Looming looming

Hello again from your friendly carpal tunnel sufferer (who's checking it out with a doctor this week because Ow.) For days now I have been steering clear of typing and scrolling and knitting and unscrewing any lids from pickle jars, which leaves me with... the loom.

I know it looks like there's zero progress from last week but that's because weaving is a lot of repetition and same old same old until suddenly there's nothing left to weave into. And when I say repetition etc., I mean the following activities:

Wooden frame thing into upper notch

Push yarn thing from right to left

Adjust new yarn strand to track a 45 degree angle from right to left

Use wooden frame thing to pat the 45 degree yarn into place

Tug the end of the yarn to make sure the sides are even with the inches that came before

Wooden frame thing into lower notch

Push yarn thing from left to right

Adjust new yearn stand to track a 45 degree angle from left to right

Use wooden frame thing to...

You get the idea. And then periodically you have the thrill of unclipping the gears so you can roll your work onto the frontmost tube, to make room for more from the backmost tube. I know it's hard to see just looking at the back end, but I have actually done that quite a few times over the course of the week. All the buffer cardboard so close together tells me I'm getting close.

You know what would be smart when setting up a new project? Colour-coding the ends of the cardboard strips so you start with some red, then move to orange, then yellow, then green. Then, when you're rolling to the other end and start seeing yellow or orange, you'll feel like you're getting somewhere.

Knitting's much the same on the repetition front, but you can multitask with it if you get bored, even without adding in cables or lace or shaping. With weaving, all you can do is make the fabric more interesting by switching up the size of yarns you're pairing up, or doing a plaid, or both, or even doing a double width which is a magic trick I really do want to learn some time.

Since I can't do any of these things till I have this baby off the rails, I am gonna get back to it. It's cold and windy out, but I am about due to see a sun patch landing on this table, and I'm not sure there's much nicer than sitting in one of those to finish a simple project.

Hope you have a great weekend, and a great weekend next time too! I am begging off Hugs till April 5, in the hopes that resting this arm will get me back to normal faster. Meanwhile, take care of yourself via nice times and treats.

 

 

Revisiting my Knitters Loom

I've been struggling at the edge of the news whirlpool lately, have you? And my carpal tunnel issues are still a bother, so I decided to block out the noise with my Ashford Knitters Loom, still bearing signs of a previous project.

I looked it up here on Hugs and it seems the last time I played with the loom was in September of 2014. 2014!!! How is it possible I went ten years without weaving? It scares me to think how much longer it's been since I sat down at my spinning wheel. 

I see from my previous notes that this tiny scarf/belt/strip of fabric was sitting at about six inches wide. Well, it's less than that now.

Also it looks like I let the finished work get up too close to the heddle. Or do I mean the reed? 

 

I seem to recall I never did figure out the names of all the parts. Just how to make them work. (which I have also forgotten.)

Either way: time to roll things down into the finished bit. At least I remember how to do that.

And how to use YouTube to look up an instructional video from Ashford for the rest. It's rainy today and I don't have anything else pressing, so with luck I'll be semi-expert again by suppertime. I certainly have enough yarn wound and ready, to get on with!

I probably need a good audiobook for this project, don't you think? I am leaning toward Hidden Figures, by Margot Lee Shetterly. I've certainly had it in my queue long enough, and it's everything I like in a book.

 

Hope you're having a good weekend so far! I am, but I think I need a nap before I tackle any more of this weaving business. Looking forward to seeing you next Saturday too. Who knows, if I pick something lengthy like Dickens on audio, I might even have set up the wheel again. H'mmmmmm.

 

 

 

 

Weaving: not for the faint of heart

I've been trying a new approach to weaving: Care Less!  Which isn't the same thing as 'careless' but involves a marked reduction in panic about making every row the same width as the one before it.  It's the same attitude that led to a marked improvement in my hand-spinning skills.  Sadly...

I don't have the stamina to see it through this time.  Picking up the loom after weeks of not touching it, and trying to calmly weave away without fussing, led to a huuuuuge difference in tension and a significant increase in Scarf Width.

Which I think, in a scarf as already-narrow as this one (6" at its best), will show.  Bonus heartbreak: I blew about 7" of scarf this way, and will have to weave backwards to eliminate the mistake and start over again.  Still quicker than knitting and frogging and knitting again... but still.

How can you tell you've messed up on making an evenly-edged scarf?  The sides fold neatly over the previously-woven bit like a cosy woven blankie over a sleeping child.

