Weaving A Gem Of A Life

Quack Quack to the rescue!

Unfortunately, Owl was not an acceptable substitute for Fishy.

After the first day, Jack routinely rejected Owl and kept wanting to play with Fishy, who was looking worse by the day. I thought about what made Fishy so attractive to him, and decided it was the combination of his size (which Owl matched) softness, (Owl was much firmer) and the many sticking out parts so that he was easy to pick up (Owl was almost smooth). I went to the pet store and spent some time looking at the toys. I brought home one whose rubber was nice and soft and had a squeaker that was much less offensive to my ears. He’s called Quack Quack, although my daughter pointed out that while he may sound like a duck, he is decidedly a chicken, what with the comb and all. Doesn’t matter to Jack & me; he’s Quack Quack.

Jack took to him immediately. After 2 days I put Fishy up high where Jack couldn’t see him, and he didn’t seem to notice he was missing; Quack Quack was who we played fetch with, Quack Quack was who Jack sought when he wanted to chew on somebody soothing, or just make some noise.

I am not going to be trusting in the dog toy manufacturers this time around. Next time I go anywhere near the pet store, I’m picking up not one but two more Quack Quacks to have in the cupboard.

Speaking of animal antics…

Last year I planted a Japanese dogwood in my yard. I’d had one at my old house and really liked it, from leaves to flowers to fruit. What I didn’t know back when I lived in the sticks was how attractive the red fruits are to squirrels.

The little guys (and gals, I assume) will literally hang upside down to get to where they need to be on my skinny little branches to reach the tasty fruits.

“Whew! I finally grabbed it and can now sit on a branch and eat it without fear of falling.”

Two recent different but beautiful sunrises to close out this post for you.

Dyeing experiments

I’ve heard about dyeing with koolaid but hadn’t tried it. Then I read Karen’s post about speckle dyeing, and figured I’d try it on something small first. I’d recently finished knitting these socks. Very nice, but all white.

So I read a bunch of online how-tos, then went to the store and got 3 packages of koolaid. Sprinkled it on from a spoon.

Wasn’t crazy about how it looked in the pan, but had hopes I’d like them when it was all done. At least one of the sites I read said that it had to sit for 2 days. So in the meantime I read more directions about speckle dyeing yarn and measured out a cotton warp for 3 scarves. Learned my lesson about dyeing outside so am set up in my basement.

Meanwhile I spoke to my dyeing teacher who strongly recommended I not do it with the dye powder for safety reasons, so I used the eye dropper technique I’d seen here. As suggested, I left plenty of white areas.

Then it’s a 2 day process from here, too. Batching overnight till the next day, then sitting in water for another day.

So I figured I’d do some immersion dyeing of weft yarns for the speckle-dyed warp. First time I’ve done this, too, except for with Rit dyes. Here are the 3 skeins in their individual dye vats.

They only had to sit in the dye bath for about an hour, than overnight in water. Here they are at the end of that overnight sit.

And an unlovely picture of some really lovely yarns. Very solid colors, lots of depth of color – much more than I’d intended, actually, but I love each of them.

By now I could go back to the socks. Ugh. I didn’t like them at all. Looks like something from a horror movie.

So I figured I’d overdye them with the blue koolaid. Even worse! Now they look ugly and dirty!

Back online I went. The ‘real’ dyes I have are meant for plant-based fibers (cotton, rayon, silk), not protein based fibers like my wool socks. But I read how to dye wool with these dyes, and figured nothing could make them any uglier. Again into blue, this time real dye and a relatively dark blue.

Here’s an unlovely picture of beautiful socks (ok, sock-singular)! You can barely see the koolaid splotches, which is just fine with me.

Now back to the speckle dyed warp. Oh no! There are no longer ANY undyed areas. Everything that was white is now pinky-lavender.

Not what I had in mind at all. Sigh. Would I overdye this yarn? After thinking about it for a few days I decided I’d warp it. If I hated it when it went on the loom, I could always take it off dye it then. Or I could cut my losses and just toss it out. Or give it to someone as a prepared warp. So here it is going on the loom.

I don’t hate it anywhere near as much as I did in the skein, so decided I’d try weaving with it. Instead of using my beautiful immersion-dyed skeins, though, I chose a lavender cotton that would almost match the lavender in the warp, hoping it would mute everything out a bit.

And it does. Looks like it’d make a nice baby wrap. Will it make a scarf anyone likes? I can’t tell yet. But I can always choose to overdye it after it’s woven, now, can’t I?

Finding calm

I don’t walk along the bay every morning, but when I do it never fails to engage me. Even on foggy mornings like the one below, the bay is beautiful.

And in the early mornings, when I walk, it is quiet and peaceful, bringing me peace and calm. Very much appreciated in the craziness and ugliness of this campaign season.

The next several photos, all taken on the same morning, give you a sense of the changes I’ll see in just 9 minutes and a few hundred yards of shoreline.

