Wherein I Take Another Stab at the Stash

The baby wraps were not particularly hard or difficult to weave but since the loom was giving me the fits during the weaving of both 30 yard warps I'd pretty much had it with 2/20 mercerized cotton warps and fly shuttles.  For a while at least.

Not to mention I really need to continue to de-stash in a very serious way.

The 2/30 silk had been on spools for - oh, way too many years.  If memory serves (not that it is these days - serving that is) this yarn is left over from weaving the samples for Magic.  So we're talking at least 10 years.  (And OMG, does time ever fly by quickly when you're not paying attention!)

I'm relieved to say that I emptied, or nearly emptied, a quite large number of spools.  The bad news is that there are still way too many spools left with serious amounts of silk on them.  Which means I either wind more spools of the 2/20 silk on cones and do a mixed warp or I think of something very creative to do with the left over yarn. 

(The little bits of yarn left will go to my lace making buddies - there's far too little to weave with, too much to throw away and lots to make many lace bookmarks, or other lace goodies.  And I like enabling my fibre friends.) 

I did think of using some of the left over silk yarn as weft on this warp but the intention was to use up some of the very large (2 pounds?) of tussah silk in a rather bland sage green.  I may wind up doing some of each even though the warp isn't all that long as I wimped out and only did 20 yards instead of 30, fearing I would run out of silk.  (Ha!)

At any rate, the intention here is to dye the scarves after weaving.  The tussah silk will take the dye differently than the white silk and should look quite nice. 

Now that I've got the header woven and am satisfied that the treadling will work (no outside ends falling out of the cloth, etc) it's time for lunch, the chiropractor (my back is slightly 'out' but I know from experience that it won't go back 'in' by itself and why wait until it gets truly painful?), the guild room to thread that overshot pattern and then maybe come home and hemstitch and start weaving the first scarf.

We'll see how the best laid plans go.

Another Mini-Milestone (or two)

This morning I went up to the annex and did some more pressing.  The colours of the Fox Fibre yarns are actually a little more intense than shown here - guess the flash wiped some of the intensity out.

From the left - 50% green, 25% green, 50% brown, 25% brown, then regular 2/16 unmerc. cotton in cream and on the far right, natural white wefts.  I was going to put some of the 'raw' yarn on the cloth to show the change in colour - and I forgot.  Brain is truly not firing on all cylinders these days.  :(

Three of the wraps are almost ready to go.  I still have to sew the Fox Fibre label onto the two FF wraps that are ready, measure them and attach the care/hang tag.  The other three will get sewn some time this week, depending on how I feel after Wednesday.

In the meantime I have a long list of things that need to be done yet, including threading the guild loom on Monday, drive mom to her doctor's appointment and so on.  I'm still hoping to get the silk scarf warp sleyed and tied on today but it doesn't look like I'll get any weaving done.  We'll see how things go on Monday - hopefully I can at least get the first scarf started.

My web master made a truly Herculean effort last week and it looks like he's getting very close to finalizing the transfer of Magic to digital format.

Since word of mouth is the most effective marketing tool I'd appreciate it if you, dear readers, would pass the word that Magic will be available sometime in September in digital format.  I'm taking names and making up a contact list to let people know when I have cd's in hand and available to ship.  For those who prefer a 'real' book with actual fabric samples - there are still 14 abridged copies of Magic left.  They are listed on my Art Fire store http://laurafry.artfire.com/

People on my contact list will receive their copies of digital Magic first, then I will be listing it on my Art Fire store as well. 

Ghost Weaver

From time to time I wind up being a 'ghost weaver'.  In other words I weave for someone else.  In this instance I'm not doing the weaving, just dressing the loom for another guild member.

She wanted a 15 yard warp, which is about 3 yards longer than I can do on my warping board.  However another guild member had her large warping mill in the guild room so I asked if I could use it.  Here is the warp about 1/3 wound.  I made it a little bit longer.  Each side of the mill is 27" or about 3/4 of a yard.

Here is the warp all ready to go.

The warp went into a plastic bucket and then I started rough sleying.  The set on this warp will be 18 epi.  I used a 4 dent reed and sleyed four per dent except for every 8th dent where I put 8.  That's why it's called 'rough' sleying.  :)

Just beginning to beam the warp.  I split the warp chain into two because I don't have a warping valet to help hold the warp and I felt 18" was just too wide to try and weight with just one water jug.

And here it is - ready to thread.  I'll go back on Monday and do that.

