Yesterday I took Jack out for his regular afternoon walk. It’s been very cold, so he usually chooses to walk only as long as absolutely necessary to accomplish his mission. The afternoon walk was once around the block, which was what this walk often is any time of the year. Fine.
We got back home and I sat down to do some computer work. Jack was sitting near me in the room, just like always. He was, I thought, chewing on his bone. Swell.
When I was done on the computer, about an hour, I stood up and saw this.
WHAT THE HECK?!?! Jack hadn’t been chewing on his bone, but pulling things out of the rug!
In 2 years he has pulled out a total of maybe 2 dozen, and I always thought they were done in error when he was grabbing for a toy. But this?!?! This is BAD!
To make it as bad as possible, this spot is dead center in the middle of the rug. It’s not like I can put a chair over it or something. I have no clue if I can put those parts back into the rug; I will try, but I’m betting it will either be near impossible or will look like hell when I’m done, and that I’ll be looking for a new rug. I’ve thought about weaving one, but wasn’t really ready to do that. Especially since this rug is a 5′ x 8′. Quite a large rug for handwoven indeed. Your suggestions will be appreciated.
In another what-the-heck is a new problem with my Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor. I have used this program for years, ever since I’ve had a blog, for sure. It’s how I edit my photos and size them for the web. When I got my new laptop, I’m thinking about 18 months ago, I had to change the version of the software and get used to it, but it works very similarly, so fine.
Except starting a few days ago, not fine. I open an image. Crop and adjust as needed. Go to Save for Web and resize. Hit Save. I consistently get an error message: “Could not complete this operation. The specified volume could not be found.” It matters not what file location I choose.
I’ve figured out a work around, but come on – what the heck happened?!?! My work around is more steps: Go to Image Resize. In a few clicks I’ve gotten it to the size I want. Then go to Save as and rename the file so I now it’s the modified one. Then click Save, and it easily goes to exactly the same location as it couldn’t find a minute ago. Again – what the heck? I can’t find anything in Preferences that would seem to have any impact. Again, your suggestions will be welcomed.
Ok, so here we are on December 31. A few days ago I had a minor freak out when I realized that I had only 4 days left in the month and had completed NOT A SINGLE THING for my inventory. YIKES!
So I put the black and white 8/2 tencel scarf warp on my counterbalance loom. I figured I could weave it off relatively quickly. And I did. I’m not in love with the huck weave structure I chose, but it’s okay.
This was an experiment, to see what I might like best for weft for the shawl warp I’d painted at the same time. First I did a gradient weft: 16.5″ of a solid color, my standard 64-thread gradient to the next solid color, repeat. I had 4 solids I used: black, dark gray, silver gray, and white. It’s okay, but not my favorite. I do like those spots of black on one end of the fringe – reminds me of porcupine quills.
Next I used solid white for the weft. I like this one better. You can see that one of the fringes in the middle of the white end sort of came undone in the wet finishing. No idea why, but I’ll have to fix that.
I had enough warp left for one more scarf. What color would I choose? As I thought about it, I had a light bulb moment. My cowls have been selling pretty well, so instead of making one more long, fringed scarf, I’d weave two short cowls – it’ll be summer time and people like short cowls in the summer.
So I wove one with the dark gray weft and one with the silver weft. This got me 4 finished pieces instead of 3. 🙂
I don’t think either of these photos show the cowls to their best advantage, but frankly didn’t want to go through the challenge of the Adobe process again with the other shots I’d taken.
Then I realized I’d finished weaving another scarf on my rigid heddle loom a few weeks ago but never did the finishing. This is the counterpart to the one shown here, this time with a dark purple chenille weft.
This rayon boucle warp doesn’t look good when double twisted, so I tried to put some beads on it to dress up an otherwise plain fringe. Geez, it was one problem after another, until I finally gave up, cut the fringe short-ish and called it good. So I ended December with 5 pieces. But absolutely nothing is on the loom now to start January. I saw a scarf woven from this to-die-for draft on Facebook and grabbed the draft from Handweaving.net – this is why I stay a member!
Thank you to Tara Oftenorth for creating this modification. I think I’ll warp my Macomber for this next.
UPDATES:
Jack had dental surgery last month – 14 teeth removed! Yikes! I suddenly realized that since his mouth has healed he has been doing a lot of chewing, much more than previously. Those teeth must have hurt, poor baby. So yesterday I went to Petco and bought 3 different kinds of chew toys. He loves them all. Hopefully this will protect future problems.
I googled the problem with Photoshop Elements, and was far from the only person with this issue. I followed directions for fixing it, and it worked like a charm.
I just started weaving and happened upon your blog. Your woven items are beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
Enjoy, Mary, and welcome to the world of weaving. There are lots of us out here, and we’re always eager to answer questions and otherwise encouraging people new to the craft.
I agree with Alma. Rug layering is a very trendy thing to do and is a quick fix. Google will give you some good inspiration.
Poor Jack – I’d love to think it was an innocent mistake – – who knows what he was thinking of. Have you considered a small round area rug in the middle of your 5×8?
