures from the workshop, they are on my flickr pages at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/48947451@N00

Hand Painted Bamboo into Singles

2009-05-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

I finally got my two lots of hand painted bamboo fiber spun up into singles. They are really shiny and pretty. I will ply them with a single ply wool at some point. I have no idea what I'll do with it when spun up. There will probably be something like 350 yards per bobbin. It's rather interesting how each of the color pallets spun up. The cool pallet didn't seem to spin up as brilliantly as the raw fiber but the warm pallet did. I think one of the reasons the colors are more muted in the spun is because the color didn't seem to penetrate as well on the inside of the roving.

New Ikat Stretched Onto Frame

2009-04-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

O.K. this time, I used mercerized 10/2 cotton left over from a previous project. It worked like a charm. With ikat you have to twine 2 times every time you fold the warp and then slide one of the twinings down the warp to the other side. If you have a sticky warp, it pulls and drags on the threads and can stretch the warp. But these mercerized threads were a bit shiny and slippery and I didn't have any trouble moving the twinings down through the threads. So now I'm ready to tie on the resist strips this weekend. Here is the newly warped frame:

Very Cool Weaving Tool

2009-04-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

LeClerc has this great little bobbin winder tool that really helps if you have an electric bobbin winder. I got my electric spinner from a guy from eBay a few years ago. I think it's home made using a sewing machine motor and foot pedal. It works great. However, when I got the LeClerc bobbin winder helper a couple of weeks ago, I was dismayed that it was about 4" or more wider than the electric spinner superstructure. I gave the problem to my partner who had some extra hard wood left over from a loom project he was doing, and he just added a piece onto the right side to hook the device to.

This little device is amazing. If you have used an electric winder, you know that they can go pretty fast and if you're not careful can cause yarn burn on your hands - if you keep holding the yarn in the same place. This device also tensions through the little spirals so you don't have to tension as you're winding. You just hold onto the handle and move it back and forth across the bobbin. It moves as smooth as if it was greased with butter. Very cool tool.

Handpainted Bamboo Roving & Handspun

2009-04-07T07:51:00.000-07:00

Here is the beautiful bamboo roving spun up. I'm a little disappointed that the yarn is so light in color. It's always a surprise when you see how your finished yarn looks compared to the raw fiber and to see what happens to the colors. I was thinking of overdyeing this fiber in darker colors but I think I'll just ply it with wool. The juxtaposition of the shiny fiber with the matt fiber will look really pretty even if it is a bit light. What I'm spinning now are the warm colors on the right side of the pile. There was a separate dyeing of the cool purples and greens. I'll post those later.

If your blog is in Blogger, do you know how to . . .

2009-04-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

reply to commenter's questions? I tried to go onto Blogger Help and I couldn't pose my question in such a way that people understood what I was asking. You know when you make a comment on someone else's post, the program asks you for your email address and says it's not going to post the email address? I always assumed that the email address went to the original blogger so they could respond privately to the person and for security so that you know the person commenting is authentic. I cannot find where I can do that in Blogger, do ya'll know?

The Weekend - April 4-5, 2009

2009-04-06T07:54:00.001-07:00

Well, boy did that weekend go fast! As they say, just too much fun! Saturday was our Fiber Artisan guild 1st Saturday craft day. Frank Mikulastik helped me put a warp onto an ikat frame. What a lot of work! It took all told about 3 hours between all the twining and folding - from about 1-4 oclock. The sad part of the whole thing was that when we were done, there were loose hanging threads from the frame. Not good. Not even mildly acceptable really. I looked at it until Sunday night and then decided that I just couldn't live with it or try to make do with it and Jim helped me wind it off the frame onto a ball. Back to the drawing board. What I don't understand here is that the yarn was 100% unmercerized 8/2 cotton from Halcyon Yarn. Believe it or not folks - it stretches (big time) in the right circumstances. No one at the meeting had ever experienced a stretchy cotton warp. But believe me it happens. Ikat has to be completely tight with perfect thread control with no shifting or your pattern will shift. The beauty of ikat are the controlled patterns that you can create but if you have a bunch of hanging threads, obviously your pattern is going to be wonky. So I'll start from scratch now with some mercerized cotton and see if that works any better. From that meeting I had to drive to Sunnyvale and drop off some birthday presents. I then discovered that I had left a project bag at the craft meeting place and I had to go back to that place and pick up the bag and then get the car washed on the way home. I left at 10:00am and didn't get home until 6:30pm. It was a lot of hard work for naught. But I did learn how to wind an ikat warp onto the frame, which was a big learning process in itself. (The above picture is of Phyllis Karsten's ikat coat. It's an amazing piece of work and beautifully put together with the lovely silky lining. I have a new appreciation for ikat dyeing after having gone through the exercise on Saturday.) The picture below this description is an ikat frame with the design already on it. It's a butterfly. Can you see it? There is a complicated multicolor overdyeing process that is involved after this step. This is Phyllis' project and she only uses here handspun cotton for her projects. It is beautifully spun fine natural colored cotton that looks to be about 10/2 weight, maybe smaller.