Currently reading Triumph at Kapyong; Canada's pivotal battle in Korea

Stacking Up!

Recently I was reminded, or at least supported, in the concept of celebrating milestones.  This one seemed like an appropriate one to relish - a stack of completed ready to sell shawls.
The weaving of these shawls went like the proverbial hare.  The finishing, however, is proceeding like his opponent, the tortoise. 

What many people don't understand is that the basic construction of hand made items can go quite quickly.  The finishing details - well, quite often that takes as long - or longer!

So it seemed appropriate today - the day I was supposed to get my next chemo but my white cell count isn't good enough to go ahead and another week delay has happened - to remind myself that I have been accomplishing things.  That in spite of the current challenges I am not stymied in my life or my work.  That progress is being made, life goes on and that eventually I will see the end of this particular stretch of the road, just like I am beginning to see a dent in the pile of finishing that accumulated earlier in the year.

Later today I'll pack up some of these shawls and put them into the mail.  And then I'll get back to more fringe twisting.  I think I wove something like 58 shawls of this type.  I'm far from done with the fringe twisting, but at least the mountain is being eroded by working on it a little bit every day. 

For now it's back to the loom.  I need a little weaving/physical activity therapy today.

All Wrapped Up!

stack of 'finished' wraps

sewing the 'hand woven by Laura Fry' label into the seam

The thing about weaving is that what you are mostly making is squares or rectangles.  Towels, place mats, shawls, scarves, table cloths.  Rectangles.  Or squares.

Generally if you are making something out of your fabric, you can make any sort of shape you want, like garments.  Or bags.  Or - well, your imagination is the limit.

I'm not a seamstress.  Yes, I can sew - if I have to.  But to make a garment that fits well and doesn't look home made instead of hand made - well, I would rather be weaving.

So when I was approached last December about making baby wraps, I thought that would be a great new product for me.  I wove a prototype and then could not contact the person who asked me about it - their email elicited no reply, a message left on their voice mail garnered no return call.  So I boxed the prototype up and pretty much forgot about it.

Until I met my latest student.  :)  She's a big fan of baby wraps and essentially wanted to learn how to weave so that she could make herself baby wraps.  I remembered my prototype and found it in the store room (a bit of a miracle, really!) and gave it to her to test drive.

Her feedback was great and I revisited the idea with her input.  And now I have 3 completed wraps with 3 more yet to come, possibly 4, because I made a couple of them shorter than originally planned.

Whether or not the baby wearing community will be interested in my baby wraps is yet to be determined.  But I feel confident I've got a product that will perform well and, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  And besides, they are rectangles.  If they don't sell as baby wraps I can always cut them down into table cloths or something, right?

Digital Magic in the Water

My web master started work on converting the project pages into a pdf format.  Just a teaser - here is what Project 1 looks like - the draft info is included on the following page.  This is one of those samples that doesn't look a whole lot different after wet finishing.  Click to biggify - you should be able to read the text.

The text pages have been proof read and sent to my web master as of this morning.  Looks like we are on track for late September publication.  :)  And yes, there are still 15 copies of abrided Magic left for people would would like some actual fabric samples.

Currently reading Hangman by Faye Kellerman

Finished! (Almost)

This morning I went up to the annex and fired up Puff so that I could press the cloth that went through the washer and dryer last night.

I'm quite pleased with the results.  The green and brown are the Fox Fibre weft yarn, the white uses 'ordinary' 2/16 cotton in natural for weft.  The pattern in the two Fox Fibre cloths is quite subtle now but shows up when viewed from different angles.  I like the way it plays peek-a-boo.  ;)

The warp is over the half way mark now although I'm not exactly sure how far.  I'll measure the 3 pieces tomorrow when they are dry and get them sewn up.  I've got massage tomorrow afternoon so probably won't weave after that - sewing these items will likely be a better activity (and let my neck muscles rest from weaving).

I'd hoped to have this warp off the loom before Wednesday but it doesn't look like that is going to happen.  I'm thinking the next warp might be a silk scarf warp.  I've got a bunch of 2/20 natural white silk already on spools so beaming that warp will be easy.  For weft I have some finer tussah silk.  Since I can only sell a few 'white' scarves I'll probably weave them up and then dye them after weaving.  Which means a hem stitched end, not fringe twisting.  :)  I've got way more fringe twisting to do, I really don't need to add to that mountain of finishing work. 

The really nice thing about hem stitching is that no further 'finishing' is required once off the loom.  And hem stitching a scarf really doesn't take all that long.