Poor Peg – That’s just what you need is a hole in the carpet!
I like the black and white scarves – especially the second one. It’s a city skyline. It
s a skyline reflected in a still pond. It’s a really cool scarf!
The last thing you showed – the pattern – is amazing in itself, and should work up beautifully.
Joann’s does have the needles you mentioned – they always try to suggest them to me when I go on their site to look at yarns. The ones they show, however, are plastic and designed for sewing knitted products. I don’t know if they come in fine narrow little things that would work well for beading.
I did a quick search to look for a picture of a big eyed needle and found it in an etsy shop. I also think JoAnn’s carries them, I got mine from Shipwreck Beads when there.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/572961399/beadsmith-assorted-big-eye-beading?gpla=1&gao=1&utm_campaign=shopping_us_yummytreasures_sfc_osa&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_custom1=0&utm_content=5270845&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIoJvWq5S12AIVEY5-Ch0I1AuXEAQYBCABEgLxF_D_BwE
I use Weavepoint for designing drafts. But I did take a seminar at Complex Weavers about using layers in Photoshop elements and assigning different weave structures to them, then bringing them over into your weaving software and it recognizing the layers as weave structures. It all sounded so easy, which it might be for someone familiar with Photoshop. Big learning curve for me to get there and I just haven’t had the time.
Just remembered the name of the needed – a big eyed needle.
And no knowledge of Photoshop although I do have a free version of Elements on one of my computers with the thoughts of learning how to use it for designing drafts……..have never had time to spend learning it.
Yes, it is now a free version of Elements that I have, too. I use Fiberworks for designing my weaving drafts. It’s great and easy to use. Don’t know that Photoshop would be helpful at all for that. But maybe you meant your embroidery drafts?
Yikes on the rug!
Lovely black/grey/white scarves. When you sew your cowls do you do a French hem? or sew like jeans are sewn together? I’ve made a couple but wasn’t happy with the bulk.
On beading – I add beads in the fringe and also sew them on along the hemstitched edge or a hemmed edge. If putting them on the fringe I use a closed beading needle – it’s closed on both ends with a huge opening the length of the needle – does that make sense? It’s easy to put the yarn through the opening and then slide beads over the yarn. I do it all the time even with the tiniest seed beads.
I use a flat felled seam on my cowls. Its bulk depends on the fabric of the scarf…not bad at all on these tencel, it is a bit thick on a rayon chenille, but then the scarves are a bit thick, too.
I have put beads on the hemstitched edge, but that wasn’t the look I was going for on this. I guess I’ve never seen a closed beading needle. I have seen and occasionally used the ones that are made out of very thin twisted wire and have a huge eye, but they are so flexible that they bend out of usage very quickly, at least IMHO. And I don’t have any at the moment. Next time I’m at Michael’s or Joann’s I’ll have to see if they have any of those needles.
Wishing you all the best in 2018!
We avoid carpet like the plague here, a small spilled spot will provide endless hours of chewing. I’m guessing anything on rug fiber is especially delicious, more so if it is shaggy! We’ve had walls chewed, blankets, a piece of kibble fell between a wider portion of our wood floor, it now has a very wide space there. Dog just do this crap, hard to say why. I always check to make sure it’s a toy and I always check when the little heathens are too quiet! It’s too late for this rug, but keeping some bitter apple around should you notice an interest in something else is handy.
The black and white scarves are delightful! I don’t bead, but Cindie is the queen of beading scarves. I bet she has some great tips.
Stay warm Peg, and once you get over being mad at Jack, give him a New Year’s cuddle too.
I have to have rugs on a few of my floors – it makes it feel like home and reduces echo.
I should clarify…although the impact is BAD, he was not doing it when I turned around, and I’m a firm believer in not chastising the animal unless you catch him in the act. So Jack wasn’t punished. And in my opinion, yelling at him may well be counterproductive even if I caught him in the act – he is a sensitive little guy with plenty of anxieties already; I don’t need to add to that.
Bitter apple is a good idea. In hindsight I had noticed for a few days that he’d drop his squeaky toy while we were playing and sniff the rug. Although I wasn’t aware I’d spilled anything, he clearly had an unusual interest in something in that area.
I’ve beaded scarves before…this boucle was just too ‘lumpy’…if I could get it through the eye of a needle that needle was too big to go through the beads. And if, by chance I could get a bead threaded, I couldn’t push it up past most of the lumps in the boucle. I could have beaded on a completely new thread, but that wasn’t the look I was going for.
Thinking about you and yours, Theresa. Sending hugs and a glass of hot mulled cider your way.
Cider sounds wicked good! Punish dogs..never besides the terriers look at me and then giggle amongst themselves. I reserve the “Bad dog” comment for truly horrendous behavior, then everybody slinks off, those guilty little minds.Contrition lasts for about a minute..maybe. Jack is so sensitive probably a simple redirect would be the best if caught in the act. Do you think it could be the color he doesn’t like? 😉 My first Cairn was so good she never chewed anything as a pup nor had an accident except for one sleazy paperback chewed to pieces. I believe the content was offensive to her.