Weaving – Fiberjoy

Year End Fiber Bookends

2022 started off with weaving cotton bath towels for Ed and I.

The year closed with knitting Blunk the Hat

The unique construction was engaging and fun. I’m planning to stash dive tomorrow afternoon for more handspun yarn to make one for Ed.

This hat used 70 grams out of 100 grams handspun skein.

One fiber goal for 2023 is to do better with recording my projects herein the blog.

I’m extremely thankful that the December 23rd ice storm wasn’t anywhere as bad as the epic icestorm of February 12, 2021! All the roads in this area were skating rinks; many vehicles ended up in ditches. A video was posted to Youtube of an adult ice skating down the middle of 3rd St in Silverton (seven miles from here) pulling a young child in a sled. What fun!

Our road.

This view is just 3 blocks from our road, our road is towards the far bend in the road.

By eleven Christmas Eve morning the temperature had gone from 20F to 35F so we loaded baked ham, a pecan pie and rolls made the day before, into the car and drove to have an early Christmas dinner with daughter and family.

I’m praying
– the war in Ukraine will cease
– that people everyone will become less self-absorbed
instead learn to listen and to care.

I pray that God’s love and peace will be felt.
His will be done.

Granddaughter made these delicious cookies.

May 2023 be an all around good year full of contentment and finding happiness in the ordinary.

Weaving into 2020

2020 opened with three rugs started on the loom in time for the visiting grandchildren to try their hands at weaving.
Feathers was thrilled to continue weaving until supper time.
Wesley also loved it but, he was quite taken with my mountain dulcimer.He and Faith had fun playing some simple duets together.After supper we played Life. It’d been a couple of decades since Ed & I had played that game when our kids were still in their teens.
A fun thing for me was to watch when our daughter-in-law, Lacey, arrived after hanging out with Sarah all afternoon: as she walked in the door and saw Faith weaving, she stopped and stared at the loom then zoomed right to the backside to inspect the warp, the warping beam and heddles. She was absolutely fascinated with this thing that she’d barely noticed before. Instantaneous love! We could almost see her mind going hundreds of miles an hour as she took in all the possibilities with the harnesses, treadles, warp and weft. Before she even threw the shuttle she was dreaming of buying one. I really hope that she will be able to in the not to distant future. She has an engineer’s brain that loves solving problems, schematics, and being creative. Plus the kids like to weave. A win-win.

They went home with one green rug before I had the chance to photograph it so I have only the two others that were made between the last week of December and the 4th of January.
Pippin on the rug destined for the hall. Unfortunately he loves chewing on it. Until we can thoroughly train him not to chew on it it’s in the office where I can keep an eye on him when he’s on it.

Weaving and spinning thoughts

This evening an email set me to thinking about why I spend so much more time spinning then weaving.

Opportunities to weave were squeezed into any free moment possible, even a five minutes of waiting for tea to brew was time to throw the shuttle. I even enjoy the slow work of hemstitching the ends while the web is still on the loom.

Whenever spinning flirted with me I quickly turned my back on such a thought. When presented in a tantalizing way I’d remember my mom’s hilariously dismal attempts to learn how to spin from a Navajo friend. No way! Not when I could buy wonderful yarns perfect for weaving from a local source just up the road from where we lived in Portland.

Ed practically hauled me over to a vendor who was selling a beginner’s spinning kit AND was willing to get me started. He decided there was no way I should pass up the opportunity to broaden my fiber world.

My loom has seen far too little action these past few years. As I go about the daily tasks, dreams of weaving flit through my mind. Right now two projects are waiting in the wings including a simple one that shouldn’t take more than a few days.

The other project will take hours of planning and preparation before the warp is on and the actual weaving can begin.

Therein lays the main reason that spinning has taken over.

It’s easy. Grab some fiber, a spinning tool and you’re spinning.

With a spindle it’s also portable. How I love that aspect! Sure, weaving with a small loom is sort of portable.

Snort. Not in the easy way of spindle spinning.