Sunday I went to the Alameda antiques and flea market which is held at the old navy base. That is an amazingly huge place! It is acres and acres of flea market stuff. My girlfriend and I spent 3-1/2 hours walking through half of it. We got there at 9:00am and left at about 12:30. We couldn't face going through the rest of it. It's on a beautiful piece of land with big ships right next to it, those big star wars looking cranes nearby and a breathtaking view of San Francisco. Well worth your time to go there on the 1st Saturday of the month. They open at 5:30 for early birds so if you are of a mind to get some great antiques and get first choice, that would be the time to go. Unfortunately, you have to pay a dear entrance fee to get in that early - $15! It goes down to $10 at 7:30 and then to $5 at 9:00. We got there right after 9:00. But wow, $15 just to get into a flea market. But this is a good place for dealers to go and get antiques at bargain prices, I guess so it would be worth it for them to pay the $15. So that was my Sunday. I didn't get home until about 3:00pm. Another weekend gone.

This is a picture of the flea market with San Francisco in the background at about 10:00am on Sunday. The temperatures said they were only in the low 60's but it felt like at least the 70's.

More views of the flea market.

That's it for the weekend. More later.

New Patio Table Covers

2009-04-02T08:57:00.000-07:00

I had off work on Tuesday for Cesar Chavez Day and I took the opportunity to go shopping for oil cloth for the patio tables. They are both wood and have really seen better days. It gets pretty grungy out on the patio and the tables need to be wiped off a lot. I also needed a nice work surface for dyeing and working outside.

Oil cloth - sounds like old people, doesn't it? Well, I guess I am old now - old enough to collect social security. And it does look a bit like maw and paw kettle's place out there, I know. But I don't have enough places to put things so they have to hide from me in plain sight. It's amazing how you forget to see the stuff that is right in front of your face when you have to look at it everyday. After I took these pictures I straightened it up a bit but really, there's only so much I can do out there without getting rid of stuff.

I also had time on Tuesday to handpaint some bamboo roving with ProChem MX Dyes:

Handpainted bamboo roving

Light is a bit flat, last light of the day but isn't this flower lovely?

The light's a little better in this one.

2009-03-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

Now life could be worse. We are having glorious spring weather. It's mostly cloudy but the temps are very nice. I look at weather back east right now and they still have lots of snow everywhere. Check out these temps:

Today - Mar 17 -Mostly Cloudy - 69°
Wed - Mar 18 -Partly Cloudy- 71°
Thu - Mar 19 - AM Clouds / PM Sun - 70°
Fri - Mar 20 - Partly Cloudy - 67°
Sat - Mar 21 - Few Showers - 63°
Sun - Mar 22 - Showers - 60°
Mon - Mar 23 - Sunny - 63°
Tue - Mar 24 - Sunny - 65°
Wed - Mar 25 -Sunny -66°
Thu - Mar 26 - Partly Cloudy - 67°

Death of a Friend

2009-03-12T15:23:00.001-07:00

We lost our dear friend on Tuesday. He was our dog of 12 years. He was a good dog and very healthy until the end. He had developed a tumor on his spine and became a paraplygic almost instantly. We did some research and had almost made the decision to try to deal with him as a paraplygic animal when the decision was taken out of our hands. The paralysis moved to his upper torso and he was scared and in pain. We had no choice but to let him go. We will miss him.

Warped for Conference - Irridescent Weaving

2009-03-05T08:51:00.000-08:00

I just warped for the CNCH Conference in Sonoma. Since I got the warp in the mail very early, I figured I'd just go ahead and get the loom ready. It's still almost two months away! But I have some other projects in mind that I want to get started on and thought it would help to keep my mind clear if I didn't have this waiting to do. The irridescent part will happen with the weft shots, I assume. She talked in her handout about using colors that are opposite on the color wheel to create the irridescence. It's stunning isn't it?

Stitches West

2009-03-03T10:02:00.000-08:00

This weekend was Stitches West in the Santa Clara, CA, convention center. As usual, it was a busy and exciting day. Our weaving guild has a booth where we teach people to do drop spindle spinning. I usually have a 3 hour shift that day, and 3 hours seems like 20 minutes. It is so busy, that sometimes there are 3 people deep waiting to get a spinning lesson.

Almost at the end of my shift, a lady walks up to the booth giggling, and she giggled, for the first minute or so that I was talking to her. She had on a badge, so in curiosity, I looked down at her name at it was THE 'Cat Bordhi'! Amazing. I talked to her for a few minutes and her excitement was infectious. She was really excited about something coming up called the "Socks Summit." It's August 6-9 in Portland, Oregon. There are an unprecidented number of fabulous teachers going to be there. Go to this website and look: http://www.socksummit.com/ She said there will never be another place where this many fabulous knitters are going to be in one place including Cookie A, Nancy Bush, Judith McKenzie-McCuin, Barbara Walker, Lucy Neatby, Meg Swanson, et al. I'm trying to figure out a way to find a place to stay in Portland. My son in law's wife's parents live in Portland. It would be so much fun to just go. Cat Bordhi said, it doesn't have to be expensive, just go and not even take classes. Just go and hang out with these amazing knitters.

