The Wheel Deal

Yesterday my husband found a listing for this Louet S10 spinning wheel on Kijiji and it was such a fabulous deal we couldn't say no! It's in really great condition and has seven spools and a rack that attaches to the bottom of the wheel so I can easily ply as many as four singles. :)



I just found out from my mother in law that there will be some wool fleece coming my way which is SO AWESOME! I will have to decided if it will be good for wet felting, because otherwise it will get spun on this bad boy!

A lovely friend gave me this amazing handwoven rug with an Asian dragon silhouette. Also it is TOTALLY in my wedding colours and thus matches a handwoven hand dyed/screened blanket that two of my college girlfriends made for me. I plan to hand stitch a little sleeve at the top so I can hang it on my wall instead of putting it on the floor. I just don't know if I can walk on it. :P


The coolest thing about the rug is that is is reversible! I adore it!


I have been busy weaving up scarves on my four harness jack loom in the basement. A-It is so much cooler down there and B-I need to start building up some stock for the Annual Sale in November.

This scarf in 100% wool, made with a peach and sage green space dyed wool, and a few stripes of peach and rust stuff I have on cones.


This scarf was a real learning experience for me. It is difficult to see but I wove a stripe of darker green above and below the horizontal orange stripes and that yarn didn't shrink at all when I wet the scarf out to finish it. So I had to cut it out and replace that with the paler green weft and re-wet it and hope for the best. Shown below is the scarf where the yarn has been replaced in the left side but not yet on the right. It looked a lot worse in reality, but if you click on it you can see the puckering that occurred when that section of weft did not shrink with the rest.


Below are close ups of the two sides. Now I got a much better result once the weft was replaced, but because I was sewing it in by hand the tension was different and so I did experience a bit of a pucker at the outside edge when the yarn I replaced shrunk, but over all it's much better than what I had before.


The other thing that happened was kind of a happy accident. The stripes of rust and peach were of a different wool than the rest of the warp, and it shrunk more. So it pulled up the ends of the scarf into a scallop. NEAT. I left a very long fringe, plying two warp threads together all the way across. (Sarah, I absolutely used that little doohickey you gave me. It worked like a charm and my fingers thank you). Below is the puckered scarf before I wove in the new weft.


And this scarf was a real quickie using some dishcloth cotton I had dyed. One side was pale brown, space dyed with navy, and the other side is peach. I used a peach acrylic faux-hair for weft. Not only is the scarf soft and fuzzy, but since it doesn't have any animal fiber in it it might appeal to a vegan, unless they are concerned about the dyes.


The peach faux-hair crosses the areas of pale brown in the navy warp and gives the scarf a mottled look.


And this is the Rose Tapestry at 114 hours:


I had warp threads break on me! So where you see the white cord wrapped in figure eights around t-pins that is a busted warp thread than I had to replace. I seriously have nightmares about this kind of thing and it was a bit trying when they started to fray, especially because it is supposed to be a high quality rug warp and I paid a hefty sum for it. GAR.


Anyways in the long run it should be no big deal. I think it was just the idea that freaked me out (angst to the max) in the beginning. It's a pain in the bottom but not The End of Days. :P

And hey, speaking of pains in the bottom I have learned something new. The lady who gave me the rug told me that the pain I have been experiencing deep in my hips is likely Weaver's Bottom. I laughed but she was dead serious, so I looked it up:

Weaver's bottom: Inflammation of the bursa that separates the gluteus maximus muscle of the buttocks from the underlying bony prominence of the bone that we sit on, the ischial tuberosity. Weaver's bottom is a form of bursitis that is usually caused by prolonged sitting on hard surfaces that press against the bones of the bottom or mid-buttocks. In proper medical parlance, Weaver's bottom is called ischial bursitis.

Thanks MedicineNet. com!

Thanks for popping by!

♥
JQ

Tapestry update and a few side projects...

Greetings fellow earthlings!

This is what my tapestry looks like at 85 hours!


I know it seems to be progressing at a snail's pace. I've been finding it difficult to designate even 1 or 2 hours a day with my 2 year old operating at full throttle, especially since summer has hit. We are undertaking fencing and landscaping our yard. I can't believe it's been almost 2 years since we moved in! I'm hoping to have a small vegetable garden and some flower beds as well as actual GRASS! :D

On a completely separate note I just have to gush for a moment, about my super awesome hubby. He's like, the KING of thrift store bargains and has been finding the most amazing stuff at great prices! Take a look at all the yarn and crochet thread!


Not just the amazing deals but the colours he's been able to find are fabulous! I'm especially in love with the Skeins of lime green size 30. All those skeins are Daisy brand and are 400 yards per skein.

He found a whole bunch of Daisy skeins in the Pansy colourway, so I think I might save that for a big bedspread or table cloth project:


I use crochet thread in so many of my projects. I like to use it for more traditional uses like doilies and lace, but it is also what I use to make my colourful inkle bands, and inkle jewelry, and it comprises about 75% of my current tapestry, the rest being random bits of wool, silk and linen. The white and off white will be perfect for blending or for dying.

Three big cheers for a fabulous husband who is so very supportive of my vocation! ♥ ♥ ♥


Speaking of crochet thread and doilies, I made these 2 matching hot pads using caramel and chocolate brown with a bit of black. I plan to make a set of 8 matching coasters, but I need to adjust the pattern. I copied this from an old hot pad my grandma purchased at a thrift shop:


I puzzled out the pattern for this set of rainbow flower coasters as well. Big thanks to my mum in law for thinking of me when she picked them up at a yard sale! And another big thanks to her for finding me some cool colours of crochet thread recently. I am so lucky to have such a supportive family! ♥


They are two-toned. The backs are darker and bits of that dark colour show up behind the lighter colour because of a slight variation in the patterns from back to front. Now I want to find a clear glass bowl--like a candle cup-- to keep them in!


Thanks everyone for stopping in. Hope you are all having a good summer!
♥
JQ

The Rose Tapestry at 64 Hours

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.
--Georgia O'Keeffe


This is 64 hours. Total weave time includes everything I do for the tapestry once the warp is strung, tensioned and twined. That took me about a week of evenings.


It's probably about 60% weaving, 20% yarn prep (dying, skeining and winding butterflies/bobbins), and 20% visualizing. That last one actually happens the whole time I am weaving and prepping yarn as well. I do pause for contemplation. I sit with my work and survey it; I imagine it unfurling. I roll colours in my hands, twining them together to get an idea of how they will mingle. How I weave each section is more important to me than how fast I can do it, so I never feel guilty about taking time to think. If I spend 6 hours weaving a section and then decide it really doesn't work I have to un weave it.


I'll be moving to the left side to complete the green petal or at least weave it as high as I need in order to weave the dark squiggly section just to the right of it. Once those two pieces are done I'll be able to start on the petal that is unfurling above it all. Another small section to the right is ready to be woven so if I get bored of green I might skip over there and weave the section of orange/yellow with black lines.


And this little guy is the product of another delightful workshop I was able to participate in through my local spinners and weavers guild. There's a bit of pop culture reference here. Can anyone guess?


He's made with wool fleece and special tools called felting needles. I REALLY had fun making him. Actually I'm feeling as little distracted by it! I just want to buy up a bunch of coloured fleeces and needle felt my own army of cute.


Thanks for stopping by!
♥
JQ