While waiting for a concert:
Sitting on the porch at McMenamins Edgefield passing time before a concert, people watching. When I returned from a stroll this woman was asking Ed about the spindle which was peeking out of the small tea canister sitting on the arm of the Adirondack chair next to Ed. A knitter who wanted to learn how to spin.

Getting fresh air and exercise:

I have no idea how many miles spindles have accompanied me during walks. Well over a pound of BLF has been spun as have other smaller projects.

Spinning is a soothing tactile way of relaxing. It can also be mindless; a productive hands-on activity which allows me to listen to audios, watch a movie, think, or pray.

Weaving remains a passion. My goal these next few weeks is to manage my time better in order to carve out a regular weaving routine. In my dream world I’d spend a certain amount of time each day spinning, weaving, playing the violin, practicing the piano and walking. Someday.

Weaving Wednesday

A simple weaving project was done this past summer using tencel and linen threads purchased through eBay and during Black Sheep Gathering. Woven on my 40″, 4-shaft Norwood loom.

Threading some 450+ needles.

I didn’t think to take any actual weaving shots.

After washing and drying the fabric in the machine I set to with my trusty Featherweight Singer.

The bottom hem.

I had hemstitched the edges while the material was still on the loom.

Another seam going in.

I liked the fringe so much that I decided it would look great incorporated into the design.

This picture is washed out, the main color is a rich burgundy.

Yes, I wove curtains.
For our bathroom.
Yes, one of these days we’ll replace that ancient wallpaper!

Finches, a hummingbird and a shirt

I want to put the brakes on June, to have the days slow to a languid crawl wherein there is plenty of time to luxuriate in the last weeks of one of the most pleasant Springs to be had.

Hearing the noisy birds at the feeders this evening I grabbed my camera and slid quietly outside to snap pictures of the finches.
(Picture heavy post; please let me know if any of you have a slow connection which makes loading lots of pictures almost impossible.)

At times throughout the day over two dozen would be flitting amongst the branches of the ash tree and two feeders.

A tiny bird hummed into view to stop for a bright sweet drink.

She kept an eye on me but didn’t seem too wary about the less than five feet between us.

There was another reason I’d stepped outside before the evening dew began to fall.

A shirt was waiting to be brought inside and ironed after this past Saturday’s debut at the NW Regional Spinners’ Guild conference held on the beautiful grounds of Willamette University. I only went for the day to chat with people, spin and volunteer to watch items in the Gallery a couple of hours. And chat with more people. While spinning on my Egret. And have a delightful lunch outside next to this bridge with Flora who drove down from Portland to spin for the day.
The material was woven earlier this year (see 1.4.14 post) from a combination of linen threads, tencel threads and wool. A linsey/woolsey shirt – which looks like it will definitely need ironing. The material may have come off the loom in January, washed, dried and rolled up to store but it took until May to get around to figuring out what shape to make the shirt. I’m quite pleased with it. I love the woven detail that can be seen close up.

1.4.14 Weaving

Whee! Another project came off the loom yesterday. This material is destined to be a summery shirt.

1.5 Correction on the yarns used. (I should never write thread content from memory late at night!)
Warp, 4 types, sleyed at 16 epi using 12 dent reed:
10/2 linen, plum
8/2 tencel, deep burgandy
8/2 linen/cotton, red
5/2 cotton garnet
Weft – 2 of the yarns used in the warp: 8/2 linen/cotton red; 10/2 linen plum
Alternating shuttles in straight twill drawn (1,2,3,4…)

Extra warp had been measured on for testing color combos and treadling pattern for the weaving. With a limited supply of three of the colors there wasn’t much leeway for extensive sampling, but enough for both Ed and I to like the pattern of this sequence. I love the very slight slubbiness that both of the weft threads had which adds a bit of character.
Weaving 003 (The colors are closer to the real fabric in this top picture.)

Tossed in the washing machine then the dryer with a large fluffy towel it came met all my expectations. Except for throw that left an undetected loop underneath. I completely missed it, even during inspection before tossing it in the washer. I blame the small child who was here yesterday. She helped me finish weaving the piece then apparently I was too excited about tossing it in the washer. I’ll have to get a needle thread a length of that yarn along side this errant loop (as seen below) so that it can be cut.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30