Another highlight of my day was spending some time with Dr. Gemma from the CogKNITive podcast. I was in one of the isles of Stitches talking to a lady that I had met in the spinning booth. Anyway, I was talking to her about Webs and how they had a podcast that I listened to and someone walking by heard me talking about podcasting and stopped. She said she heard me talking about podcasting and wanted to know who I listened to. I recognized her voice - it was Dr. Gemma! I said "I know you." She wanted to know how I knew her and I told her that I listened to her podcast CogKNITive. I hugged her and told her that I felt I knew her. She mentioned something about wanting to learn to spin better. I asked her if she would like for me to give her a couple of tips. She was very excited about meeting someone who, not only followed her podcast, but also was a spinner. So I took her back to the spinning booth and gave her a few tips. She was 100% better spinner when she walked out of the booth. She was so excited, and I was excited for her to be so successful. She also wanted to play with spinning wheels so I took her over to Carolina Homespun and we played with wheels for a while. She also had in tow two other podcasters: Bellitrix and Stasymama. I even had the opportunity to go out to eat with them but had to beg off. I had waited too long to eat and already eaten a huge plate of food. Great fun.

I didn't buy much. I went by the Brooks Farm Yarn store and wasn't all that excited about their yarns this year. I also hit several other yarn stores, still no excitement. It was probably just me. I went by Webs and it was mobbed like usual. Stitches can be very overwhelming. The way I buy yarn is by project. I just don't go there with no ideas, just buying yarn. I need to have a specific project in mind so that I don't buy too much or too little yarn. And since I was so lame as to not bring any project plans, I got what I deserved, very little yarn. I did buy a beautiful little shawl stick for $11 and one skein of beautiful purple and green sock yarn - that was all.

Kitchen Towels Off the Loom

2009-02-17T07:44:00.000-08:00

I really love these kitchen towels. They are made from thick
and thin cotton, I forget the technical name for the type of
cotton right now. There may be some problems using these as kitchen towels as there are floats. There is also some yarn carrying up the sides for 4 rows at a time which could cause problems. We'll see. But in the meantime, I'll just enjoy looking at them.

San Jose California in February 2009

2009-02-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

I just had to post this picture which I took this morning coming in to work. I was a passenger and the car was jiggling but I have an anti-jiggling thingie on the camera so it looks pretty clear to me. It's particularly interesting with the snow behind the palm trees.

The Towels Are Off The Loom

2009-02-13T07:43:00.000-08:00

Yay! Took them off the loom last night and they look fantastic. I zig zagged the edges and washed and dried them and ironed this morning. Tonight I will cut them apart and hem them. I want to take them to the Blacksheep weaving study group tomorrow morning, along with a couple of knitting projects I've finished. This is a new group for me and I'm looking forward to going tomorrow (like I need another monthly meeting - I already belong to 3 guilds that meet monthly. But it's always good to be around fellow weavers to get your weaving mojo going and to learn new stuff. The guild meetings don't teach anything normally, they are either sharing what you're already doing or you are listing to someone talk about their work. It will be nice to be in a group where I actually learn something for a change.

Sweet Pea Coat

2009-02-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

I finished this coat about a week or so ago. It was really an easy knit. It is a Kate Gilbert pattern that I downloaded from Ravelry. It was knit with a double strand of worsted weight yarn. I think I used Web's Northampton, which I absolutely love. I think the pattern was 2-1/2 sts. to the inch, and a really fast knit. There was a bit of confusion around the pocket area. She had you knit a separate little pocket liner and then insert that onto one side of the knitting at the top of the pocket area. But with the help of a fellow knitter, we figured that little puzzle out. I was also offered help by Kate Gilbert herself when I emailed her, which I thought was really nice. She said there might be a bit of a delay due to the volume of emails she gets at Twist Collective but she said I could definitely get help from her. I really appreciated that, even though I didn't take her up on it.

I have the sweater soaking as I write so I can block it out. It's about 2-3" too small at the moment but I think that can be fixed with blocking. I really like the sweater though and the buttons are bone and brass which I sent for from an online resource called www.ascuteasabutton.com. They had an amazing selection of buttons to choose from.

I'm weaving - yay!

2009-02-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

In December I bought two weaving kits from the Yarn Barn of Kansas. They are nice people and their prices are good on most things. One kit are kitchen towels and the other kit contains yarn for colorful chenille bath mats. I got the loom warped this weekend and here is the beginning of three beautiful towels. I picked the colors because I love greens and blues and cool colors. The yarn is thick and thin mercerized cotton at 12 epi. That's an end feed shuttle and seems to be working very well. I still have a bit of draw-in on each side but not too much yet. We'll see how the rest of this weaving goes. Thank you Nancy Alegria for the inspiration to weave these towels. She posted a wonderful scarf with this design on www.weavezine.com in their first issue.

