A new addition
My loom came to live with us yesterday :). I'm so excited to have her here! She's a 4 harness Gilmore loom and I can't wait to weave on her. We weren't quite sure of her footprint, so we had cleared out space on my side of the bedroom to put her by the sliding glass door, but after we moved everything and she was unloaded into that spot, we realized that she would fit where we originally wanted her to be, in the living room, squeezed between the sideboard and the living room furniture. After some thought, I think we might move her again - this time into the bunny room and put a fence around her. I think that would be the best space, making her the most accessible to me when I'm dressing the loom. We'll see how soon that happens :). I'm heading into Tempe Yarn and Fiber tomorrow to use their warping mill to wind the two warps for the towel and washcloth project that I'm planning on doing for Camelot. Until I do that, all I can do is admire her :)!
Exciting news!
Can anyone guess what the news might be after this teasing picture?
Did you guess??? (Possibly, you are wondering what the picture is actually is?) You guessed right if you said that the news is I'm getting a floor loom! This calls for a squeee! A loom came available to me for a very good price and my mom very kindly offered to buy it for me. I'm going to contribute a bit to the price, buy selling my clarinet on craigslist to help. She (the loom) is coming to live with us tomorrow! I'm VERY excited and the towels for Camelot will be the first weaving project I'm going to do all by myself - on my loom! I will be posting pictures as soon as possible! And yes, I do know that I am extremely spoiled. I'm hoping to repay my mom by teaching her how to weave! Oh, if you are still wondering, the picture is of a boat shuttle, used to carry the yarn back and forth across the warp, though the raised sheds.
Catching up on weaving
So, you might be asking yourself, what could possibly be distracting Heather so much from her blog that she hasn't posted in a very long time? The answer - weaving! The two wool/alpaca scarves that I wove at our lys were just the beginning. I gave the first of them to my mom, who was ecstatic to receive my first weaving ever. One of our friends from Tempe Yarn and Fiber told me that if I was serious about learning to weave (e.g. take the weaving class at TYF), she would loan me one of her floor looms. When I told my mom this, she said that I could have the money to take the class if she had it at the end of the week. She did and I started weaving classes almost 4 weeks ago. I learned how to warp a loom and all the terms and my brain was full of information - but it was so much fun. I took to it very quickly and after I finished my first piece, a sampler, I pretty much warped my second project by myself, with Terry just observing to make sure I didn't make a huge error.
My first real weaving project was a sampler, like I said. I'm not a big sampler person, but I was really glad that I was pushed gently into doing it. I pulled the yarns for the sampler from my stash, things that would match the warp, but were different from each other. I used worsted weight, fingering weight, sport weight and some novelty yarn (which I never buy but was so glad I did because it looked totally different than any of the other yarns on my sampler) and proceeded to do an inch of tabby, two inches of twill and 3/4 inch of tabby but weaving with buttons. The sampler was really instructional and it turned about beautifully. My mom saw it and decided she had to have it - so I finished it off as a wall hanging for her. Here are the pictures:
The second project I did in the class was a shawl, I gave it to Laurie as her birthday present. I used heritage sock yarn (which is washable wool) the brown as the warp and the weft was the lilac color. I used all 24 inches of weaving space on the loom, which meant a lot of time dressing the loom (getting the warp threaded and set up on the loom in order to start weaving). I used a very complicated pattern for a beginner, called gothic cross. It was a bit time consuming to thread the heddles in the proper order and more than halfway through it I realized I had a threading error. I ended up practically rethreading it all to fix the error. After fixing the threading error, I sleyed (threaded) the reed and realized after I started weaving that I had mis-threaded the reed and had to fix one little section (that mistake wasn't as awful as the first). I learned a lot from this project! Mistakes mean more learning - right?! Once I started weaving, it went very quickly. I am so proud of this project! I love it and I think Laurie does too. Laurie has been asking for an everyday shawl for quite sometime now, all the shawls I've knitted her have been in luxury fibers and not appropriate to snuggle in during everyday situations, so this project was the answer. It's washable and warm! And beautiful! I'm still working on twisting the fringe on the shawl. I've finished one side, but barely begun on the second. One of our friends loaned us her fringe twister, so it's going much faster than on the earlier scarves where I was hand twisting the fringe... Here are the pictures:
The next pictures are of some cotton that I am planning to weave 4 towels and 2 washcloths out of. Camelot (my therapeutic horsemanship program) has a big fundraiser in May and students are asked to contribute, whether with donations requested from others or from themselves, to a basket and the baskets are tagged with the student's picture and bio. For my basket, I'm planning to weave 4 colored hand towels and 2 white washcloths and then I will put in some bath and body works things like body wash and such. I think it will be a lot of fun! I know I had fun picking out all the colors. I'm using the white for the warp and the stripy colors for the weft for the towels, and white for both like I said for the washcloths. I hope they are well used eventually!
I've really pushed myself these last few weeks, but it was so worth it. I'm happily catching up on sleep now and looking forward to posting my next post... ;)
Meet my Ladybug!
Finally, some pictures of my new wheel - a Schacht Ladybug. Laurie is calling her "Buggy" but I have tentatively named her Adabel. But as I have been spinning on her and getting to know her, I might change her name, though what to I do not know. We'll see.
In the place of honor, right in front of my recliner!
My own little ladybug cheering me on as I spin. She is on the bottom left of the wheel, where I can see her as I spin.
A close up of the yummy fiber.
I've been having a such a good time spinning on her. She is so much fun to spin on and it's so cool to have a wheel to call my own. A friend from church just gave me 2 Romney fleeces that are washed and carded and are a natural white color. I'm looking forward to spinning them up and having fun dyeing them!
Tradition
Well, I have a lot of catching up to do here on the blog...
First, I wanted to share how we celebrated Laurie's birthday. We took a trip to Urgent Care. Sounds fun, huh? I dislocated my wrist and had to go in to make sure it wasn't broken. How, you might ask, did you dislocate said wrist? A tickle fight. Laurie and I were being very silly and she was tickling me (I am extremely ticklish). I playfully pushed her away from me and she grabbed my hand and pulled. With an audible "pop" my wrist dislocated. We were a tad worried that it might have been broken - there are so many little bones in your wrist, so we went ahead and headed out to Urgent Care. Our friend, Marc, came with us. When I was finally seen by the doctor, he palpated my wrist and said that it felt dislocated but it needed to be x-rayed anyway. No broken bones on the x-ray and the doc said that he couldn't tell from the x-ray if it was dislocated, so he sent me home in a wrist brace to wear for a week. Well, when we got back to the car, I reached over and twisted my wrist to buckle my seatbelt and there was another audible "pop" - this time my wrist popping back in! Yay for being all fixed!
Laurie and I have spent several of her birthdays in the ER or Urgent Care, so we were just following tradition. The following Friday, we went out with Marc for Laurie's birthday dinner and had yummy sushi. Hopefully, I'll be giving her her birthday gift from me soon. I'll give a hint that it's woven...
