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Since I had the Macomber treadles tied up for braided twill and my feet knew the treadling pattern after the baby blanket, I decided to prepare a warp for some braided twill scarves.
I chose an 8/2 black rayon for the warp, intending on weaving three different colors of weft.
First was a red purple 8/2 tencel from WEBS. (The color in the photo below is correct, not the one above on the loom.) Lovely sheen, great drape, nice color purple. But the purple and black don’t have enough contrast to show that braided twill pattern off clearly.
So for the second scarf I chose an 8/2 tencel azure, again from WEBS. I particularly like this one.
I’ve done some studies in black & white before, and thought it was time again, so I picked a 6/2 off-white bamboo.
I didn’t think the difference between 8/2 and 6/2 would be noticeable. Ditto the difference between rayon and bamboo.
In this particular case, I was wrong. You can’t really tell from the photos, but the black & white scarf is substantially thicker and has both less drape and sheen than the rayon ones. If you only feel the bamboo, it’s fine; it’s only in comparison to the rayon ones that the difference is obvious.
I’ve successfully interchanged rayon and bamboo before, and different sizes of yarn, so it must be this particular bamboo and this particular rayon. The WEBS yarn is really lovely, and I don’t remember where I got the bamboo, but I remember it was on sale–maybe there was a good reason for that?
Regardless, these three scarves were successful, but I’m tired of braided twill, and the Macomber, for now. Moving on….
My niece is having a baby. Her first. It’s a girl. Sure I could have gone to Babies R Us and bought something off her registry, but I didn’t want to do that.
I’m a weaver. I wanted to weave her something. No not something, I wanted to weave her a baby blanket.
I do have a small supply of baby blankets in my inventory, but none of them were what I wanted to send her. I wanted to make a new one.
And I wanted to make a cotton one. Now, I’ve made other handwoven baby blankets from cotton, and I’ve not been overly happy with the results. I like the way they look, but I haven’t liked their softness and drape. Actually, their lack of both.
It was time to try again. I figured what the heck? Since it wasn’t expected, if I wove it and hated it, I could throw it away — the materials wouldn’t be too costly — and go to Babies R Us as a default. Safe enough.
So I warped the Macomber loom for an 8 harness braided twill in 5/2 cotton. White warp, pink weft, what could be simpler?
I liked the way it looked on the loom. But then again, I almost always do, so that wasn’t really meaningful.
While I was weaving, I decided on a different course of action than my usual. Usually I weave, sew on the binding, and wet finish with a hand wash. This time I’d try another way. After all, that old saying that is if you do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. Plus, I still had that throw-it-away-Babies-R-Us default option.
So I took it off the loom, went upstairs to the sewing machine, sewed not one, not two, but three rows of machine stitching on each end, went down to the basement and tossed it in the washing machine. Then without looking at it I tossed it in the dryer.
My thinking is that the cotton would shrink however much it was going to, and if the blanket was still alive when I took it out of the dryer, that was the time to sew on the polyester satin binding.
Well, I took it out of the dryer and LOVED it! It was soft and sweet, not a bit of stiffness left in it!
Went back upstairs to the sewing machine, sewed on the binding, shot a few pix, and sent it off to baby.
I will definitely do this again. And will probably use the washer to wet finish all my cottons from now on. I’ll still hand wash all my rayons and bamboos, though.
I have so much to learn. That’s one of the things I love about weaving. As soon as I have one thing mastered, there are a dozen others waiting for me.
Back to the loom!
The weather has been just beautiful since I’ve been home on my mini vacation. I have been doing just what I said I would – weaving and weeding. And reading. Good things all three.
The radar map tells me that we should get some actual rain today, as opposed to the promised-but-never-delivered rain of the last several days. That will be great – we’re too dry.
As the days progress, more of my flowering shrubs are sharing their beauty, as the blossoms fade on others.
 weigela beautifies the bottom of my driveway So now I have new current favorites :^). Clearly I’m fickle, preferring whoever’s showy at the moment.
 up close, the weigela knocks your socks off I do treat them all the same, however. A little attention, a lot of benign neglect. If you can’t live on that, you’re doomed in my yard.