Cotton Chenille Towels

2009-01-07T14:38:00.001-08:00

I wove these cotton chenille towels for xmas for my daughter. I wanted a bit of contrast for the darker stripes so I walnut dyed some of the chenille. It didn't come out quite as dark as I would have liked but I'm pretty pleased with them. I had problems with the selvedges. The yarn kept wanting to bunch up on the selvedges and pack in really tightly. I was thinking for a time that I would just keep these and use them since I don't care about that as much. Since they were a gift, I wanted them as perfect as possible. But the selveges were definitely not straight and even. Oh, also, I had quite a few little chenille pulls in the yarn. It must have been when the tension wasn't even and it would poke out the backside somehow. I surely didn't see anything like that from the topside. At first I thought they were skips but they are just little pulls.

Handwoven Towels

2008-11-19T15:19:00.001-08:00

I am weaving some bath towels from 1000 ypp cotton chenille. They are coming out very well but I'm not very happy with the selvedges. They aren't absolutely horrible but they aren't really nice either. I think it's the chenille which is taking up the yarn much more than I thought it would. I'm using a set of home made temples and am watching the edges carefully but every now and then the edge threads tend to want to start scrunching up together and making a smooth area once in a while. But all in all, I'm pretty happy with them.

I walnut dyed the contrasting color in them.

Mitchell's Sweater

2008-11-19T12:32:00.000-08:00

Only one piece to go! Mitch wanted a red or blue sweater for Christmas. I settled on a manly looking rusty dark red color. Jim thought the bright red sweater wasn't the right color for a little boy. Who am I to argue since I'm not a male? The only piece I have with me is the sleeve so I'll post a photo of it. You can oooo and ahhhh here. . .

2008-11-19T12:24:00.001-08:00

Fiona's hat. The pattern and yarn came in a kit from a website. Can't remember which one right now. But it's called the Ultra Violet Hat by Debbie Ware. Isn't it cute? I love the happy colors. It's as happy and fiesty looking as my 4 year old grand daughter Fiona.

Finished Knitting Project

2008-11-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted and I'm feeling a bit guilty, especially since have no excuse whatsoever except laziness. I've been working on several projects lately. I finished a sweater for my grand daughter Kendall. It's a purple bulky wool/mohair with a sort of cowl neck. She's ten and still likes Tinkerbelle - so I intend to do a Tinkerbelle like embroidery on the front in a contrasting pink color before I wrap it up for her for Christmas.

New Windows!

2008-09-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

We had 60 yeard old windows in the house in aluminum frames that were loose and the calking holding the window in place was falling out. If someone had pushed real hard, some of these windows would have fallen out they were so bad. So this year, I decided to get new windows. We chose to do the install in two segments due to the congestion of stuff in the house - which has to be moved 3 feet away from the windows - inside and out - for the installers to have a place to work. The first installment was about 3 months ago before the hot weather. The last 3 windows installation took place yesterday.

It sure took a lot of work to get the house ready for both installations! We have been home organizing to install new windows in very congested areas of the house. We have been organizing the office for about 2 months. My live-in cannot throw anything away and we get into a huge fight every time I try and get him to get rid of anything. So rather than fighting - I allowed him to make the office so untidy that I could hardly get in and out anymore. It's funny that you have no idea what it is going to be like to live with someone until you've been with them for a while. We've been living together for 10 years and it's slowly gotten worse over the 10 years. It's a serious problem when you live in a small home.

So anyway, this weekend was spent moving the computers and computer tables away from the windows. There was a LOT of stuff in there and it's now sitting all over the living room. And the outside was bad too. We had a woodpile to move, tables with dye pots, microwave, etc. on them. And what added insult to injury was that it was about 100 degrees outside when we were doing this stuff. But it's done, yay! Now all we have to do is get the house back together. There has been some really good things come out of this whole mess. I will not allow him to get the office in that state again. We will get rid of paper and equipment that is unused and just piling up. I can finally clean the carpet in there! And the windows look superb. Clean white and lovely.

BTW, this brings me to Home Depot windows. The windows themselves, of medium grade, have a lifetime guarantee on them which can be passed on to the next owners. The installers were meticulous, cleaned up after themselves and did a wonderful job on the windows. My complaint is with the scheduling department. On both window appointments they double booked in our time slot. And although we had our appointment for about six weeks, they still booked over us. I was so mad yesterday morning I was ready to spit bullets at the girl. This is the second damn time they have done it to us. When I called her to confirm our appointment, because they neglected to do that (AGAIN), she says "I'm so sorry Ms. Brunston, but it seems we have double booked your appointment and we have no one to do it today. Would Wedneday be a good day?"
That's when I blew up! I said "No, it will not be a good day. You cannot do this to us again! We both stayed home from work today for this install as well as spending 2 days getting ready for it. You WILL fix this." And she did. She wound up cancelling someone else I assume. Which I'm really sorry about but damn it, serious time and money effort was involved here and I was not going to be put off. Jim was insistent that if they didn't keep the appointment yesterday that we would cancel our order and get the windows elsewhere. Luckily it didn't come to that. I did not want to wait for another eight weeks to schedule the order with someone else. They have to custom make your windows and it takes them quite while to make them. Anyway, it's all done now and we have all new dual paned windows in the house. There's only one window left and that's a garage window that faces the street. We might do that one ourselves one of these days just so the glass and lines within the glass match the rest of the house.

