Yarn Sources

Sharon asked where she could obtain the fine cotton slub I like for towels and other household textiles. Click on the photos for a close up.

The reason I like this yarn is that it is finer than most slubs I've seen from other suppliers which means that I can make a lighter weight textile. :) Generally speaking, you cannot make a thin cloth from fat yarns.....

This yarn is 100% cotton, comes on 8 ounce tubes with approx. 1875 yards per tube. I use it singly for towels, or combine it with other yarns to make a fat weft for placemats. When using a 2/8 cotton warp I set that at 24 for twill and this yarn beats in nicely at about 20 to 24 epi depending on weave structure and how dense you are aiming for. The Spring Towels on the AVL are beating in nicely at 22 ppi.

As it happens I sell this yarn. It comes in a limited selection of colours as shown above. I don't stock every colour - I don't 'love' every shade it comes in - but can get it.

The price is $11/tube (Canadian). I can also get the bleached and natural on 2 pound cones (approx.) at a retail price of $20.00 per pound. I do take Paypal payments and would be happy to take orders. I'll be putting an order in to the supplier over the weekend. If anyone wants to order some of this yarn, 2/8 cotton (warp twist) or cotton boucle please contact me by email: lauraATlaurafryDOTcom.

If there is interest I can put the colour cards for the 2/16, 2/8, 4/8, 8/8 and cotton boucle on my blog too. This yarn comes in 70+ colours and the 2/8 was what I used for the colour gamp kits.

Necessity

One of the challenges when one is using up stash is that at times there might not be quite enough of the yarn/colour needed to complete a warp. :}

Once this lovely pale blue and lavender warp was wound, I looked at what was left over and decided there wasn't enough of the pale blue to use two ends in the weft bundle so I went hunting in the store room. Lo and behold, a cone of 2/8 cotton in a darker value but greyed so that it would 'fit' with the other two colours was lurking in a corner.

This darker blue would not have been my first choice, but in the end I'm quite happy with it.

It's these happy little surprises that keep me coming back to the loom. I wound up using the same darker blue for the hem because I didn't want to run out of the pale blue. Of course, you know what this means....I'll be left with an ounce of the pale blue!

But I'll also have used up some of the darker blue cone. A cone which probably dates from the mid-90's! I also found a couple of peach cones so they'll also be used to make up a warp with a pale shade of orange. The cloth will probably resemble orange sherbet and whipped cream. Yum. A nice thought for a rather grey and gloomy day.

On the ankle front, I can now tolerate about 90% of my weight on my left foot. This is very exciting because it means I'm getting very close to being able to walk again. Hooray!

Currently reading Beyond the Cleavage by Raquel Welch

Fruit Salad

This warp has a little bit of everything in it. :) These are the yarns from the pastel colour gamp kit, all mixed up, a little bit like fruit salad.

On the other hand, it's a nice, spring-like colour combination, and I'm enjoying weaving on it very much.

The weft is a fine cotton slub, the weave structure is twill blocks treadled in points. I think you can see the treadling but click on the photo for a close up.

Mizz B came today. She cut and serged the two place mat warps I got woven last week then wound two more mat warps for me, again using some of the pastel colour gamp colours. One warp using one end of pale blue, one end of lavender. The other uses a pale orange and yellow. Should also be nice and spring-like to work on.

I'll dress the Fanny loom tomorrow and continue with my therapy weaving.

Speaking of which, the physiotherapist said everyone should have a foot powered loom to help recover from a broken ankle. :)

I've got stretches to help loosen the muscles/tendons at the back of my ankle. The good news is that I'm now able to stand with my weight equally distributed on both feet. Am getting really close to being able to stop using the moon boot I hope. But it's obvious that I'm not going to run any marathons or climb any mountains any time soon. :} No matter, so long as I can weave!

Currently reading The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

Rolling Along

I kind of surprised myself last night when I managed to dress the loom all by myself - and the help of the various systems I've put in place over the years. I doubt I could have accomplished it at all without the warping valet. :) It truly is the most forgiving of helping hands - if I need to roll back a bit it doesn't sigh and roll it's eyes. It doesn't need a drink or potty break. It just holds the tension, evenly, consistently - no complaints.

So this is the next warp. The weft this time is the same natural cotton boucle, plus two ivory 2/8 cotton and one ivory cotton slub.

Yes the current placemats all look the same. This is called developing a line. A designer will create a quality of cloth, then interpret that quality in a variety of colours. This allows the customer to decide that yes, they want that quality of placemat and gives them a variety of different colours to choose from.

