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We’re back from Black Sheep Gathering, in Eugene, Oregon. Had a wonderful time with Jane Grogan who came all the way from Wisconsin  to teach weaving in Oregon.  She wore her vest woven on the 4″ square Multi. which I didn’t get a close up of. 😦 But here we are in the booth where we got to weave together when she was “off duty”.

Jane in vestBSG4a

I also like her hat with the diamond top and the rolled brim. Hers was two dark colors so the diamonds stood out more than on mine where the colors  kind of blend everything together. I’ll use more contrast on the next one. But I like it anyway.

Jane Hat 4Jane Hat 5

Yesterday was spent going to town to pick up the cats from the ‘motel’ and get a few emergency groceries. Today is shipping orders and catching up on the laundry. What fun! lol  and Friday we’re off to Medford for the month’s grocery shopping and for lumber so Randy can get busy filling orders again. This year we are going to be at the California Wool and Fiber Festival in Booneville which is in September. We have not been there since it joined the Mendocino County Fair so it’ll be a new experience for us. If you are in that area I hope you’ll come by and say hi.

Meantime… Back to weaving. Hope your summer is off to a great start!

June already!

Sorry I have not been back here in a while. It’s been a busy month already. Black Sheep Gathering coming up next weekend, too. Jane Grogan is on her way west to teach a couple of classes there.  If you want to be in her classes you’d better hurry to sign up. I don’t know if there’s any space left but you can check. she’s doing something with the 4″ Multi’s and has a Quilting class using the tiny Weaver Set. That’s going to be interesting. Wish I could join but I am going to be busy at our booth. Sis is coming up, too, and she’ll be looking at white fleeces, being the spinner of the family.

I’ve been weaving squares but have no project in the works just now. But once we get back I’ll be able to settle in. The garden is in now and growing so that project is pretty self-sustaining for a while. This is some mohair, I think it’s some Sis spun with colored nubs. Not sure what it’s going to be…

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Finally finsihed!

The Tri top is done. I wove four 12″ squares and sewed them in pairs. Folded in the sleeve openings a couple times and fitted the sleeves in until they looked right. Pinned them in place and tried it on, adjusting until I had the look I needed.

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Then I top stitched the sleeves in place.

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After that I turned it inside out and cut the excess fabric and zigzaged the seam.

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Here it is.

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I tried to take my picture in it but the do-it-yourself-setting on my camera has quit doing it. All I get is a fuzzy one so will have to wait until Himself and do the photography with his big mulit-talented camera. But here’s the fuzzy view, for what it’s worth.

DSC01959I think it turned out, in the end, okay if a less than flattering design for me. The color is nice and the texture of this soft cotton is very nice.

And, by the way, the beans are coming  up! Hope things are springing up where you are!

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Is it a blouse or is it a cat blanket?!

That’s still up for grabs. I am working on the sleeves. I think the problem is that the shoulders are too wide. This is going to turn out to be one of those cut and sew projects after all. But meantime the weather has warmed up and we got the bean tower in and the beans planted. It’s 80 degrees on the deck. Yum!

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Something else today…

Well, I wasn’t happy with the sleeves i made so I’ve ordered more yarn and put the project on hold until it arrives.

Meantime, Randy is getting the new garden shed up and I am sorting and moving the contents. Some to stay and some to go.

 

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And since it’s gotten warm finally, I planted out the winter squashes and pumpkins. The peas are getting big, too!

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Sleeves

I wove some 7″ triangles and made a sleeve. I think it’s going to work. I need to weave the other one and sew up the neckline a bit, it’s too wide as is. Then we’ll see.

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Meantime I was playing with a little thing I found on a Brazilian Youtube. I did this experiment on the Tiny Weaver Square. It should have had 5 petals, but I wasn’t up to the math and just wanted to see how it would work. Kinda of cute. Takes a bit of time and  my warp was, in this case, too thick to really work well. There’s a rather too thick lump in the center where all the warps cross, but I can see uses for this sort of thing.

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Assembling

Got the top pinned together and am sewing up the shoulders and sides.  Fit is pretty good, near as I can tell but…  same ole same ole… It needs sleeves. No, I need sleeves. I think this would be cute as a sleeveless top on someone with firm young arms. Mine need sleeves. Not sure how I’m going to go about that but will be working on it.  Here it is so far.

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The front I assembled using a slip stitch in the darker yarn. The back is just an overhand stitch in the same yarn. I decided that if I was going to be wearing a target, it should be on the front and not the center of my back! More later!

A hail of a spring day!

Hail, rain, wind and all the while the sun shinning! lol Well, not all the while. It did gloom up now and then, too. And never did get very warm. Took my morning walk and then came back in and went back to weaving. Lookee there… it’s hailing again! I always feel sorry for the poor critters out there in that stuff. I remember many, many years ago walking home from school and got caught in a hail storm. Tried hiding under a hedge but finally ran to the nearest house and begged asylum. The lady let me come in until the storm passed. That was actually 60+ years ago and I remember it vividly! I hope all the critters can find a safe place to ride out these showers!

But back to weaving, the suns out again! lol I decided to make the center front yoke in the second color and weave it in a twill. I think it’s going to work.

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Another project

The white 6″ cotton squares are going to take a long time, if they ever do get done. The one I washed did soften up. Not a lot, it’ll still be a ‘crisp’ cotton, but mostly it’s going to take a long time to weave them. So meantime I have a new project started. Have some worsted weight cotton in my stash. It’s make by blue sky Alpaca, but it’s 100% cotton and very soft. I’m not sure how it will wear but decided to try it. I’m using the 14″ triangle for this one. I just finished weaving the first Tri. It took 30 minutes to weave this one, it’s woven plain. The yarn has a subtle variation with very light blue, a slightly darker blue, and just a tiny touch of a light green. It doesn’t photograph well. I might work a texture for the yoke tris. Haven’t decided about that yet. But here’s the sketch of what I have in mind and the fist tri.

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Easter weekend

No weaving going on this weekend. My hands are now too grubby to touch yarn! Gardening and spring type yard work instead. For instance, here’s Randy filling the new garden box with compost and dirt. He sifts all the rock and roots out first, lots of work but it makes a nice growing bed. The tomatoes will go here this year. He also put up the pea trellis, tho they haven’t quite reached that high yet. 😉 A bumper crop of rhubarb in the back there. The bed to the right will have summer squashes and cukes eventually, they’re still in the baby seed bed, but growing nicely, as are the onions in the left photo. I planted three kinds this year, the regular yellow, also some white and red which I haven’t tried before. The bushy plant is a perennial celery. Kind of a cross between celery and parsley, I guess. It has the celery leaf flavor, and that’s what I like. It’s in its third year now.

yard new bed pea tressis onion bed

But I will show you the  squares I wove last week from the stash picks. I am leaning heavily to the one on the right. It’s the easiest to weave and I rather like it’s texture. I think it’ll make a nice summer top. But it won’t be a fast one because even being easiest, it is still a slow yarn slow work with. I don’t seem to have the labels handy but if I haven’t said what it is, I will when I get back to it.

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Meantime, I am enjoying a nice summer this spring. Hope it’s a warm sunny weekend where you are!