(insert image of Mary, weeping messily if not noisily over every pass of the shuttle thingy, still determined not to learn the proper name for Loom Parts.)

Oh well. It's not really scarf weather yet anyway.

Take care of yourself today and if you accidentally weave outside the lines, make it look Meant in whatever way seems good to you.  See you tomorrow!

A super amazing woven thing

I'm so excited to show you how my bulky handwoven frog-green scarf thing came out!  It's the first time I've tried weaving something where the length is manually striped, using two different colours of yarn, and it looked so cool even at the setup stage I knew the finished product was going to be awesome. Bonus: this is a fantastic way to use up odd leftover lengths of much-loved yarns.

Had to do some fancy footwork with my yarn scraps to pull this off...

The stripes looked great on the loom, too.

Once the loom was ready, I waited until the singles had rested enough for plying and got to work on that part of the job.

The finished yarn looked a little crazy, and if I hadn't had a plan for it already I might have felt like it was a failure.  I was pretty sloppy with the original spinning too, as I recall - I was aiming for sooper bulky and meandered between that and regular bulky . Still: plied!

And because it was going straight onto the loom, I didn't have to skein or block it before winding it around the shuttle thingy.

Turns out weaving with sooper bulky yarn is just as fast as knitting with it, because it didn't take very many passes to get from nothing to this splendid fabric:

That's from the same night, my friends.  Like, minutes after getting the plied yarn ready to go.

In fact it was still light enough outside for me to be able to show you how the fabric was building up on the roller:

I think this is the point where I realized I might be weaving a table runner.  I mean, it's pretty hefty fabric.  I kept on working though, and put off bedtime till it was done so I could take this glamour shot first thing in the morning.  I don't think you need to click on the photo below to see just how tall that last row is where the yarn finished off.  Sooper. Bulky. Yarn.

I couldn't wait to pull it off the roller...

and tie off the fringe at the ends...

and take some glamour shots.

I think the whole process, from starting to spin to tying the fringe, happened over 48 hours.  That's pretty amazing, isn't it?  Even if what I got really does feel like a table runner or a slice of carpet.

I absolutely love the way these stripes came out and I feel completely certain this was the right way to use this yarn and fiber...

... and it's definitely the most interesting weaving project I'll do for quite a while.

But best of all?  Table runner or not, it makes an amazingly warm and soft scarf.

Still - nobody else is going to want it, are they.  I should just keep it for myself.  Ahem.

Hope your weekend is fantastic and that you're able to pop back in on Monday.  I've got a whole week of good stuff lined up to share with you.  See you then!

Three cool things in one woven project

Cool thing number one:  I got the August scarf set up before July was halfway done.  Go me!

This is the silk/merino sock yarn I got in a club I was probably ill-advised to join (probably = definitely, since it's physically impossible to reduce yarn supplies by increasing same.)  The yardage wasn't going to be enough to do a self-facing scarf to the full width of the loom and my stash is completely free of anything complementary, so I decided to do a slimmer one and hope for a lot of length.


Cool thing number two: 

Variegated yarn woven against variegated yarn comes out looking kind of like a tweedy plaid.

... especially from a distance.

Cool thing number three:

I am totally getting a straight edge (on one side) this time.  Finally!  I might actually be getting the hang of this whole weaving thing.  Maybe I should have challenged myself to two scarves a month, just to up the repetition factor.  I bet I could have pulled off straight edges on both sides.


And... a bonus cool thing:

I am so going to make ultra-skinny scarves a Thing by wearing this when it's done.

(we live in hope.  can you really get away with a less-than-six-inch-wide scarf?)

Spinning the frog prince, and having an inspiration

The fairytale themed colours in the latest Twisted Fiber Art club were so fantastic - they were all inspired by particular fairytale books, published in two very different decades, with two very different colour palettes.

The only colour I got and didn't know what to think about was Frog Prince, which is basically green and brown with a little mauve in the transition.

Nice colours and all, but how best to use them?  Somebody asked for socks in it and I duly bought some yarn, but that didn't help me with the roving, which I eventually decided to spin bulky because: fast.

This particular roving has silk in it, and it's very slick and a bit shiny as a result.  Super nice, is what I'm getting at.

But it gave me a lot of trouble in the spinning.  For some reason that may or may not be related to how hugely stressed I was the day I spun it, huge patches of it came out super twisty.  I might even say Overspun.

Practically coiled in spots.

Still, I persevered until I had four busy little singles all rolled up and ready to ply.

