Tag Archive | weave it

A couple of new old projects.

I was rummaging and found these two. The quilt top was one of the first projects I made with our looms. I used the Tiny Weaver set, the 3 1/2″ square and triangle, to make this quilt top. I ran it though the washer and found some quilt batting and fabric for a backing and now it’s a proper quilt. I think it’s about crib size. The backing color is not ideal, but it was the only bit of fabric I could find in my stash that fit.

The other thing I found was a blouse I made for myself back in the day, too. It has used an assortment of loom sizes. The 12″ and the 3 1/2″ I think. The yoke and sleeves in this one are knitted. I can’t recall off hand what the yarn is called but it’s a sport weight (I think) cotton. It was comfortable and nice to wear but you probably notice that I am speaking in the past tense. Well, you know how things go when you ‘grow up’.

But now we’re almost ready to leave for Canby and OFFF. Randy is finishing up his 7 foot shawl loom. He promised someone (Sorry but we can neither of us remember who) that he’d have one this year. I think I am ready. Tomorrow I take the cats in to the ‘motel’ & buy groceries for the trailer and Thursday we hit the road. Keep your fingers x-ed for a cool but dry weekend!

Do come see us if you can!

Busy Bees!

Sep20

Well, we’re not bees but busy we are! Having been gone about a week and a half to fiber shows we have a lot of catching up to do before we leave again for Canby and the Oregon Flock and Fiber Fair. Got rained out last year… well, more like blown out, so are watching the forecasts closely. This was the Natural Fiber Fair in Arcata, Ca. I failed to get a picture in Booneville, where the event was held in conjunction with the county fair, midway and all. It was pretty exciting!

Meantime, we found orders for over 70 looms when we got back plus ripe tomatoes and wind fall apples that are attracting the deer and have to be canned this week. The apples might wait but the tomatoes and beans wouldn’t. And trip laundry and 200+emails lol Such problems! Anyway, if you are waiting for your order, please be patient, we are peddling as fast as we can!

The fairs were enjoyable and we sold looms and made a few new weavers, I think. We did some ‘boondocking’ at the ocean side, too, which was fun. Going to sleep with the sound of the crashing waves was at first a bit of a challenge. Crashing was certainly the correct word! I hadn’t realized how much noise water hitting on rocks would be. Much more than our little stream running over the smallish dam here at home.

But speaking of water sounds, we got to go to sleep with the sound of falling rain a couple nights ago! That was indeed a welcomed sound! A neighboring town, just over the hill, has suffered quite a tragedy, they are saying at least a quarter of the town has burned. I feel much better with this rain and more predicted for next week.

And I think I have my Weaving for your Doll book nearly ready. Last evening I got to finish the leotard and will try to get photo’s for it today between shop work and applesauce! But now I need to get Himself some breakfast and go to work. Hope you get some weaving time today!

Oh my… how time flies…

Aug22

And that’s even if you’re not having fun. Not that I’m having un-fun, it’s just that time of year, but sorry I have been so long in posting. Peaches got ripe, then the fire and three shows coming up in September, then his truck had to go to the shop. We have to go pick it up today. You know how these things go.

But sis was down this week for an all too short visit and brought along a couple skeins she has spun from her birthday fleece.. I got a chance to try it out with a little weaving in the evening while we chatted. I used the 7 inch set. We had been discussing pattern weaves on the Multi and I thought I’d try one diagonally. I think it worked pretty well so will have to get busy and try a few more of them. This one is the slide stitch. I wove a few rows, six I think, and then worked a slide row with three regular rows in between & it came out nicely spaced. Now don’t take my word for this as I can’t really remember for sure. I’m not going to tell you the details of how to do it this morning but will work it as I type tomorrow so hopefully can get it right. Meantime if you’re interested you can go to my YouTube- Weaver Hazel– and take a look at the Multi version.

But here’s what I made with the sample yarn. Two squares and two triangles, sc around the edges and a tie string. It’s an ear warmer. I’ll also try to get a photo of it on. This kind of shows the pattern stitch.

