50/50 Silk/Camel Sample

Fall is not my most favorite time. The daylight hours are less, of course, but the light also changes as the sun gets lower in the sky, creeps me out, with that said, I will continue with life.

Our traveling season will be over after this weekend with the Southern California Handweavers WeFF show, it's a one day show but very large and fun.

Note:  I have not stopped working on my P2P2 project, I'm still braiding, braiding, braiding.

Now on to my sample. We like to have samples, both woven and knitted, in our booth to show how our yarns work up and I am getting behind in my sample making so it's catch up time.

I will be working with 50/50 Silk/Camel, it's very fine yarn at 800 yards in a 50g skein. I have never worked with this yarn so if all works out I will have a scarf plus a square sample for the booth. I will also work in colors that are not inside my comfort zone to see what I can come up with.

Project:  Scarf 8" x 72" + sample square
Yarn:  RedFish DyeWorks
Colors:  P4d, BG4d, YG3b
Sett:  36 epi, 3 per dent 12 dent reed
I wind my skeins onto 4" cardboard bobbins with my bobbin winder. I use a plastic swift because the yarn doesn't stick to it as it does with the wood ones. Put the yarn on the swift, wind it off to the bobbin, takes about a minute and a half per skein.







I usually work with paper and colored pencils first but this yarn is so fine it doesn't translate well to paper. I will continue to wrap cards until I find a combination that pleases me.

Back to Work

All the excitement of the P2P2 Big Reveal is over, projects shown, the accolades given and received, thanks given to Meg for organizing this fun project, and it's back to regular day in and day out duties. This weekend my job consists of winding 152 skeins of 60/2 silk on to spools, boy it just can't get any more exciting than that.  I am listening to a great book "Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death" Author,  M.C. Beaton so it's not as boring as it could be.

P2P2

I am using the excuse of it being so hot today to not move around much, so I am braiding some trim for my P2P2 project.   There are a couple areas that I want to boost up and I also want trim for the edges.
I am doing an eight strand braid on a Chinese Braiding Stand with 20/2 silk in red and black, one strand per bobbin. Color placement is B R R R R R R B.  I call it the taillight braid and hopefully will mimic the taillights of the cycles.
I have left the fabric on the loom but I will cut it off tonight and wet finish it.  The end is drawing near!

P2P2

Just a minor change, still too much yellow but I'm running with it. The yellow grabs my eyes when I look at the photo, the yellow in the warp grabs my eyes too but now I don't flinch. I might darken the green and make it smaller. These little snafoos really slow me up.

Just as I thought, too much yellow and green. I should really try listening to myself sometime.

P2P2

I have the design part of the warp measured.  As I only need 3 yards for the vest, I decided to go front to back in dressing the loom. I am going to go through the reed to see if I like this part well enough to continue. It's looking rather garish at this stage, but then it's colors I don't normally use so we'll see.

The percentage of the cream in the photo is almost half but I have cut it way down, yellow and green can take over a warp all too easily.

P2P2

With only until the end of the month to finish, I have got to get a move on.

I have decided on the inspiration photo.

I have chosen the colors.














I have decided to weave fabric for a vest. It is hard to put my design ideas down as I see pictures of the finished product in my head and just work toward the end product. I design the color scheme on my warping reel as I go. This fabric will be mostly grey and I am using 4 shades of a black grey with some pure black thrown in.  The balance of the colors will be randomly placed through out.

Chameleon Project

Before my long trip, I had started the Chameleon Project.  I made the mistake of going to a pet store instead of the feed store to buy dog food.  Right up front, where you couldn't miss it if you tried, was a big glass aquarium with the most beautiful Chameleons in it.  I fell in love - with a reptile. I got a clerk and started asking questions and the answers were in the line of, "Oh you need an aquarium, probably 30 or 40 gallons, it should be a vertical one as they (notice the they, you really shouldn't have just one, it might get lonely)like to climb upward, oh and you need heaters, one at the top and one at the bottom. Lots of live plants and fresh crickets of course." By this time a figure I'm up to about $1500. so I decide to take a picture and weave a piece of cloth to remind me how beautiful they are.

That decided, I started my process. At our next conference, I was in Giovanna's booth and found a beautiful hand-spun Italian silk singles called Tulipano, (100gr 1700y) brought it home, gave it to RedFish along with the picture with instructions and had it dyed. I then started dressing the loom, joined P2P2, went on a 6 week selling trip, came home to work on P2P2 and remembered the Chameleon Project.  This picture doesn't do it justice, I will post another when it's taut.

Whew! That was very long winded.  I almost finished dressing the loom today and should be weaving by tomorrow morning if I can sneak away from chores at RedFish.

P2P2 - Decided

I discovered today that I have to finish the project that is started on my loom before I can dress it for P2P2, Yikes!!! The project is on the back beam and half way through the heddles, I worked on it for awhile this morning and will go out again this evening.

In the mean time, here are my photos received from Holly Haynes presented in least favorite to the chosen one.

This is the least favorite of the photos sent to me, it is a shop window in Rome. Very nicely set up but the greens are, well, they just are not in my color range.

This salad looks wonderful and I would love to eat it and I like how they put it on a light blue plate but it has that green.

I love this picture of the Smokey Mountains but I'm back to green, a much nicer green but......

This photo is tied for second place. I really like the colors and their proportions, I will probably use this color combination in the future.

Oh how I love Southwest Utah, in fact, I was very near to where this photo was taken a few days ago.  This is actually my favorite but it's colors I work in quite often so I will just hang it on the wall.

The photo I picked for my inspiration weaving is so far out of my box that I'm surprised myself. I never work in black unless bribed with money. I have never worn black except for shoes but this photo just instantly grabbed me.  There really isn't that much black in it and the grey tones are wonderful, with just enough color shots to make it very interesting. So I'm going to see if I can do a grand weaving!

Thank you Holly for the great pictures! 

P2P2 - Deciding

P2P2 (Pics to Picks #2) An internet weaving design exchange using pictures sent to you by someone else in the exchange.  Each person who joined the exchange received the name of another person to send 6 or so photos to and in return you would receive photos from someone else. I received my photos right before we left on the long trip and looked at them off and on for 5 weeks.  The major problem is deciding which of the 6 photos I want to use as my design inspiration.  Tomorrow I will post the photos and make a decision, gotta get crackin'!