Weaving A Gem Of A Life

Spring in the woods

Yesterday the beautiful spring weather called me off the road and into the woods for my daily walk. I really wanted to see what was blooming there.

Spring beauties are up — ahhhh. They are so aptly named.

In my woods they come in the stunning variety and a slightly less gorgeous, paler, almost white bloom.

I kept climbing the hill in the woods, turned around, and saw this lovely wooded view.

Can you see the roof of my house in that photo? How about that terrific field on the next hill that I like to climb up to and enjoy the view?

No? Don’t see either? Here they are.

I kept walking and found several patches of leeks. They’re a real spring delicacy out here in the sticks. I think they’re a distant relative of the leeks sold in the grocery store, with stems as thick as 3 fingers. These wild leeks, called ramps in the southern states, have a stem that’s about the width of a pencil lead. Their flavor is decidedly not delicate, particularly when eaten raw – which I never do. Lightly sauteed they provide a nice green with an onion-garlic flavor.

On my way back down the hill I came upon this down log that has provided some early food for a flicker or pileated woodpecker. That hole is probably 1.5″ deep and 3.5″ across.

Approaching my yard, I saw that the partridge berry fruits were out. Although the US Forest Service says they’re tasteless, I definitely disagree – these little red gems taste like teaberry gum.

Back in the yard, I had a little chuckle. These grape hyacinth used to be in the flower bed. Clearly when I had the well dug last year the machine moved them & I didn’t notice the small bulbs when I replanted things.

Trust me when I tell you they’re flowering more here in the lawn than they ever did in the bed. They’ll be done flowering by the time I need to mow, so I’m not going to move them back. They can live right here.

Back to the Dralling Board

After those Tencel silver warped twill scarves I wanted to work with that silver gray yarn some more. I thought it would be perfect for that classic drall weaving pattern.

I loved the silver & gold twill and thought seeing equal amounts of the two colors would be great.

In real life…not so much. There’s not enough contrast between the two colors, and for reasons I don’t really understand the silver gray is much more likely to look like gray than like silver. Hmmm.

My second favorite in the silver twills was the olive. So I tried that with the drall.

Better, for sure, but still not enough color contrast to show the weaving pattern at its best.

Ok, move to navy. Now I must say here that what I think of as navy and what is commonly thought of as navy are clearly two different things. I think of a pea coat – so dark navy it’s almost black. Clearly that’s not what almost anyone else thinks of. I’ve gotten ‘navy’ yarn in Tencel, rayon, cotton, & bamboo, and all of them were much lighter than what I had in mind. Nice, but not what I expected.

Enough stalling, here’s the navy & silver drall.

Much better contrast, even though the blue doesn’t send me.

Finally I went as dark as I could with black. This one is definitely my favorite in the set. More so in real life than in the photos.

I’m making progress, but I’ve gotta keep weaving to catch up with my needed stock numbers. As positive responses come in for shows I applied to I’m reminded that I can’t let up, at least not yet.

Make New Friends…

When I was a Girl Scout we learned lots of songs. I remember tons of them. Some were beautifully simple songs that were great sung in rounds. One of them is Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold. Total lyrics of the song. (Actually, when I just googled to see if I could find an audio clip, I see there are several verses, but we only sang just that one.)

That’s what was in my mind while I was weaving this next scarf.

I think you can see in the photo that it looks different depending on how the light hits it. Sometimes that silver grey Tencel yarn looks very silver, sometimes it looks very grey. I much prefer the silver, and that’s how it looked the whole time I was weaving with my bright light on it.

For this scarf I didn’t think that the gold showed up enough, so I wove a second one with two strands of the gold yarn. I also used two strands of this terrific olive color and the same treadling pattern.

I wove the last scarf in this warp of four in a curry, thinking that it would look like silver & copper. Not so much – it looks quite orange. I find it interesting how different the two sides of this particular treadling pattern look.

After I had the four scarves woven I decided to bead two of them. Here’s the silver & gold woven with 2 strands of gold.

Then I beaded the ends of the olive scarf.

I do love working with Tencel – it’s so smooth and has such a wonderful sheen and drape. I’m off to weave more with it.

Half A Dozen

I haven’t been blogging but I have been weaving. And doing some garden cleanup. And visiting my grandson. And working my increased schedule at Pfeiffer Nature Center. I’ve been busy, can you tell?

Weaving-wise, I stayed on my hand painted bamboo-cotton kick for a while longer. This time I was using a thinner yarn, an 8/2 cotton. This yarn has 3,360 yards per pound vs. the 1,680 yards per pound of the yarn I used earlier – twice as thin. (In fact, I’d never realized before I was writing this entry that the typical bamboo-cotton is a 4/2 weight.) It was also in a colorway I hadn’t used before, one that Tammy calls Blue Spruce. For the scarf on the left I used a weft Tammy dyed for me in solid Emerald; on the right is a solid yellow.

Personally I find the yellow far too bright. I could never wear that color – it would look really awful with my skin tone.

Then I wove with an alpine blue, on the bottom in the photo – lovely, at least to me. Finally I decided to weave a plaid-ish one. Because the warp is variegated I couldn’t do a true plaid, so I went with consistent blocks of color in the weft. As I was weaving it I wasn’t at all sure I liked it, but once it was done I thought it was fine.

After weaving these four I decided to go back to weaving with Tencel and tried out a 4 harness pattern for pinwheels. They were both less of a pain to weave and less delightful as finished products than the 8 harness pinwheels. Then again, maybe they would have been more striking if I’d used black & white instead of dark coral & sienna.

Weaving Gems

After the Magic Kingdom bamboo-cotton scarf I picked up another hand painted warp of the same fiber, this time in a colorway Tammy calls Gems. There are some similarities in these two colorways – I didn’t realize how close they were when I placed the order, apparently. Or more likely I ordered them at different times and forgot what I had, simply ordering what I like.

Anyway, here are the handwoven Gems bamboo-cotton scarves.

First I wove a scarf with a solid Emerald weft. Lots ‘o green, I thought. Try something else. So I used a navy bamboo weft. Interesting, but too dark, so back to the Emerald for scarf number 3. Although most green tones do not look good on my skin, they sure do work for lots of other people, so I’m sure they’ll be liked.

Back to the warping board….

Weaving A Gem Of A Life

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Spring in the woods

Back to the Dralling Board

Make New Friends…

Half A Dozen

Weaving Gems

Weaving

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