Weaving A Gem Of A Life

Racking them up

I’m making progress on HR’s custom baby wrap. Just not as much as I’d planned. I’ve only gotten about 80″ woven in 2 days. Despite working really hard.

Just not at weaving.

My firewood guy showed up yesterday morning. Strike while the iron is hot, especially since the cold weather is just around the corner. Before we started Friday morning my basement looked like this:

By my steps there was I short row of firewood 7′ long & 5′ high plus a tiny bit of the next row.

Turn around and you’d have seen one long row of firewood 12′ long and 7.5′ high plus the start of the next row.

By this afternoon the short row turned into 3 short rows.

The long row turned into 2 long rows plus the start of two more (you can only see 1 in the photo), plus a small pile of long pieces that disrupt stacking.

I went from 4 cord of firewood stacked in the basement to almost 10. I don’t wield a chain saw or own a splitter, and I don’t lift huge pieces of wood. But I do help hold wood on the splitter, toss every piece down the ramp into the basement, and stack every piece. That’s A LOT of manual labor in the past 2 days. My arms feel sort of like jello, so I can’t weave for hours, even when I’m done stacking for the day.

I’ll have a firewood break of at least 2 days now, so I should be able to get a bunch of weaving done in the interim. Then probably 3 more cord of wood to the basement and another 7-8 stacked outside. I’m hoping one of the neighborhood kids will want to do the outside stacking after school for $$. It will be SO worth it to me!

What the Heck?

I feel like this photo shows the colors on this warp accurately.

So why, then, does this shot from the front show yellow & orange? Neither color is in the warp, and no Photoshop adjustments can make any noticeable improvement. Weird, huh?

Anyway, you can see the treadling difference here with the same tie up. HR asked me to do different treadling on tails. Here I’ve just started the hearts & flowers.

This image, on the right side of the loom, is more accurate in color, and you can see how nicely her iris tencel weft is playing with the other colors.

You can also see a threading error on the right side. I didn’t see it till I had almost 10″ woven – after I took this photo. I made a repair heddle and it’s fixed now, but I’ll be doing a bunch of needle weaving when it comes off the loom to fix this error – poop!

Back to Babies

After some delays, I’ve finally been able to get back to weaving my custom baby wraps. As always, I started by winding the bouts on my warping mill. HR, the warp designer, created a beautiful flow, using 10 colors — more than any of my moms to date. With gradients between each, there are only narrow bands of solid color.

Using Maurice Brassard cotton, here’s bout 1, going from royal to bleu to peacock.

Bout 2: peacock to vert pale to lilas.

Bout 3: lilas to rose pale to fuschia to magenta.

I had a bad moment, actually a bad few hours, with this bout. I had more than 80 threads wound & measured – close to 13 yards of each of those 80+ threads. Due to a bit of sloppiness in my paperwork, however, I’d inadvertently skipped over the rose pale completely, going directly from Lilas to fuschia.

OH NO! Fortunately I went back to my paperwork again before I started measuring out the next color and saw my mistake. I had to unwind those 1,000 yards of lilas & fuschia, carefully so as to not waste them, winding them on cones as I went. That took A LOT longer than winding it in the first place. Just like unweaving takes a lot longer than weaving. But I caught my mistake before it was too late and started again at the top of the bout with the lilas & rose pale before moving to the fuschia. Whew! Disaster averted.

And last: magenta to mauve pale to mauve fonce.

Here’s how the colors all play together. (The colors are pretty dull here, they’re richer in real life.)

I can’t wait to start weaving!

3 Blankies

I have the 3 blankets hemmed, washed & dried. All I need to do now is the hard press. I used a straight twill threading & treadling for all, and I’m quite pleased with how soft they all are.

Here’s the first one, the custom weave for TB.

The warp colors are cobalt, bleu, & thin stripes of marine; the weft is cobalt with the thin marine stripes. TB specifically wanted a rolled hem, not binding, so I had to choose which would be the ‘right’ side when I made that hem. I opted to have the side with the deeper colors, what you saw from underneath while still on the loom, be the right side.

Here’s my niece’s blanket, same warp, woven with all 3 colors in the weft for plaid.

My niece is pretty serious about the materials for her soon-to-be-born son, so I opted for a rolled hem for her, too, not a polyester satin binding. Again I had to decide which was the right side, and again I opted for the brighter side.

Finally, here’s the 3rd blanket I wove on this warp to have in my stock for shows. This is the only one I photographed with both sides showing so you can see the difference.

I opted to bind it, and I’m not sure that was a good decision. That binding is far more pucker-y than I’d like. Should I take the binding off and try again? Should I revert to a rolled hem? I haven’t yet decided & I’d love your input on this.

I had to buy a new sewing machine….the one I inherited from my mother was behaving badly, despite regular servicing. All I need to do is forward, backward, & zigzag. No fancy stitches needed. So I opted for a Janome model that is supplied to schools.

It didn’t like sewing that slippery binding. As guided by folks on the internet, I reduced both the tension & the stitch length, which definitely helped. If I have to do it again I’ll try with the tissue paper in there, too.

500 Steps

Although the temperature was about 31 degrees this morning, it’s a beautiful, sunny, Autumn afternoon. I took my camera with me when I went for a walk. I spent the first part of the walk looking up.

I don’t recall oaks having this many colors. Usually they go from green to a brief span of dull gold and then brown.

This year the oaks are green and gold, peach and salmon, burgundy and copper.

And the sumacs — oh, my! They are on fire!

So many colors in just a few plants. Standing right next to each other, how can they be so beautifully different?

I think this is cohosh. Whatever it is, the magenta leaves and blue-black berries are lovely.

Even these prickly vines, never producing berries, are beautiful.

And where the leaves are completely gone, the sun on the tree trunks and leaf litter has a grace all its own.

The sky is so blue against the dark trees and white clouds.

I decided to look down for the walk back home.

While a very poor year for wild apples, it’s a heck of a year for acorns.

A few red clover blossoms hang on.

The leaves on the ground need no narratives.

These are just a few of the MANY shots I took, all within only 500 steps from my front door. I’d love to see what your camera would find within 500 steps of your door. Do comment and let me know where I can find them on your blog or other public location.

Weaving A Gem Of A Life

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