And then I realized what had been bothering me about the colours I'd been shifting through: I had some other Twisted Fiber Art yarn - years old - that might match it.

I got it out and took a look and - yep, I think so. The lighter colour maybe not so much, but the brown?  Definitely.  There's not enough of this stuff to knit anything interesting in either colour, but together they make up just about enough for one half of a handwoven scarf.

So before I could stop myself, I took my yarn remnants straight to the loom.

I'll keep you posted on how it all goes but meanwhile: I hope you find unexpected project ideas today too.  See you tomorrow!

The June scarf, in July

Amazingly, a little determination went a long way with the Hallowe'eny scarf I wanted to make in June.

I finally finished it, just by deciding I was going to!  Must use that trick more often.

Of course I still have to give it a good soak and trim the fringe, but those are minor considerations and could be done just a few days before gifting - assuming any of the scarves I've been weaving really make it out the door as gifts.  I have a friend who would love this one, and another friend who already loves it and expects to receive it, and a Me who can't help thinking how matchy it is for a ton of my own fall/winter outfits.

I'm especially in love with how well the evolution of colour worked out.  Basically it's roving that shifts from black to grey to yellow to orange, woven perpendicular to yarn that shifts from black to grey to yellow to orange.

And I even managed to spin the roving fine enough to look pretty good with the yarn, though of course the sides of the cloth are still a bit more curvy than they should be, and there's a patch here and there where I spun even thinner than the original yarn and got a denser-than-elsewhere colour patch as a result.

Still - I think this looks pretty cool, don't you?  Please tell me you wouldn't give it away either, because I really don't think I can.

I do think I can show you something new tomorrow though - hope I see you then!

Fun and games with yarn and a loom

Remember that whole 'weave a scarf every month in 2014' thing I was going for?

The idea was to end up with at least 11 Christmas gifts ready and gorgeous.  But if I've got this straight, I wove three scarves in three months and gave them all away, then wove one scarf in three months and gave it away, and then there was the June scarf.

Which looks like this at the moment.

Well, perhaps more like this:

There is still quite a bit yet to weave - which is to say, I could have it done in thirty minutes if I sat down and did it.  And I plan to, unless something disastrous happens.  Or something shiny.  Apparently I'm easily distracted.

I do realize it's July now and I should be long since finished this scarf, but all through June the interaction between me and the loom was

a/ me passing by the loom on the china hutch and thinking Gah! must weave that scarf and

b/ me shoving at the loom on the china hutch and thinking Gah!  must make space for these books / piles of yarn / other odds and ends.

Then on Tuesday night after going for an emergency walk to clear my head I sat down with the loom and put in maybe ninety minutes and got to where I am now.  I was too tired to think of joining on a new lump of yarn at that point so I stopped, but I was terribly impressed by the fact that effort = results.  Surprised, even.

So I've done this...

... and since I have some time off today, I plan to put it to good use.

The only question is:

audiobook?

I finished The Girl You Left Behind as I ran out of yarn for the last bit of weaving, and the book I started yesterday - so dull I can't actually remember the title - has borrowed the setup of The Shootist and gone downhill from there.  Need. Replacement.

Do I dare buy a copy of The Shining, the better to appreciate a possible sit-down with Dr. Sleep?  I don't usually opt for Stephen King because hello: Scary, but he sure can tell a riveting story and I'm rationing the other authors I know I can count on for those.  Maybe this is the day to listen to Carol Burnett.

Hope your decisions today are a lot less apt to put you into quaking boots, and I'll see you tomorrow!

Weaving a scarf for June

June is getting along now, but so is the scarf I decided to weave for this month:

See?  Loom's all set up.  Set up strangely, because I didn't expect to run out of yarn quite so soon after the middle part, and also I put the heddle thingy in backwards, but set up.

I really need to memorize the technical names for the loom's parts, don't I.

As I mentioned, this scarf is going to be woven with handspun yarn, so I kind of had to get to the plying before I could go any further.

I noticed something special about this stuff right away.  You?

What this shot has got that the others don't is the giveaway.

Ready?

Hardly any barberpole!  I actually spun the singles so closely to each other, they mostly match up.  I canNOT believe it.  This bodes well, I think.

And looks so pretty on the shuttle thingy.

... almost as pretty as it does on the loom:

ahhh, June scarf: started.  Can't tell you what a relief that is.

Go have a great weekend (and wish me luck for progress on this thing) and I'll see you here again on Monday!