Bobbin Lace Making

2008-08-27T11:13:00.001-07:00

No, this is one craft that I don't do. But Margaret More does. She's a music teacher, dancer, harp player, spinner, bobbin lace maker and all round good sport. Here are some pictures of her lovely bobbins and lace making set-up. This one's a bit blurry but it was really hard getting a good picture. Plus my camera isn't doing closeups very well right now, even the macro doesn't seem to be working.

Pretty Handcard Covers

2008-08-24T13:41:00.001-07:00

I had some leftover overshot from a weaving project I did last year so I put it to good use by making handcard covers. It was really easy to make, just took a bit of time. I bought some cotton fabric at fabric store for the lining, laid the handcards on the fabric to determine how large to cut. I overlapped one side and cut a slit in the middle of one side, sewed the lining on, sewed some velcro to close it and voila!

Here's what they look like without the cards:

Finished Fiber Trends Felted Clogs

2008-08-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

I just realized that I hadn't posted the finished pictures of my finished knitted, felted clogs. Here is a picture of them with my feet next to them for comparison. Felting is sooooo much fun! You keep throwing them back in the wash and checking them every 5 minutes until they are the size you want.

Catching Up and August Dye Workshop

2008-08-12T11:49:00.001-07:00

O.K. I know it's been a couple weeks at least but I've been busy! My daughter and family are here from the U.K., around London, and we are putting new windows in and everything has to be cleared away from the windows for 3 feet. That's a major project for us. Anyway, even though I don't have any of my own pictures to post, here are some photos that a friend of mine took of a dyeing workshop that we took last Saturday, August 9th. What fun! Anni Redding was the lady's name and she was amazing. She can get amazing brilliant colors from natural dyes, like I have never seen before. Here are the pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9099252@N07/sets/72157606639367878

The multicolored skeins are the skeins and colors that came from only 4 dye pots, just by using different mordants. I can't wait to do more experimentation! We had the dye workshop on Mt. Hamilton at a friend's house. She and her husband work at Lick Observatory for the last 30 years. The view was absolutely spectacular in all directions from her mountain top home. It was a really great day and now we have a huge card of samples and 8 pages of dyeing notes to do more experimentation.

Giant Felted Clogs

2008-07-30T12:41:00.001-07:00

I knew these felted clogs would be large but you can't get scale unless you see my feet next to them (below). According to my friend Frank, who has done quite a bit of felting, the length of knitted garments shrinks 50% and the width shrinks about 30%. Attached are the photos of the clogs.

Felted Purse

2008-07-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

Here is a felted purse that I did a couple of weeks ago and then crocheted and beaded onto. The felted purse is purely felted wool, no knitting. Bits of string and color made it a little more interesting. For a handle I spun up some purple wool (2 plies) and plied that with 1 more ply (3 all together) and then knitted them into an I-Cord over the shoulder handle. This morning I attached it to the outsides of the purse. I think it's rather effective.

Updated Fiber Trends Felted Clog

2008-07-23T14:54:00.000-07:00

O.K. I mostly have the first clog done with a little angst. I chose the version that has a bumper on the outside but the bumper is sticking straight out at the moment. I'm hoping that this bumper thingie is going to curve under toward the sole when it's felted. I'm questioning why I need it at this point. I might have to rip it out.

Fiber Trends Felted Clogs

2008-07-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

This is the first time I've knitted one of these clogs and I'm having a bit of difficulty with the first clog. There are two soles and when you knit the two soles together, you have the option of what they call a bumper which is a contrasting color around the bottom of the show, looks like a thick sole area around the bottom. The picture below is how I have the first sole attached to the show, getting ready to knit the 2nd sole onto the inner sole. Anyone know if this is the way it's supposed to look so far? I know it's a little blurry but as you can see, there is a little extended plain knit area attached to the gray. This is where the bumper would go, except that the bumper will now be upside down. It's supposed to face down, not up. I'm in a bit of a dilemma right now until I know if this part is right.

Sheep to Shawl

2008-07-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

We had our annual sheep-to-shawl at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, Calfironia on Sunday, July 6th. As usual, it was a lot of fun. I can't believe how fast the day passes! Nancy Weber, the lady who is modeling it, won the shawl in a drawing at our last spinning meeting. She deserves it because she does a lot of community service and she's a very nice person to boot. That's me, the one on the right with dark long hair. It always scares me when I see pictures of myself. I'm working to get the excess weight off, but it's taking more time than I had hoped.

2nd Overdye Indigo Piece

2008-07-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

Well, the first dyeing of the indigo piece wasn't dyed enough. I may not have soaked the fiber enough for the dye to migrate to the inside layers. Also with the latest dyeing, I folded the cloth around a smaller pipe (about 2-1/2"). The first pipe was about 4", and twice the size which made the design bigger. So, what I did with the 2nd dyeing was to fold the cloth so that the lightest fabric was on the outside layers. Each time I dye it, I get more color and it's looking prettier and prettier.