It is this ability - to weave essentially the same thing over and over - that convinced me that I had what it took to be a production weaver.

For me it's not all about what the cloth is and more about the doing of it. Of immersing myself in the process, striving for that zen state where I am at one with the loom. When I hit that zone the minutes fly by and at times I have to remind myself to stop and take a break.

Well, not right now, of course. My ankle is hyper-aware of when it needs a rest. :^) But all said and done, I threaded, sleyed and tied up the warp before lunch, then went back down and wove 4 placemats. I'm going to ice my ankle, take a fairly long break and then go back down after dinner to see if I can weave two more mats. That will finish the bobbins I filled this morning, so then I'll fill the bobbins again in readiness for tomorrow and then see how it goes. Find out whether I've pushed too far today or not.

And Monday I've got an appointment for physiotherapy booked at 3:15. That should give me enough time that I can do some weaving before the therapy because I may not feel like doing much of anything afterwards.

Currently reading Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

Excursion Day

Yesterday Doug had the day off and I had a number of things that I, personally, wanted to do so we took the opportunity to test how mobile I was and see if I could manage getting out and about on my own. The verdict? I can manage - and very day it's a little bit easier. :D Yay!


One of the first things we did was go to the accountant where Doug ran up the stairs and got the paperwork, hoofed it down to me sitting in the van to sign, then back upstairs to finalize the paper so that we could go to the bank and I could pay what I owed as well as deal with the stack of bills that had accumulated. :}



Then we went for lunch out and over to the Studio Shoppe so that I could take some pictures of the display in the Featured Artists Room. I thought the display looked quite nice with Dahne Andrews' paintings on the walls and my textiles nicely displayed.



Even better, I was told that two scarves had already sold and two were on 'hold'. :D

Then after we got home I iced my ankle and went down to the Fanny loom and wove 4 placemats, leaving a mat and table runner yet to do. Doug is off today, too, so I'm hoping to finish weaving that warp then get him to help dress the loom. I suspect I could manage it pretty much by myself, but it will be a lot faster (and safer!) if he turns the handle and inserts the bamboo blinds.

In the evening we went up to the annex where I pressed some placemats for hemming while he tried to wrestle some order out of the chaos.

Today is also Earth Day. It seems that there is always a lot of controversy about what is 'environmentally friendly' and what isn't. People hold very firm ideas!

Doug and I have composted in one of those regurgitators (not truly making compost but breaking vegetable matter down into a sludge which Doug empties out occasionally and buries in the back yard) for many many years. When we started composting I was amazed to notice that the number of garbage bags set out at the curb was reduced by one third.

A few years later the city started a recycling program, accepting paper 'donations'. When we started sorting out the paper products our garbage set out at the curb reduced by one half. In other words instead of setting out 3 nearly full bags of garbage we now set out one bag a week and very often that bag isn't even full.

We also keep all plastic bottles that can be recycled and turn those in. Our province has a fee for plastic beverage bottles that you can get refunded when you turn the bottles in to a recycling place and quite often we'll get enough money for several cups of coffee. Out - usually at Tim Horton's - as a treat.

Since I have numerous food allergies, I buy very little pre-packaged food products. (Doug does buy a few things that he can zap in the micro-wave.) Mostly we buy fresh fruit and vegetables, a few canned vegetables, and unprocessed meat. I make lots of stews/soups in my biggest pot so that the stove is only used once and then individual servings are micro-waved (never in plastic!)

It took a while to convince Doug that leftovers were A Good Thing, but now he's sold on the fact that it's environmentally friendly. The stove (220 v) gets used once, then the micro-wave (110 v) gets used for a few seconds to re-heat servings.

In the studio I save my thrums handing them over to a surface design artist who uses what she wants and then both of our 'waste' goes to the Salvation Army who has a textile recycling program. I save cardboard tubes and cones, using the cones on my cone winder, the rest going into the city's paper recycling program.

I use 'natural' yarns as much as possible - i.e. fibres that will break down into dust, not yarns made from petroleum products. Yes, I do use regenerated cellulose yarns.

Unfortunately I don't like the light generated by flourescent bulbs, so I'm 'wasteful' in that I still use incandescent. I am waiting for new technology to come up with a light source that I can tolerate, that doesn't create a lot of excess heat (like the halogen bulbs), gives good ambient light and doesn't use a lot of electricity.

I replaced the very old computer I used to use with my loom and my electrical bill actually visibly reduced! I try not to use a lot of things that use batteries, and if I do, I try to get re-chargable ones - although that isn't always possible. (e.g. my fringe twister is hand driven, not battery operated.)