Although my snowmound spirea isn’t the most prolific of the many spirea varieties, I find it lovely nonetheless.
 snowmound spirea This old fashioned shrub rose is AMAZINGLY prolific!
 old fashioned shrub roses creates a driveway barrier If smells could come through the internet, you’d melt at how wonderful these roses smell. Because there are so many of them, the rose aroma is powerful! And if you go back and see what this shrub looked like in our April snowfall, you’ll know how strong the bush is, too.
 rose with a few raindrops Unfortunately, I have a mock orange with little to no aroma. Some are very aromatic, but not mine. I’m told that the only way you can know for sure which type you’ll get is to buy it when it’s in flower. That’s the worst time to transplant something! Plus I didn’t know that in advance.
 mock orange 'snows' its petals generously No matter, it’s beautiful.
 mock orange beauty Even though it doesn’t flower, I like this little shrub, too. The emerald & gold euonymous adds color all year.
 emerald & gold euonymous I’ve planted two others in other gardens, but neither did well. Sometimes I see them just huge. Not in my yard. The one you see here is more than 10 years old. So while I won’t plant more here, I do like this one.
Upfront full disclosure – this post is not ‘fair and balanced.’ Also, I don’t claim to know enough to be able to have a good debate with a really well-read person on the other side of the issue. There are tons of websites where you can get all the graphs, charts, and arguments, both pro can con, about the issue of hydrofracking for natural gas. This isn’t one of them.
I do, however, know where I stand, firmly, on the issue. NO FRACKING!
Ok, now that you know where I’m coming from, I’m guessing you agree, or you would have stopped reading by now. If you are also opposed to fracking and live in New York State, there’s currently an opportunity to take a step to protect the environment. That step is support of Senate Bill #4616. This bill will make the drillers follow the same rules for the disposal of their waste that every other business does – hospitals and farmers, auto body shops and building contractors, factories and…well, everybody. Except the oil & gas industry, who gets a pass on regulations. And on disclosing what, exactly, they use in their fracking fluid.
You can google SB 4616 and get tons of information, so I’m not even going to try to give you more here. I’m just going to suggest, strongly, that you contact your NYS senator THIS WEEK and encourage him or her to vote FOR SB 4616. If you write a letter or send an email, send a copy of it to Dean Skelos, Senate Majority Leader & Chair of the Senate Rules Committee. (I believe the bill is still in the Rules Committee.) Here’s Senator Skelos’ contact info:
Albany Office
Legislative Office Building, Room 909
Albany, NY 12247
Phone: (518) 455-3171
District Office
55 Front Street
Rockville Centre, NY 11570
Phone: (516) 766-8383
Your turn: let me know if you have any positive results.
The other day I was wondering why I was able to both weave so many more pieces in March and keep up better with the blog posts. It didn’t take too long for me to come up with the answer. My hours at my paycheck job jumped substantially. So instead of weaving 32 scarves like I did in March, in May I managed to finish only 17.
Although I’d like to think otherwise, the reality is that I don’t have the same energy level I did 20 years ago, and I am more likely to come home from work and decide that it’s time to read a book, watch TV, or simply sit on my porch and enjoy the evening.
I figure that’s a display of maturity, a healthy reduction in my obsessive-compulsive nature. At least that’s what I tell myself.
I’m taking a week off, so should be able to get both some weaving and some weeding done.
Back to my May weaving, I used a colorway I’ve used once before, one that Tammy calls November. It’s not one that calls out to me every time, but my customers do appreciate the variation in colors that I offer.
I used three different warp colors…from top to bottom they’re lavender, olive, & cornflower.
When I’m getting ready to wet finish my handwoven scarves, I often toss them over my shoulder to get a look at them. I had to pull that one with the olive warp off as soon as I got it on — this color looks SO BAD with my skin tone. That’s certainly not true of everyone; it complements lots of people, just not me.
After the November scarves, I chose colors more typical for me, and wove with Rhonda.
There’s not a great deal of difference between these Rhonda scarves and the Sapphires ones I wove in April; Rhonda’s got a bit more pink in it.
From top to bottom the weft colors are wisteria, teal blue, eggplant, and Rhonda.
All seven of these scarves were handwoven with Tammy’s bamboo-cotton blend in an 8/2 size. I like weaving with it. I like the size, I like the way it accepts color, I like the way it feels. It has a matte finish, unlike most rayon and bamboo, and I do miss the sheen, but that’s overshadowed by the fact that the bamboo-cotton blend doesn’t tend to untwist, so I don’t need to make double-twisted fringe on every scarf the way I do on rayons or 100% bamboo. Making that fringe adds about 1/2 hour in time to each scarf. Doesn’t seem like a lot till you’re doing it.
Gotta run to that paycheck job now. Ahhhh…my last day for a whole week!
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