The 2nd project here is the painted warp piece. I took a class at CNCH in Sacramento with Betsy Blumenthal earlier this year. It was a fun, hands on class, and I got to take home my own painted warp from it. It didn't turn out very big because I wanted a warp faced weave and a weaving that started out being over 10", actually turned out to be only 5 or 6" because I had to thread the loom so close. The colors are subtle and they look like they kind of undulate. It's prettier than I thought at first. It's about 72" long and about 6" wide.

The last thing I did was the crocheted blanket for my grand daughter Fiona for her birthday in August. She lives with my daughter, her husband & 2 other siblings now in England. I saw this blanket on the Lionbrand website and thought it was pretty as a picture, just like her. And so colorful and cheerful. I will be able to give it to her in person when they come visit in a couple of weeks.

Indigo Piece Unwrapped

2008-06-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo of the indigo dipping we did a couple of weekends ago. Indigo stays on the surface of the cloth but I really thought it would go a bit deeper. This will definitely will need at least one or two more dippings.

Shibori Unravelled

2008-06-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

Well, here is the finished arashi shibori piece unravelled. It's pretty but I thought it would be a LOT darker. I might overdye it - we'll see. . .

Shibori Dyeing

2008-06-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

We had a guild dye day on Saturday and I did an indigo dyeing experiment which was with arashi shibori style which is tied on a pole with string and then the fabric is all scrunched to one end of the pole and then dyed. The parts under the string and the folds resist the dye, especially with indigo (which apparently sits on top rather than entering into the fabric.)

Anyway, I don't have a picture of the indigo one yet because only one side of the fabric is dyed, the rest pretty much stayed white. I think that I had too many layers of fabric. The indigo penetrated maybe 2 layers of fabric but it couldn't get inside the mass of fabric.

This picture is also pole dyeing but this time the fabric is folded in about 3" folds, wrapped and tied around the pole. The fabric is then soaked in a soda ash solution for about 30 minutes and then the fiber reactive dyes are squirted onto the fabric. I will be letting this sit on the fabric for a minimum of 24 hours (up to infinity) and when I think it has sat long enough, I'll unwrap it and see what I got.

First Toe up Sock

2008-06-16T09:51:00.001-07:00

Well, I completed one sock on my first toe up pair of socks. It went pretty smoothly after the snafoo with the square toe. The heel went fine all the way to the top of the sock. No problems. I like toe up alot.

Shibori Dyeing Experiment

2008-06-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to try arashi shibori dyeing for a few months now but it took some preparation. I needed some chemicals and a pole to use for wrapping the cloth around. I found a 2 foot plastic pipe from Home Depot that is about 4" in diameter that I thought would work well for this. This kind of pipe doesn't melt in hot water like PVC. So, I had this bolt of cotton fabric that I had bought at a garage sale a couple of years ago. Since the fabric was already dyed a rose color, I thought I might be able to do a dye discharge technique. So after I had tied up the cloth around the pipe with string and scrunched it down as far as it would go on the pipe, I boiled it in Rit dye remover. Unfortunately it worked too well and it took the color uniformly down to a light pink color. I had hoped that the dye remover wouldn't get down inside the string all the way to the pipe - but it apparently did. So, that was last weekend's attempts. I rinsed out the dye remover with clear water and let it dry over the last week.

This weekend, I decided to try adding dye to the fiber, instead of taking dye out of it. So I wet the fiber again, let it sit for about 1/2 hour or so, letting the water soak into the inside of the wrapping. I got out my ProChem fiber reactive dyes and chemicals and mixed up some urea water, alkalai powder and some dye. I mixed the urea water into the dye mix and added a teaspoon of alkalai powder which had some soda ash in it. I then poured this in little sections around the pipe. When all the light spots were covered in dye, I wrapped the pole in plastic wrap and let it sit for 24 hours in 70 degree or above heat (inside the house). It took several rinsings and a couple of washings with Saranthapol to get out the excess dye but it stopped bleeding after the 2nd washing with Saranthapol. It actually looks quite nice I think. It's only a yard of fabric. The fabric is very heavy and appears to be a double layer so it wouldn't scrunch on the pole that much. But I'm pretty pleased with it all in all. I need to try some different techniques now - smaller pole, more fabric, different kinds of fabrics. I would be able to get more fabric on a pole if the fabric was thinner: silk, thin cotton, cotton sateen?

I've been getting some books lately on fabric embellishing which look quite interesting. Also silk painting looks like a lot of fun. Painted silk would look really pretty inside a handwoven jacket.

New Windows!

2008-05-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

Finally, new windows! We had the oldest, ickiest, windows on the plant. Metal framed, 60 year old windows, loose, no heat/cold/noise protection. Dirty window tracks that would never come clean.

Two New Things

2008-05-27T11:57:00.000-07:00

Well, here are the latest two things in my life as of today: new green and white shawl woven on the new Weavebird loom (all 32 shafts of it).

