Placemats part II

Second colour/yarn combo


Three yarns bundled together to make up the weft

It was so much fun weaving up the placemats I just kept on going until the cone of soft red cotton was all used up. I have no idea how many place mats are on the beam - when I got down to not-enough-bobbins-to-weave-two-placemats I just finished off the yarn making a table runner about 32" long under tension.

And then I grabbed the large cone of varigated cotton flake, combined it with some cottolin and the solid lighter red cotton flake for weft for the rest of the warp.

No, I'm not having any particular problems winding the three yarns together. If I'm going to do a lot I'll set up a doubling stand, but since two of the yarns are on spools instead of cones it's easier (what can I say, I'm lazy!) to just take them off this way.

I always set up my tubes to wind off counter clockwise - no particular reason except I started doing this nearly 30 years ago and it's now my default position. :} After all, if you can't be perfect, be consistent!

But now it's back to transcribing and tomorrow - colour gamp warp winding. I really needed a break and it's been great fun weaving the placemats.

ps - the yellow ribbon pinned to the mat is actually a measuring 'tape'. I love using ribbons because they are so easy to pin into and because this is not actually a measuring tape but simply marked out in 12" sections I can cut the ribbon to whatever length I want. Here it's 20" for placemats (Thanks Tien - really nice!)

Heading Towards Placemats

starting the placemats


So of all the choices of activities at my disposal today, getting that placemat warp started was the most appealing.

This is pretty typical of how I begin most warps. After tying on I weave a few picks of - generally - plain weave, then twill, checking for threading/sleying errors. I find using up already wound bobbins works well, and usually have quite a selection of them to hand. What is used is less important than it have a high contrast in order to make any errors really stand out.

Quite often the outside threads will tend to roll inwards so I will take a loop of the heading weft and wrap it around the rod. You can see in the photo that a strand of the white thread is going off to each side. This is not a mistake but done deliberately and helps in keeping the warp ends all in a nice plane.

Then I wove a few picks of the intended weft, a combination of a fairly thick soft cotton with a cotton flake in a slightly lighter colour both wound onto one bobbin. Just wanted to make sure the colours were going to look nice in the woven cloth.

And then I started the hem. Forty picks of a 2/8 cotton in plain weave. The end was tucked into the first shed of the placemat, which is being woven in a broken twill treadling on a straight twill draw. Between each placemat I will weave a contrasting thread to use as a cutting line.

I'm pleased with the results and eager to get some more weaving done. If all it takes is to weave for an hour or so each day to keep my bp well controlled, I can do that! :)

Fringe Binge

Three buckets full of fringe twisting to be done

This is a view of my pile of fringe twisting that needs to be done. Yes, that's more on the table in the background.

As you can see, my living and dining room are not really living and dining rooms, but more work space. :( The only way I can deal with fringe twisting is to do it while watching tv. And there's rather a lot of it because I picked up everything my fringe twisting elf had because her life got too stressful to deal with my pile of ft.

Since I've got such a backlog of of it to do, plus the afghans that will be going onto the AVL next week, decided I needed to do something that didn't need to be ft'd!

So the next warp going onto the Fanny will be placemats. I'm low on appropriate yarns for mats, but decided some of the high twist bamboo would work just fine for warp with some cotton novelties as weft. And instead of fringes, I'll weave hems. At least it will be something different than ft! And more portable as I can bring hemming to coffee with friends or to guild meetings.

Got all the kits made except for the orders received today. Decided I needed a break from kits so I'll wind the placemat warp tonight. May even get it beamed as Doug is working until 8:30 pm.

The 'buy one, get one free' option on Art Fire works really well - except of course I didn't do it the proper way and allowed people to choose a different colour from the initial kit ordered! :D However, it was an interesting experiment and one I may repeat in the future. For now, however, the offer is over.

The good news is that my energy seems to have come back, even though my bp continues to spike for no known reason. :( If this continues I really will ask the dr to change my bp meds - perhaps my body has gotten used to the ones I'm on and they aren't working properly? Who knows.........sure would be nice to get a users manual with clear instructions on how to help one's body work healthy and well! :}

Get Up and Go

Leclerc skein winder for winding yarn for quills - and a couple of proto placemat warps in amongst the rubble

For the past few months I have been 'suffering' from a serious lack of get up and go. I've been blaming this lack of energy on a whole list of things - the unremitting stress in my life, my health issues, adverse drug reactions, yadda, yadda.

