Weaving A Gem Of A Life

I’ve decided to jump into Jan’s Scarf A Day challenge for the month of February. I may not be able to actually make a scarf a day, but what the heck, I may as well try. Besides, Jan only holds herself to 5 days a week, and does extend the completions to towels and other linens as well as scarves. I think I’m probably weaving almost that much without the challenge, so, I’m off, starting with the placemats I finished last weekend.

Last week I put on a warp, and yesterday I took three handwoven scarves off my beloved counterbalance loom. These will be the last three that I weave in rayon chenille for a while, since I need to get started on the spring and summer weights.

The three scarves are all made with rayon chenille that was handpainted by the wonderful Tammy of Yarntopia Treasures, in a colorway she calls Surreal. I’ve used this colorway before in rayon boucle, and folks really loved it. You’ll remember I also recently finished a handwoven shawl using this yarn. For the scarves, I put a thin stripe of solid purple along one edge.

I used different weft yarns for the three scarves.
The first one was a solid purple that Tammy custom dyed to coordinate with the weft, creating a scarf that striped lengthwise.

For the second scarf I used the variegated surreal yarn for both warp and weft, making the scarf darker and almost plaid looking.

Finally, I used a rather bright blue solid weft, again custom dyed by Tammy. This scarf is overall the brightest of the three.

And now to see the three of them together for the comparison.

It’s much easier to see the differences when they’re side by side.

I’m off to start on some weaving with a bamboo-cotton blend. Spring scarves, here I come!

These are handwoven placemats I made on my Macomber. I made these out of an unbleached 10/2 pearl cotton, which gives them a nice, fine look and feel, as well as the slight sheen of the mercerized cotton. I modified a pattern I had for linen placemats, since the pattern called for yarn that was about twice as thick as the 10/2 cotton.

Despite spending literally hours planning these placemats, I still made a significant boo-boo. I didn’t plan enough for the shrinkage of the pearl cotton. I used 288 threads, sett at 20 ends per inch, for 14 1/2″ in the reed. This translated to about 13 1/4″ on the front beam, which shrank to 12 1/4″ after wet finishing. That’s bad enough, but the length, ah the length. I had 20″ on the loom, but after hemming — by hand, I might add, for real class — and wet finishing, they’re only about 15″ long.

I keep telling myself that they’re just right for an elegant luncheon, when the plates shouldn’t be quite as large as a dinner plate. Besides, we all ought to eat smaller portions, and usually do when we’re in a more formal setting, and these placemats are perfect for that.

I’d like to show you how a placemat looks with a single place setting on it, but my dishes are all large and bold-colored. While they look great on my vintage red formica table, they just don’t work on these lovely handwoven placemats. You’ll have to use your imagination.

Your turn: Do you use placemats? What are your dishes like?

I’m quite a home body. I’m more comfortable staying in my little corner of the world than traveling. I think it’s the safety of the known versus the excitement of the unknown. Somehow I feel like my life includes plenty of excitement already, and plenty of unknowns. Little things mostly, but either I have an incredibly small desire for that adrenalin rush, or I unwittingly create my own rushes through mental machinations.

That being said, I have taken some really marvelous trips to far away places. Unfortunately, all those pics were taken with a film camera, and I don’t have a scanner so I can’t transfer them to a digital medium. So my version of Carmi’s On The Road challenge of the week is from my own road.

I walk on my dirt road daily. Most times twice a day. It gets me outside, gets any sunshine that exists on my face, and the hill really gets my heart pumping. Living on a dirt road with very little traffic, it also gives little Red a chance to run and explore safely, without having to battle the way-over-his-head weeds that field walks mean.

When we’re lucky, Red’s friend Marley joins us at the top of the hill and walks with us for a while. These two dogs couldn’t be more different in terms of size, coloring, or temperament, but they really like each other. They walk, they run, they bare their teeth, they jump and twist. And of course, they sniff each other’s butts. Marley’s gentle with his little buddy, and Red gets a chance to be a bit more assertive than usual. This shot shows them just enjoying a winter day together. I like both the dog counterpoint and the fogginess of this shot.

Your turn – join in Carmi’s game, or tell me about your dog’s friends.

I recently finished a beautiful handwoven shawl. Made from rayon chenille hand painted by Tammy, I’m really happy with the overall appearance of this shawl. The rich, saturated gemtones are pretty much my favorite colors.

This will go up on my website soon, but I’m betting I’ll get a much bigger reaction at shows. Although I’ve tried many different techniques, I’ve never managed to get what I consider to be a great picture of rayon chenille. The fiber’s natural sheen causes light to bounce around a great deal, despite the various ways I’ve tried to minimize it. Also, with this rayon chenille shawl, the color was a real challenge. Either it was all REALLY blue, showing next to no purple, or it was washed out looking more gray than anything. I probably took 20 shots of this handwoven shawl before I got one that I thought was worth using.

Now for something else in shades of blue & purple…
Isn’t that attractive? (Please ignore the fact that I have rather ugly feet, with a big bunion and toes that, at best, resemble cocktail wieners.) I dropped a piece of firewood on my toe yesterday. Not far, but it went down on end, and the edge of the firewood hit the toe really directly. Now here’s the really amazing thing: doesn’t that look like it should hurt like hell, all swollen and black & blue like that? Well, it hardly hurts at all.  Immediately after hitting it I elevated, iced, and rubbed in arnica oil whenever I could for the rest of the day. And today it’s really not feeling bad at all. I even got in 1/2 mile of walking my dog. Mind you, I’d usually have walked about 3 miles, but the single digit temps combined with the toe turned us around really quickly.

Your turn: got any good tricks, either for photographing rayon chenille or for keeping your toes safe?

On Saturday morning I was feeling pretty good. As planned, I’d managed to work my way through a decent quantity of my yarn stock, getting ready for the 2010 shows. I’d also done the tedious work of updating my website with recently handwoven scarves and shawls, and removing items no longer available.

Then the mail arrived. It contained two boxes of hand painted yarn I’d ordered from Tammy at Yarntopia Treasures, my favorite fiber colorist.

Most of the yarn is a bamboo-cotton blend: 2/3 bamboo and 1/3 cotton. This blend makes the yarn more affordable while keeping the best qualities of both fibers. The silver is rayon to coordinate with another handpainted rayon I previously ordered from Tammy.

The bamboo-cotton will makes some stunning handwoven scarves, perfect for the warmer weather that we’ll have by the time shows start. I purchased the rayon specifically to make a handwoven shawl that I think will look quite dressy.

So now, although I’m still working on my stash of rayon chenille, all that gorgeous bamboo-cotton has brought with it some anxiety. Overflowing shelves mean I have lots more weaving to do.

And since the handpainted yarn all needs to be wound into balls before I can get it on the warping board, it’s just that much more time. Fortunately, last year I bought a yarn swift and a ball winder. Until then I’d stretched the skeins over the backs of two kids’ chairs and wound balls by hand. These two simple tools take the time per skein from 15 minutes down to 3-4 minutes – a dramatic decrease.

Your turn – what have you received in the mail recently?