Gearing Up

Tuesday next, RedFish leaves on a 5 week selling trip. Between now and then it will be a test to see just how much yarn we can stuff into a pickup truck. Stay tuned as we hit the trail again.

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.

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!

Done

Tuesday all the big orders were shipped. Today I just wandered around, at a loss as to what to do. Then a silk shipment came in so my afternoon was filled.

We have been eating RAW, so yesterday while in town for UPS, a trip to B&N was necessary. I love the cookbook section and found the book "Becoming Raw" by a bunch of dietitians, it's subtitle is "The Essential Guide to Raw Vegan Diets". I am not a vegan all the time, sometimes sushi calls my name, and giving up eggs would be impossible but on the whole it's raw vegan. You get to eat a lot of food!

Location:Acton CA

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

Like a Chameleon, the photo never does justice or maybe I'm just a lousy photographer.

The scarf is finished. The warp is a hand spun single silk from Giovanna Imperia, it's very roughly spun, lots of texture but surprisingly strong. It was hand dyed by RedFish DyeWorks. Woven with 60/2 spun silk from RedFish DyeWorks. The hand spun sheds terribly, I hope washing will remove this problem.

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

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!


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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

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.

Trails - Albuquerque

Ready to hit the road, almost.  I just have to fill the cooler in the morning and we're gone.  I know a lot of weavers across the country and it's really fun to get phone calls and emails as everyone is "converging" on Albuquerque.  And, I get to see the painted desert again! Maybe in the rain.

Last night while packing the truck, we had a visitor. She was so beautiful and hung around long enough to let me take her picture.

Trails - Albuquerque

Down to the last week before leaving for Convergence Albuquerque, things are getting manic around here.

Trails - selling

Stitches West 2010
The trip from Acton to Santa Clara was very beautiful, everything was green and the almond trees are all in bloom. It rained once we got North on 5 and rained part of the way on 152.  All in all, not a bad trip.

Stitches West

The rains came back, more mud.

RedFish DyeWorks is leaving for Santa Clara, home of Stitches West, the 23rd. This is our first show of the season and we have lots of new yarns and colors.

Taquete Kimono

Things are moving along. I have the AVL warping wheel clicking off warp threads but can only work for short periods as the studio is not heated and it's very cold.  It has been raining for several days, the temperature is dropping, so we have snow on the mountains all the way around us. I hope it stays there and not in my yard.

The warp on my loom is for the Katazome Kimono. I am putting it on hold for awhile and putting the new warp over the top of it.

I love this stand that my husband made for me.  It's stainless steel and has a wide base so it won't tip over, but the arms are close to the ground so I don't trip over them. I can also put more than one swift on it at a time.  I love great tools!

My pile of silk for the project. Eighteen skeins of 60/2 silk, hand-dyed by RedFish DyeWorks, my other business venture.  I have about a quarter of this pile on the loom. I'm happy to be warping again.