Whilst whining about this last night over coffee with a friend and moaning about the diuretics and Plavix - the current suspected culprits - she commented that her mother had taken diuretics for much of her life and found that she very quickly became deficient in potassium and had to supplement it. My friend also said that if that was the problem, it would become very apparent very quickly once I started supplementing potassium.

As it happened, I had some bananas at home, so I ate one last night. This morning I was reasonably productive but was reluctant to give too much credit to one small banana. :}

However, feeling somewhat better, I decided to pick up some potassium supplements while I was at the store this afternoon and took a first tablet with dinner.

And have been working steadily for two hours getting quills wound for the kits. Plus I don't feel so fuzzy headed and - well - squashed is about the only word I can think of to describe how I had been feeling.........

My bp continues to fluctuate and spike for no real reason, which is worrisome but not terrible, so I won't think too much about it for now. If it continues to be this erratic by the time I see the doctor in January, I'm going to ask about changing out one of my bp meds and try something else. You know - the one that causes weight gain as an adverse effect? I'd sure love to lose some weight and nothing seems to help. So right now I'm blaming those pills......... :^)

The colour gamp kits are nearly ready to ship - should be able to get most of them into the mail tomorrow. After that I will start working on the afghan warp for the AVL, finish the rayon chenille warp on the Fanny (two more scarves), then begin making placemats. And start back on transcribing WeaveCast episodes. I've gotten very far behind on those. :(

I haven't seriously made placemats for many years - people still come up to me at the craft fairs and say their 20 year old placemats still look like new - but this year I had people coming looking for them so I guess it's time again. Perhaps people are wanting a new colour, if nothing else?

Currently reading The Night Visitor by James Doss (gave up on 13 1/2 by Nevada Barr - too gruesome for me)

Knitting

four knitted scarves

Yes, there are four scarves here - there are two pink/purple scarves - one skein had a slightly darker purple than the other.......

In one of her books Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (The Yarn Harlot) talks about knitting and patience.

She points out that knitters are no more patient than any other person. It is not that knitters are inherently patient, but rather it is because they are knitting that they can be patient.

I can go along with that observation.

I try to never go anywhere that there is a possibility I might need to wait for more than a minute or two without a trusty book or knitting project. I can cope with waiting for quite a long time so long as I can read or knit while I'm waiting. Take those waiting coping tools away from me and I become a very unhappy camper.........

So, since Doug was with me on this trip I brought along both books and knitting. As it happened, it was slower than we'd hoped, and there was no need for both of us to be in the booth to wait on customers, so I wound up with a lot more knitting time than anticipated.

And I ran out of yarn! OH NO! Ack! What to do! I went to a couple of stores to see if I could find some cheap acrylic, but no, not a skein was to be found.

So I did the only thing I could do. I bought a skein of hand spun 2 ply indigo dyed wool from one of the other vendors! (Joybilee Farms - hi Chris!) And started another scarf.

Since the skein wasn't terribly large, I wound up ripping it out twice and starting over making the scarf successively narrower so that I could get a scarf that was long enough for the intended recipient. :} And still finished knitting it in the van before getting home.........

I also finished the one book I'd been reading and started the next. And then it got dark. And then it started to snow. Even though I wasn't driving - this time - I was not very comfortable with the road conditions. A cd of Tom Cochrane's Greatest Hits kept me reasonably distracted and we got home by 8 pm or so.

We were way too tired to deal with unloading, so left that for today. It's now unloaded, but I have no idea where I'm going to put the content of the boxes. :( Since I may have some customers come to look at textiles in the next couple of weeks, I have to re-organize the store room, and hopefully bend time and space sufficiently to get everything in there, looking neat and attractive.

A challenge for another day.

Currently reading The Shaman's Game by James Doss

Show Set Up

Ah the flurry of activity as the optomistic artisans set up!

It is nearly 9 am, doors open at 10. Our booth is nearly ready. I will start setting out the textiles while Doug takes the booth boxes back to the van.

And then it is just wait and see...
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Oliver BC

We are here. Took 11 hours with good weather most of the drive. Only a bit of rain along the Falkland corrider.

We found the hall and the motel then a nice restaurant for dinner.

We set up at 8 am and open at 10.
Show time!
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