Words are superfluous.

Yep, I was

Crazy, that is. I wove some more on the rayon chenille FLW warp, and decided it would not do what I wanted when it was all done, and that I could spend weeks weaving on something that wouldn’t make me happy. So I cut it off and tossed out the yarn. Paraphrasing Laura Fry, one of my weaving gurus, “Hey, it’s only string. And your time is worth way more than that string.” It’s all out in my trash bin already.

I immediately put on another warp to get my head straight. It made me happy to put on this multi-colored towel warp. Cheryl, a really kind local artist, told me she had a bag of yarn that she’d give me. Having no idea if the yarn was ends of acrylic knitting yarn or something I might actually use, I brought her a loaf of homemade bread when I went to pick up the yarn. I was overwhelmed when I saw that it was probably 10 pounds of coned cotton yarn in various sizes and colors. A loaf of bread was insufficient and I wanted to make Cheryl a towel with it, so that’s what went on the loom.

The red, blue, and yellow warp stripes were yarn I had, the rest is part of the gift. I like the apparent complexity of this 4 harness weave.

I also really like the way the thick-and-thin multi-colored yarn makes even a simple tabby weave more interesting, creating irregular waves across the warp.

After these two towels I used an easy straight treadling – 1 through 4 – repeated. I liked that, too.

For the last towel I really wanted to highlight the weaving pattern of the first one, the towel that Cheryl will get, by using a darker solid color weft. I went with a medium blue. See that threading error next to the blue stripe on the left? I didn’t notice it till this towel, and wasn’t about to change it then as it doesn’t affect structure. But I wouldn’t ever submit these towels for jurying.

I’ve woven all 4 towels, hemmed and wet finished them, and will put Cheryl’s towel in the mail today. It makes me very happy.

Last night I spent some time needle weaving a treadling error in one of the rayon chenille shawls I wove in August. Some missed threads. Sigh. Not only do I really dislike needle weaving, it’s SO much better to find the error before the piece is wet finished. I’ve now got the shawl back in the washer to wash & then dry again and hope that my ‘fix’ doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb. We’ll see.

Oh, yeah. I like to have little things for people to buy in my booth. So I did some more rep weave mug rugs, this time with 8/4 cotton rug warp. The 5 on the left are too wide; after I wove them I cut them off, removed some warp threads, and re-threaded the reed. I also rethreaded the blue & green alternating threads on the left side of the warp so that they were a mirror image of those on the right. I’m much happier with the 2 on the right.

I also finished off the warp of bookmarks I’d put on the Missouri loom for the library demo. All but 1 are woven with bits of hand painted yarn I have left over from projects; people like them best.

I must be crazy

I am a really regular reader, if not poster, on Weavolution. There was recently a post of this truly stunning double-sided scarf, woven by Weavin Steven. The scarf was inspired by a Handwoven article from a few years ago called Homage to Frank Lloyd Wright.

I fell in love with this gorgeous scarf – its colors and the geometry of it all – and decided now was the time for me to do my own interpretation of a Frank Lloyd Wright design. I’d do my scarf in rayon chenille, in clasped weft.

So I started with an online search of Wright’s stained glass window designs. There are MANY windows, most of which are known for their very small sections and their diagonal lines. Neither of those would make me happy in clasped weft, so I finally settled on this design because of its use of color.

Somehow I got to a page that told me this was a window in the Dana-Thomas house, but when I went back in I couldn’t seem to find that page again, so it may be wrong. There are about a zillion FLW knockoffs, designs inspired by the man but not his designs. I’m guessing now that this is one of them. In any case, it’s the design I decided to use, since I have rayon chenille in most of those colors and thought it would be a good one to use.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

It means using 4, 5, or even 6 mini-shuttles of yarn at once! INSANELY slow! And I’m not at all sure I’ll have my desired effect when it’s all done and wet finished. Sigh.

Why didn’t I choose something much simpler, like this design?

Again, I’m not at all sure if this is one of Wright’s actual Tree of Life windows or an interpretation, but come on, it’s only 3 colors, and I could have interpreted those few diagonal lines as horizontal ones in my weaving! Sigh again.

Unrelated, I tried a new recipe the other day and I’m absolutely recommending it. Here’s how it started out.

I dug these carrots from my garden just moments before I wanted to start the soup. FYI this was more than twice as many carrots as I needed, so the rest just got cleaned and went in my frig for raw crunching.

Here’s how the dish ended up looking.

Carrot soup with carrot top pesto. OMG I LOVED it! I do have to say that an immersion blender would make the pureeing of the soup much easier, and that my food processor refused to do a good job of combining the pesto ingredients into a smooth paste because of the small amount of it, but I didn’t care. I have a little left that will be my dinner tonight, and I’m looking forward to it.

Weaving A Gem Of A Life

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Quack Quack to the rescue!

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Yep, I was

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