The white shawl was woven in a Judith MacKenzie weaving workshop back in February 2008 at Point Bonita near Sausalito, California. There are pictures of the location on my flickr picture account. It took place in a YMCA camp on a point, overlooking San Francisco Bay. Just a lovely location. And Judith MacKenzie is, as always, a wonderful teacher. If I can remember even 1/4th of what she told me, I'll be 1000% better weaver.

OK - I think I got it!

2008-05-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

After speaking with a couple of people on the Yahoo groups sock list, we figured out where I was misreading the pattern. It was sort of implied that there was a knit row in between the increase rows so I wasn't increasing gradually enough. Added to that, I needed to go down a needle size to be more in gauge. They look pretty good now, don't you think? I'm pretty pleased with them so far. We'll see how the rest of this first toe up sock goes.

Problem with Toe Up Sock Toe Shaping

2008-05-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

O.K. I have no idea what the problem is but I've started these danged socks twice because the toe shaping was too square. I figured that if I used smaller needles, I'd be able to get the size small enough to square they would shape around the toe, even thought they were square looking. The smaller needles didn't help that much and they are a bit loose but even if they were smaller, I think the square toe would not be pretty. Any suggestions on how to fix this problem would be appreciated.

Stash Enhancing & Weavebird

2008-05-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

Spinning Guild Meeting
Saturday (5/17/08) was our monthly spinning guild meeting. Summer is the beginning of our light attendance part of the year. We sit out of doors in a really beautiful space, under a very large oak tree. Several people were at a planning meeting for the 2010 (CNCH) Northern California Handweavers convention and several people in our guild were at a planning meeting on Saturday.

Stash Enhancement Opportunity (like I needed more stash!)
A lady brought about 10-15 large boxes of stash that she needed to get out of her house. She has been spinning, weaving, knitting, etc. for many years and has put an appropriate amount of time, money and effort into creating this very large stash. She had another 10-15 boxes at home still and had left an equal amount to all this back in England 25 years ago. Just walked off and left it. I just can't imagine what that would have been like. I believe she sold it like a fire sale. Anyway, I walked away with about 5 pounds of incredibly lovely 80's merino/silk top, 5 balls of some really wonderful black yarn with shiny specs in it, 1 very large skein of white yarn that still had a tag of $58 on it and about a pound or more of bombyx silk top, all for $80. I also came home with a large number of cones of free yarn that one of our guild members, Frank, gave me. A lady he knew who was getting rid of her stash, gave it to him, and he thought of us since Frank knew we had this very large loom which is going to eat yarn like crazy!

Weavebird - 5/18/08
Sunday we worked on the new Weavebird loom. We did some testing of it and it wasn't pulling up all the shafts. So I sat at the loom while Jim was upside down looking at what was happening underneath it. Eventually he determined that the cables needed tensioning and that seemed to fix it. That stuff took several hours. Eventually he determined that it seemed to be working correctly and we could finally wind a warp. Hallelujah! However, by the time we picked a 32 shaft pattern, and the yarn, and determined what size the initial warp would be, the day was just about shot. After 1/2 the warp was wound, we decided to give it up for the day. We were hot and tired and we weren't going to get the rest of the warp done anyway so we had some dinner, watched a movie and then went to bed. It was quite a successful day at the loom and it sounds like way now.

Oh, I forgot, we also spent a couple of hours putting on the finishing parts on the loom. Jim had to string rope through the eyes on the front of the loom apron and put a metal rod in it. Then we had to put the sectional extensions on the warping beam on the back, it took both of us quite some time to put these parts on. I forgot to take a picture of this procedure.

Oh, another thing that took quite a bit of time. I have been pondering and puzzling at how we are going to manage warping 32 shafts. I have spoke to some expert weavers who have 24 shafts and they told me their methods which helped my thinking alot. However, in the end, what we did was to make tabs, very much like folder tabs that stick up in a drawer, to mark each one of the 32 shafts. The tabs stick up about 2" above the shafts so that when we were testing the patterns to make sure all the shafts came up when called, that we could see easily which shafts were coming up. The shafts are engraved with a discrete little number on the right side of the top of the shaft but when they are coming up, you can really only see the number on the first shaft. I'll take a picture of what the tabs look like later.

Well, that was my weekend and it really went very fast. Plus it has been hot hot hot this week here in San Jose, California. We have had maybe 2 weeks of scorching 90 - 100 degree heat starting about one week into May. Weird heatwave. Much too early for this kind of heat. We usually don't get this kind of heat until late July and August. Global warming?

First Blog Post - Yay!

2008-05-16T13:36:00.000-07:00

Where to start. . . I have been doing all kinds of needle crafts for many years. I actually knitted skirts with matching tops when I was a young woman. I was never into the traditional knitting of sweaters and such. At this point in my life, I was too busy working and living my life for any kind of needle or fiber arts. I went back to school, got divorced, had lots of fun (lots of outdoor sports - learned to ski and play tennis, etc.) and then began to settle down again in my late 40's to early 50's when the grandkids began coming along. So I started knitting and crocheting again when my grand daughter Kendal came along 10 years ago and the fibery obsession has really grown since then.

