And then weeks passed

Honestly, I have absolutely no idea where the time goes. Suddenly two and a half weeks have passed since I last posted. How does this happen? What am I doing with my time? Sometimes I don’t even know, but each day goes by. So it’s time to share some odds and ends of what I have been doing.

FINALLY, after MONTHS, I got the blues-greens handpainted warp off the loom These are not intended to be beauty shots…it takes me a long time to set those up, take them, edit out the junk in the background, and adjust the lighting so the colors are relatively close to real life. I knew if I took the time to do that, it’d be another week before I got to the post. So I just sort of snapped images.

This is a shawl. I added some narrow stripes of the very dark purple that’s in the weft. It adds a bit of interest. And here you can see the difference in the two sides of the fabric. A nice thing about shawls is that I don’t have to decide which is the ‘right’ side since I’m not hemming or seaming anything.

The rest of the warp is just yardage at this point. About 3.25 yards. I intended to sew it into a garment, but I may try to just market it as yardage. Easy peasy…if it sells.

On the knitting front, after I finished all my gift knitting, it was time to pick up the needles for more socks for me. After all, socks wear out, and I’ve learned that I am absolutely no good at darning them. Since I pretty much always have socks on my needles, I’ve become much more comfortable with tossing them out when they get holes. (Ok, truth be told I have a small collection of holey socks…shouldn’t they make good rags or something?)

I had 2 skeins of the sock yarn, purple plied with blue. Love the colors.

I like to do different things, so I searched Ravelry and downloaded a free pattern with some lacey ribs. Knit a few inches and it just didn’t move me. Back to Ravelry, and this time I picked another free pattern with a combination of cables and purl bumps. I knit all the way up through half of the gusset, and realized that those cables were making it too tight; I would not like the way it fit if I continued. I’d have to make it wider/add stitches, or go up a size in needles, which I didn’t have. So I pulled it all out. Ergo the sloppy skein you see.

Back to Ravelry once again. Decided I wanted to make a gansey sampler, but nothing moved me. (Don’t know about ganseys? Here’s a nice article that compares ganseys and Aran knitting in sweaters, which is their traditional form.) So I came to my computer and played in Excel to create a sampler of my own.

Then I realized that the nice blue & purple yarn would not be the best to show off the stitches, so I pulled out some plain undyed yarn and set to work. I’ve already had to make some adjustments to my plan, but here are the first 4 motifs. I put my hand inside because it’s much easier to see the stitches that way.

Meanwhile, I tested out my button making class on my friends, made the necessary changes, and scheduled it with the Weaving & Fiber Arts Center. You can find it here, twice, in an attempt to accommodate different schedules. As we moved forward, the Management Team at the Center decided we needed to buy a document camera and make it available to our teachers to encourage more online teaching. So I ordered that, and then had to figure out how to use it myself, and draft procedures for teachers. I still have to get it to the Center and make sure it works with the laptop that’s there.

Finally, I’m registered to take an online class via the Jacksonville, FL weaver’s guild. A Rochester woman and Center teacher is teaching the online class, entitled One Warp, Many Structures. Our warps will go through shadow weave, doubleweave, echo, rep, and more, so choosing 2 quite different colors for the warp was essential. I chose a rust/brick and a lavender. Here’s the measured and chained warp. I love the way it looks, and the sheen on the mercerized cotton adds to its beauty. I plan to beam it and start threading today.

So I’ve not been sitting around and eating bon-bons, but sometimes it feels like that.