Packing the truck

The truck is almost packed for the Southern California Handweavers Guild's WeFF show tomorrow.  SCHG is the first Guild I joined and it's fun to do a show when you know practically everybody. I have to set my clock back and get to bed early to get up at 3:45. The joys of a traveling silk merchant.

Just get on with it!

I have come to the conclusion that no matter how many cards I wrap I'm not going to like any of them. I am just going to pick one and weave it.  This is a booth sample for sett and hand, it has nothing to do with my color preference, I was given these colors and told to weave so I'm going to weave. And it's raining. 

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.

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!

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

I'm beginning to think I will never get it together! I got the Chameleon Project off my little loom but my camera batteries were all dead.

Now to begin P2P2.


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Location:Acton CA

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'!

Contemporary Handweavers of Texas

T-Shirt yesterday: She who dies with the biggest stash is dead! When's the estate sale?

Temperature: 74. Humidity: 82

Pack up at noon and move to the next stop. Seems like we just left home and the road trip is half over!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:College Station TX

Just My Yarn and RedFish DyeWorks

Since I wanted stripes for this shirt instead of random color, I thought I should wrap some cards to see how my chosen colors would work with each other.  I very seldom do this but in this case I'm glad I did. The colors worked fine, however, the pink hand-spun silk was too fuzzy.  I traded it out for the same color in 20/2 silk and it looks much better. I have also decided to sley the 20/2 two to a dent and the 60/2 three to a dent, it will still be sheer but the difference in the stripes won't be so great.  I will work on wrapping new cards tomorrow. Maybe

Just My Yarn and RedFish DyeWorks

New project this week.

Yesterday I laid out the 3 skeins of yarn I purchased from Just My Yarn www.JustOurYarn.com and looked at them off and on all morning.  In the afternoon I started adding RedFish yarns to fill in the warp.  I decided I wanted a lot of color in stripes and a sheer fabric. 

 This is what I have come up with so far. The pink on the left is a hand-spun silk I had RedFish dye a light pink.  Because it is hand-spun the color is very streaky, which I love. The 6 little skeins are RedFish 60/2 100% silk in stock colors. The 2 skeins across the top are RedFish 20/2 silk in stock colors. The 3 skeins on the right are Just Our Yarn. The one to the left is tencel, the middle is 30/2 tencel and the right hand side is Rayon. I might add more colors later, I'll have to wait and see

I will be using my Schacht floor loom which has 2 inch sections. I will use the AVL Warping Reel as I think I will make each section different. 

May haps I best decide what this rectangle will turn into and figure how much warp I need. This is always a great idea! Back to the drawing board.

Weaving

Stats for Pink and Yellow Sleeveless Jacket.

2 skeins Sea Silk, 70% Silk and 30% Seacell (r) from "Hand Maiden fine yarn". It's a hand dyed yarn from Canada. Color Melon.
2 skeins 60/2 Silk from RedFish DyeWorks. It's a hand dyed yarn from right here in my backyard. Color YO1b.

I used my 36" Schacht Floor Loom, threaded in a point twill. I used only 4 of the harnesses and tied 1 harness to 1 treadle.

Wove 25" wide at 15 epi. Warp was 2 1/2 yards long. This loom has a waste of 20 inches.

The whole project went very quickly. The Sea Silk is very soft spun so it needs to be handled gently. The yarn label says hand wash only.

I'm not in a sewing mood so I will start another warp.

Weaving

No threading errors.  I always hemstitch, even if it's fabric, to make finishing easier.

Everything is going smoothly

Close-up - I'm weaving with a gold 60/2 silk.

Finished - This is a warp for a short jacket, only took a couple hours to weave it off.

Cut it off.

The is the "right" side of the fabric.  I wove the fabric facing down so I didn't have to lift as many sheds. This photo is closer to the real color, it's amazing how the color changes when it is away from my cherry loom.

I will wet finish the fabric and post the stats next week.

Weaving

I'm glad it's Thursday again, but it has been so hot and humid that I don't think I had the energy to do anything except thread my loom. Slowly.

I'm threaded and knots are tied.  This is a very nice yarn but you cannot handle it too much as it is loosely spun and pills easily.

All wound on.  To me this is the most important part of dressing the loom.

  I'm ready to tie the front knots and lash on.

I might not get to weave tomorrow as RedFish will be in Camarillo Saturday for the Ventura Spinning and Weaving Guild's annual Harvest Festival and Sale.  Packing to do and lunch to make.                                                                                                                                                      

Weaving

Stayed up way too late last night watching the meteor shower. It was the best one I have ever seen.

I didn't get to my studio until after 2:00, but I am sleyed and started going through the heddles.

Weaving

This was the first Thursday of my weaving Thursdays and Fridays for the next 5 months. I did do a few loads of wash as the machines are in the studio but on the whole I got a lot done.

Decided to used some of the yarns that I have picked up at Conventions to make some new selling clothes. I cannot resist beautiful hand-dyed yarns and don't feel guilty buying them if they are something we don't dye.  This one is from Hand Maiden out of Canada, it's 70% silk and 30% seacell.  Seacell is a yarn made from shells, mostly clam and shrimp.  Surprisingly it's very soft. They call the color melon, one skein is a soft pink and golden yellow, the other a darker pink and a deeper golden yellow.

I have done my math and measured the warp, I'm ready to slay the reed in the morning after my walk.  I'm going to alternate light and dark and weave with RedFish 60/2 in a golden yellow.

Just weaving

When someone asks me what I do, I say I am a hand weaver. I have been reflecting on this for awhile and have decided I cannot say this anymore unless I actually weave.  I own a weaving shop, I teach hand-weaving, I buy and sell weaving equipment, both new and used, but I never have the time to do any weaving. So, I have started weaving again. Yeah! I am a hand weaver.

I learned to weave 35/40 years ago, the 70's. Everyone wove in olive green and orange wool. It was horrible, the colors were horrible, the wool was horrible, the finished product was horrible, we worn it anyway. Slowly I found sources for fine silks and cottons and my weaving life was changed forever, no more wool for me!  Jump forward 40 years and my first project in becoming a hand weaver again is WOOL. Not the thick, scratchy, ugly wool of the 70's but a fine beautiful silk and superfine merino blend. RedFish DyeWorks needed a sample of this yarn so I was going to throw a warp on and zip it off in no time flat, right.

Color choosing was easy. When weaving a sample, I always go to my favorite colors - turquoises and reds. In this case 4 shades of turquoise and a coral. All 50/50 silk/superfine merino 2 ply hand-dyed by my other company RedFish DyeWorks.

I wanted this to be quick, a scarf and some sample squares so I measured a mixed color warp, went through the reed, through the heddles (point twill) on 4 harnesses. Wound on, gently, don't want to stretch the wool. This is moving right along.

I wove several inches with the #4 turquoise, the darkest, and didn't like it so I took it out and tried the #1. Didn't like it either, took it out, tried the #2, liked it only I had a problem. Things I didn't remember about weaving wool, thick or thin; you cannot tension it like silk. The warp was too tight, weaving then unweaving twice, then weaving again, sawed my warp at the heddles. Many broken threads and the rest were very, very thin. So much for quick. I managed to get the warp advanced and retied. I am weaving again, the tension is like a hammock, I'm weaving 8 shots, then advancing. Very slow going, but I'm going. Even though I haven't woven much in the last ten years, in my mind I'm still a weaver. I just need some practice.

Trails - Packing

We are in high gear with our packing. Leave first thing in the morning.  CNCH is a fun conference as we know tons of people there.  We will be staying at the Extended Stay, our home away from home.