A work associate, who later became a friend, was talking one day about 4 years ago about spinning on a spinning wheel. That really intrigued me. I joined her at her spinning guild meeting the next weekend. Someone offered to loan me a drop spindle and I was instantly hooked. The possibility that I could make my own yarn was an instant draw. I think, at that time, I believed I could save money by making my own from raw fiber. I HAD NO IDEA how addicting this fiber obsession would become nor how much money I would invest in tools and fiber! The next thing I knew, I had bought a used Ashford Joy spinning wheel from one of the guild ladies and off I went. Next thing I knew, I had bought a fleece and a drum carder. And that was only the beginning. Before that first year was up, I had a room full of fiber, another spinning wheel and lots of little tools to help me along. OK that's the spinning part. My friend Vicki, who got me in this whole thing in the first place had been traveling in the Northwest on a vacation and had brought a loom home. I remember distinctly thinking she was crazy. I felt I was over my head in tools and fiber already, I couldn't imagine getting into another fiber craft at that moment. After watching her make some beautiful shawls on her loom, eventually, I started thinking about getting a loom, in the back of my mind.

In the meantime, my husband had been talking about getting into weaving for some time and I just poo-pooed him. Eventually I started looking around for a used loom. I found a Schacht Mighty Wolf loom in Redmond, Washington, several hundred miles away from us for about $1000 - which was a fantastic deal since new, they cost around $3000. We took a 3 day trip to Washington State and picked it up. It was a great trip and the loom was fantastic. O.K. this was my first loom. I did several projects on it and since it was so large, decided to get a small workshop loom. I found one on eBay for about $120, which I snapped up. It's a LeClerc Dorothy loom and weaves 15" wide. I think I did one project on it. At the end of last year, my friend Laura decided to get a Gilmore, 8 shaft, 22" weaving width loom and decided to sell her Baby Wolf loom so I bought it for $500. I have woven one project on it so far and taken it to one workshop.

The latest thing that has occured in my weaving world is my husband's company got bought and he exercised his options and came into some money. He figured this might be his last chance to buy a large computer controlled loom since that money wasn't accounted for in anything yet and was kind of free money in a way. We did quite a bit of looking around at dobby looms and he felt that the LeClerc Weavebird was the loom that fit the bill the closest - so he ordered it at the end of 2007 for an early 2008 delivery. Well, it was a bit late in getting here but finally came in total last week - 22 boxes, 750 pounds later. Wow! It is fantastic.

Notice, I have omitted the whole part of having to clear out a room, getting rid of furniture and having to put in attic stairs and moving all the fiber and tools up into the attic. Just this part took 2 months. Poor Jim. I don't think he realized how much work it was going to be to revamp that space! He had to first put in attic stairs (no small task) being is he had to buy a hoist to install in the roof to haul the 200 pound attic stairs up to the ceiling. And before he did that he had to re-frame that part of the ceiling so that the attic stairs would fit across several joists. He then had to bring electricity up there so he could see in the dark - then move air ducts around, put in flooring, etc.

So now, skip forward, where we have cleared the room and put all the fiber and tools up into the attic and it looks pretty good at this point. The loom is coming the next day and Jim takes out the rug cleaner to make sure the rug is clean before putting this monster loom in the room. The danged rug cleaner is broken. Before he could start putting the loom together the next day, he had to go out and buy a rug cleaner and clean the rug and hope it was going to be dry the next day (it was by the way).

Long story short, Jim stayed home the rest of the week so he could get the loom put together. By Friday, he had it entirely put together but we had no computer. I wasn't sure what we were going to do for a computer in there. I thought in the back of my mind that we would buy a laptop for it but had no idea where the laptop would live while we were weaving on the loom. Something very interesting to me is when you see these looms in the shows or in a workshop, a laptop is strapped to a beam in front of the user's face so she/he can see the screen while weaving - usually AVL looms. But on the Weavebird, there doesn't seem to be any built in place for a computer. Now does that seem like a really good design to you? If you were designing a brand spanking new loom that is designed to be computer controlled, and if the best place for a computer screen is in front of you so you can see the screen (so you don't get a neck ache from looking to the side) wouldn't you think someone would have thought of putting a shelf in front of you for a laptop computer or at least a monitor? I don't know, maybe it's just me. Oh, and there is another interesting thing about this loom. They haven't upgraded the port to a USB port. Do you not think that is strange? We had to go out and buy a serial converter so the computer could talk to the loom. Weird! It's like LeClerc wanted to get into dobby looms but had outdated information when designing it.

Anyway, Jim has gotten the loom and the computer on speaking terms. Yay! We got a 32 shaft pattern from www.handweaving.net and tested the loom on all 32 shafts. Sally from Weave-It is amazing. In no time at all, she had fixed the 24 shaft program to see the 32 shafts and we were on our way. We have yet to put a warp on it because it still needs a bit of adjusting. The cords to the shafts have a bit of slack in them on certain shafts.

O.K. this is a first 'catching up' post. From now on, I will probably post at least weekly, if not more, depending on what fibery thing is going on in my life at the moment.