Just thinking…

Jul19

It’s July and too hot to be doing much with yarn. I am working on a project for a book to be published by somebody else. I hope I can get it done in time.

But meantime, cleaning up the kitchen this morning, I got to thinking about dishrags. Lots of people weave them on the looms, Sis is one of them. I have also done it but mostly for the how-to pictures. I have clung to my sponges. But awhile back Sis gave me a stack of her old faded ones to use as rags in the shop or somewhere. I just shoved them in the kitchen towel drawer. The other day I got a bug to clean out the overflowing drawer and remembered seeing on someones blog that she had a basket in her kitchen filled with old dishrags, etc to use as clean up rags and save paper towels so I got out one of my hand made baskets (arthritis won’t allow that anymore) and put them all in it. And have started using them for that purpose. And I think I am converted! They are easy to rinse out and hang on the edge of the sink to dry. It was too easy to toss the sponge into the sink where it probably grew some really nasty stuff. I know I went though a lot of them. I remember reading in a “green” magazine that it was actually cheaper and more energy efficient to use paper towels. The author if this piece having proved to herself that the manufacture and delivery of the paper towels saved more energy that the washing of dish cloths. I am going to equate the making of the paper towels with the manufacture of yarn, energy wise. And I refuse to think of the “energy” spent weaving the cloths as effecting the global climate, so will skip to the washing. If you ran a batch just for the dishrags, yeah, that would count, but who does that? You toss the in with whatever batch seems appropriate to your style of doing laundry and as that energy would be used with or without the cloths that also can’t be counted against your ‘carbon footprint’. So it seems to me that the handwoven cloth is going to come off ahead however you look at it. There’s a little water used to rise the cloth but I usually rinsed the sponges and often the paper towels as I use the tough ones so that can’t add to much.

And more to the point… The dishrags woven with kitchen cotton do a much better job of cleaning! That’s really the part that converted me. I am going to have to weave a few more of these handy bits. I’ve had some people tell me they use them as wash cloths, too. I’ll have to give that a try next.

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

May12

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!

Cotton top

May10

Got my extra yarn from Webs so am starting on the sleeves again. I’m kind of playing this by ear, so am not quite sure how it’s going to work. Or frankly, IF it’s going to work. I’m going to weave the four 12″ squares and see what it looks like and go from there. I’m thinking I might like set-in sleeves better than just square ones, which will mean some machine sewing- steeking- but I’m not sure how that will look with this design.

Meantime, I’ve been getting some gardening done, tho it’s still a bit early. In spite of warmer than normal temps, it’s still a bit chilly nights so I am rather pushing it. And now he’s getting going again in the shop, preparing stock for Black Sheep Gathering at the end of June, which means I’ll be out there more, too. Still, I have weaving time in the evenings while the games are on! The Giants are doing great so far.

Hope things are warming up where you are!

Sleeves

Apr28

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.

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.

A hail of a spring day!

Apr25

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.

Easter weekend

Apr20

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.

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.

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

Looking for the next project!

Apr15

I liked my new top so much that I went out to Le Shed this morning and rummaged into the bins and found some potential yarns for summer tops. I bought this stash (most of an 8×10′ shed) from a knitting lady who retired and moved so there is a lot of stuff in there that I am not familiar with. I found these four that look like I may have enough for a project. There is one more, a thick and thin linen that looks nice but is heck to weave with on this type of loom. I’m not sure how these are going to do, either. I’ve started weaving a swatch of one. It’s pretty and very summery. It claims to be cotton, mohair, and poly something or other. The one at the bottom of the photo. It seems to be do-able but it will be slow going. Should be a lovely fabric if I can get them done. I am working on designs. We all know how well that worked this last time! But I have High Hopes! And even if the last one didn’t quite work out as originally planned it still worked out so this one probably will too. Check back now and then to see how it’s going. I’m still looking for ideas for that other pile of squares, too.

Hazel Rose

My Life in the Country