Doug and I plan our routes when we drive in order to use the least amount of gasoline and buy/lease vehicles with the best mpg that we can afford. If they made a hybrid van I'd probably look very seriously at leasing one of those, but we also have to keep in mind our bottom line. :(

Our society is very wasteful. Rather than repair appliances, it's now cheaper to just buy new. :( But as individuals we can each do at least one thing to be a little less wasteful, a little more environmentally friendly, and every little bit does help.

More Progress - sloowly, slooowly

After having a good wallow in my disappointment yesterday, I woke up this morning (having had 7 hours of sleep - hooray!) determined to surrender to what is, instead of struggling with what isn't....

A friend who is an RN commented that I needed to toughen the tender bones, so once I was dressed this morning I put the moon boot on and hobbled, using the walker to support myself, up and down the hallway and into the kitchen and lr for a change of scene. Managed about 5 minutes before my toes started to tingle and decided that was probably enough to begin with.

Then I went down to the studio and started weaving on the placemat warp. And right away noticed that weaving was easier today than it had been yesterday. So I counted that as real progress, no matter that I only managed 3 mats before deciding that that was probably enough for today.

After lunch I went back down to the studio and found that I could actually put a little bit of weight on my foot without wearing the boot while using the crutches. (No room for the walker through the pathways!) So again, a tiny bit of progress.

In the end I managed to thread the entire warp in one sitting before deciding that my foot had been down long enough.

The colours in the photo are not true - my camera seems to have a thing about not representing blues very well. The warp is in reality less yellow and more mauve/blue than what you see in the photo. I think I'm going to go with the natural white cotton slub and a very simple twill block progression. The warp is threaded point over all 16 shafts.

I took the 9 colours from the pastel kit and set them up randomly on the spool rack and then threaded them 'randomly'. In other words, I just made sure that no two adjacent ends were the same colour.

Since there were only 9 colours (two spools each) the warp was beamed at 18 ends per section but I'll sley the warp at 24. With this 2/8 cotton I can fudge the width so I'm not anticipating any difficulty reducing it from 26" on the beam to 19.5 in the reed.

After all of the above activity my foot hasn't even swollen up too badly so I'm going to go for 4 mats tomorrow and see how it goes.

Progress - of a sort....

Well the good news is that I was able to weave two placemats on the Fanny loom. The weft is a bundle of 2/8 cotton, cotton slub and a fairly fine cotton boucle' woven in broken twill.

The bad news is that I'm not nearly as mobile as I was expecting to be. :(

Saw the surgeon at 8 am this morning. He, at least, was pleased with my progress! So pleased that he wasn't even going to write me a referral for physiotherapy but I asked him if I could have one and then decide if I was managing well enough on my own or needed some help. He was kind enough to let me use my discretion and wrote the referral to a clinic of my choice. I'm to wear the moonboot to walk for the next two weeks, gradually weaning myself off of it. (Freudian slip - I originally wrote "weaving myself off of it"!)

I, on the other hand, expected that I would at least be able to stand on my own without the moon boot, but that is only just barely possible. Forget being able to walk or go up and down stairs without it so I'm still bum-de-bumping up and down. I have no idea if I can even make it out of the house on my own yet - boot or no - so Doug will be called in to help me run some errands on his days off this week.

Doug reminded me that he was 3 months recovering from his broken ankle - and he didn't have surgery - so he said that I'm doing as well as he expected even though I'm not living up to my hopes. :}

Mizz B came today and cut and serged the tea towels while I wove. Then she serged the washcloths that she had woven after which I showed her how to beam sectionally and she got a 10 yard tea towel warp onto the AVL. I used the yarn from the pastel colour gamp kit in a random sequence and which I'll thread randomly in a fairly simple twill progression - probably. If I use the linen/rayon boucle for weft the weave structure will be plain weave. If I use the cotton slub it will be twill.

My self-directed physiotherapy will be to weave on the Fanny for a while (without moonboot, working on increasing flexibility and weight bearing) and then work on the AVL. The AVL is ready to thread and I can do that on my own.

But after putting my life on hold for 6 weeks, I am having problems surrendering to the inevitable and facing up to the fact that it's going to be another 6 weeks (according to the surgeon) before I even begin approaching some semblence of 'normal'. And a full year before I can consider myself as good as I'm going to get.

Just in time for my next surgery. :} Gotta admire the timing of all of these things!

Currently reading Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett