That yarn that I thought looked overwhelmingly bright, like a Mexican fiesta, turned into a lovely rainbow sherbet when I wove it in twill blocks with an undyed weft. The colors are a bunch more muted in real life than they appear in the photo.
I wish I’d woven both with that weft. Instead I wove the second with a periwinkle weft. Jack couldn’t resist photo bombing this one.
Here’s how I decided to finish the fringe on that leno pima cotton scarf. I think it added a nice touch to a nice scarf.
Although I don’t have a photo of it, I decided to turn that rayon scarf with the problem fringe that turned yellow at the end into an infinity scarf. That way no yellow will show.
I’ve said it before about other towels and I’ll probably say it again about new ones, but I think these are my favorite ever kitchen towels.
I love their colorfulness. Is that a word? They make me smile just to look at them. I wish they’d made me smile to weave them. The natural cotton is soooo soft that it kept breaking warp threads near the selvedges. I wove 3, cut them off, and re-tied, thinking that might help. Then I wove the other 3. Still problematic. I am decidedly not proud of the selvedges on these towels, but I think they’ll be really thirsty. And I’m betting they sell regardless of their less-than-beautiful selvedges. But we all know what happens when I say that. 🙂
Gotta get back to the loom now. Still cranking out work.
Time, that is. The days, weeks, and months just fly by. Two weeks from today I’ll be at my next show. YIKES!!! Do I feel prepared? Um, no. Will it be fine? I’m sure. I’ve not done the Clothesline Festival before, and have heard such wildly mixed reviews from others that I have no idea what to expect from it. But I know what I expected from myself, and that was to at least mostly replenish my stock with the number of scarves, shawls, and other items I’d sold in July. I had two whole months!
Well, I’m not too close and now I have just two weeks. My goal was 9 shawls, 21 scarves, and several little items. Plus I’m completely out of my packing bags, which I sew from pillowcases.
So far I have 6 shawls, 7 good scarves and 3 not-good ones, and no little items. I don’t think I’ve done great planning. Maybe I shouldn’t have spent so much time dyeing yarn. Or making pants. Or taking photos, or blogging or figuring out why the contact emails on my website weren’t getting to me, or….what are those other things that eat up my hours?
I’ve already made some other decisions that may not have been the best, too, decisions that I’m too far into to change. I just keep telling myself that it will be fine. Maybe I can start to believe it.
So the photos in this post, from the top down – all warps are hand painted 30/2 silk:
snowflakes with royal purple rayon weft, same weight as the silk so the motifs are square, unlike the next two
snowflakes with 20/2 lavender silk weft
snowflakes with 20/2 red-violet silk weft
watery silk with 20/2 ice-blue silk weft
watery silk with very fine (same weight as the warp) slate blue cashmere silk weft
Theresa over at Runamuck Weaving is amazing. Very skilled, very generous with her time, very encouraging, very rational. She has encouraged me every step of the way with my pants fail. One of her appropriate thoughts (my paraphrase) is, “Hey, it’s just fabric. If in the end it doesn’t work, you can always weave more.” That’s the approach I generally take with my weaving, but for some reason had totally lost with these pants.
Even with Theresa, I had to just let things sit for a while; I was too disheartened to proceed immediately. But I’m moving forward. I spent a huge amount of hours taking the awful pants apart. Very carefully, since the handwoven fabric is, well, handwoven, and not as ‘stable’ as commercial fabric. Regardless of whether I decided to try making the pants again myself or take them to a tailor, the failed pair needed to come apart.
Then I took the new pants I’d bought and followed some online advice on how to make a pattern from them. At Theresa’s suggestion I used pellon 830 to make the pattern.
The next step was to cut the pattern out of muslin and see how it fit.
I don’t have the waistband sewn on here, but it’s sooooo clear that these pants are an infinitely better fit than the store bought pattern.
I know I need to make some adjustments. The waist needs to be a little wider than my current pattern, and probably the legs above the knees, too, to allow for plenty of movement. Do I need to modify the crotch length?
With handwoven fabric I sure don’t want lots of stress on the seams every time I sit down. But I am SOOOOO encouraged.
Right now I need to consult with Theresa some more before I attempt to modify my pattern, and I’ve used all my muslin, so I need to put away the sewing machine for a few days and get myself to Joann’s, but I’m confident I can make this work.
Many months ago I bought a toy for Jack. A small, blue, rubber, squeaky blowfish. We played fetch with it every day, sometimes both morning and evening, inside and outside. Fishy was clearly Jack’s favorite toy. He made noise so if Jack didn’t see where he went he’d hear him. His size was perfect for Jack’s small mouth, and his rubbery squishy-ness was just right for Jack’s gentleness. Fishy had projecting fins, tail, and spikes, so he bounced erratically, making him more fun. He was just the right weight to carry the perfect distance when I threw him.
Then one day Fishy’s squeaker popped out. Jack and I were both sad. I went to the store and they told me they had one at their other branch and would get it sent to my branch and call me.
Several days later there was no call, I so called them. There was no record of my request so we started again. A week later I called back again, this time getting a manager on the phone. He apologized and told me that according to their inventory the other branch had 10 of the toys, and that he would personally make sure they got sent over and I got a phone call.
More days went by. The manager called and told me their internal inventory was wrong; they had none in stock. He’d call the company they order from and see if he could get me one. “Get me two,” I said. At this rate I’d want a backup.
Meanwhile we tried small balls of various materials. Rubber bones. Plush animals with squeakers. Knotted ropes. None were anywhere near as pleasing to Jack as Fishy. Some too small and rolled under things so he couldn’t reach them. Some didn’t throw well. Some were too quiet, others too loud.
At least a week went by and I got another apologetic call. So sorry, none to be had in the small size (called mini) I needed; only the large size was available.
While we were waiting Jack and I kept playing with a silent Fishy, who was looking decidedly worse for the wear. Still nice and soft, still bounced good.
Finally I went online to see what I could find. While I could find a few mini blowfish, they were at a real premium….apparently not being currently manufactured.
However the company had 2 other mini animals that I thought would be fine. I bought 1 of each, figuring I’d put 1 in reserve. They just arrived – an owl and a pig.
The owl is pretty round so he won’t bounce as erratically as Fishy, but we’re going to start with him anyway. Pig will wait in the cupboard.
After the last post my back healed. But then my stomach left me. Except for a few trips to the bathroom, I slept from 10PM on Friday night till 7AM on Sunday morning. My daughter graciously brought Jack to her house since I couldn’t walk him, or even hang out in my yard with him. Horizontal was the only option. Don’t know if it was a stomach flu or food poisoning, and frankly, don’t care. It was nasty and caused me to miss weekend activities that I’d been looking forward to for weeks.
No worries, readers, I’m back to 100% now. But I obviously didn’t get anything done for a few days.
I’ve found a park within walking distance of my house. Deer in the lawns nearby are a common sight. Can you see the new antlers on the buck (at right)? They’re still in velvet.
With a round trip of about 4-1/2 miles from leaving to returning to home, I can get about 1 of those miles in a beautiful woods.
Look closely to the right of the photo and you’ll see the spotted fawn behind the greenery. Mom was only about 10′ from me, and watched me walk by but didn’t bolt.
About 2 miles of the trip takes me on a little-traveled road by the bay. Can you pick out the great blue heron?
The bird wasn’t at all interested in watching me, but took off pretty quickly.
Watching it take to the air was much better in person than the photos show.
These are truly large birds. Graceful. Impressive. Beautiful. I can see their relationship to the dinosaurs.
Back on the home front, I pulled my first carrot.
It looks so impressive. But it tasted so bad. Woody and bitter. I did some online research after that, and learned that carrots do best with warm days and cool nights. Although I planted my carrots early enough, our hot days and nights were not good conditions for them. I’m going to wait another few weeks and re-plant.
But I have gotten a nice potato crop.
This is my total harvest. I think I planted more than 15 potatoes, but only had 7 grow. Of them, 5 were small plants and 2 were big, so I think this is a decent return on investment. They’re hardening off a bit before I bring them inside. But maybe I’ll have to cook a few for dinner tonight. 🙂
