Starting Smaller

A while back I started to weave some green and white place mats. I had it all figured out and got so excited about it I measured out enough warp to make 12 of them. Well, it did not work out so well and it sat and sat on my loom. I ignored the loom every time I looked at it, or got dejected all over again...I mean it was a ton of work to get that thing all strung up and I didn't want to cut the mess off and loose all of that work. Meanwhile the loom just sits, not working at all. I got re inspired after participating in the San Juan County Fair Sheep to Shawl and so I cut the warp off of the loom, rolled it up and sent it to shame itself in a closet until I can figure out what to do with it.

All of that being done I decided to start smaller and just go for ONE place mat to see if I could get it to work. I had a bit of cotton from when I was making Jacob's belt with the tablet weaving and decided to use that. Here is the process that I used to get a couple of balls of leftover cotton to look like this:

First and foremost, I did what I failed to do in my last project and that was determine what the 'sett' should be. I used the WPI method...wrap around 1inch and count the number of threads. Divide by 2 and that is generally what the sett should be for a plain weave.

I think my number came out to be 10. Because I was doing a Twill, rather than a plain weave, I rounded up to 12. So my sett was determined to be 12 dents per inch.

I had originally planned to have a solid dark blue background and a weft of the light blue. After I started to measure the warp I counted, rewound the dark blue back onto the cone and determined that it would have to be a 3 colored place mat if I was not going to go buy more yarn (not really an option according to the bank account at the time). So I collected the materials and started again.

Then I wound the warp. It didn't take too long and since I was just doing 12 ends at a time it was really easy to keep track of how many ends I had and it made it easy to stop and tend to the children when I needed too.

Then I cut it off of the warping board....

Then the tedious work begins...sleying the reed. Every single one of the 156 threads has to be threaded through the reed. It took some time but eventually I got here:

Then all of those individual threads have to go through a heddle, in a certain pattern. For me it took about 3 hours to thread the ends through the 4 heddles in pattern.

After it is all threaded I had to tie the warp to the back apron and then roll it up (not really since this warp was so short) and tie it to the front apron, adjust the tension, fix a couple of heddle threading mistakes and then tie up the harnesses, again in a certain pattern. This would have been a lot easier if I had not had to get out the pliers and pry apart some of the hooks so I could get the cord in, I also had to make a couple of new cords since there were a limited amount on the loom.

Then I could get to the business of actually weaving. Sort of. First I put in the header and then I got to weave a couple of inches before hemstitching the beginning of the weaving.

Then I got to weave away until it got too close to the reed. Then you roll it onto the front beam and keep weaving until you get to your desired length (I added about 1/2 inch to account for any drawing in after the tension was taken off of the warp threads). Add the final hem stitch ...

Remove from loom and set on a table edge with something heavy, like a couple of books so that you can carefully pick out the header yarn...

Then let the recipient of the place mat check it out (he rubbed it and said it was soft and pretty) He said "is it for Daddy?" I said "no" he asked "is it for you?" I said "no" and with an excited raised pitch he asked "is it for me?" and I said "yes!" and he said "oh goody goody!"

Then I gied off the fringe in over hand knots. I did this in groups of 4 threads. This of course has to be done on both fringed ends, and then up to the cutting mat to even out the edges...

And finally, forbid the intended recipient from touching it so you can take a 'good' picture.

Crafty day

So I have been working on another pair of socks and got to the point that I needed to do some grafting. Problem is I lost my yarn needle (major bummer since I haven't been able to find one quite like it and I loved that needle). I went to Joanne to pick up a replacement and of course I wander when I go there. I saw something that inspired me while there and I picked it/them up... A couple of doughnut beads. I grabbed two of them, a couple of dowel packets and a packet of cup hooks. Oh and the sandpaper. I am so glad I remembered the sandpaper even though it meant getting out of line.

So I got home and started to assemble...you can do this too...all you need is:

-a donught bead with the most centered hole you can find or a wooden toy car wheel.

-a wooden dowel in the same diameter as the hole in your bead...just eye it, it will probably work.

-a small cup hook

-a thumbtack and/or drill with a small bit.

-sandpaper

-small saw

-pencil sharpener (the handheld kind with 2 size holes)

-superglue or other strong bonding agent.

Slide the bead onto the dowel. I buy the 99cent packets that come with 12 dowels that way I can find the best fit as they vary ever so slightly in size. It should be a pretty tight fit - you might have to wiggle the bead with a little pressure to get it to slide on.

Next I used the push pin to mark the center of the top of the dowel and pushed it in as deep as my cup hook. At this point you may drill a pilot hole for the cup hook but I found the push pin hole was enough for me to start screwing the hook in. Not too tight or the wood might split on ya. Even if you drill, use the pin to make a starting poing for your bit so it doesn't skip around on you. Also you are less likely to split the wood if you drill the hole first.

Now I saw the bottom of the dowel off so it is a length I am happy with - its subjective, you might like a longer shaft than I do, you might like a shorter one.

These next couple of steps are optional - I put the bottom of the dowel in the pencil sharpener and 'sharpen' it to get a tapered end (you don't want it pointy) Then I sand. I sand the tapered end so it's smooth and also the shaft and the top above the whorl (bead). I just smooth all the edges out.

You can totally be done at this point, however depending on how tight the bead/wheel fit on the shaft you might want to secure it. I slide the bead up, run a ring of glue around the shaft where I want the whorl to sit and then slide it back down. I hang it from the hook so the whorl is not skewed by laying on it's side. You can also stain and/or varnish or wax the dowel too for a more finished look. I choose not to do this last part but the beauty is I can always do it at a later time.

So, here they are!

Wood:

Amethyst:and Stone:

The other little project I have been working on for about a year (well I started it a year ago and put it down until last week) is a mini scrapbook about the little things I love that my son does. Nothing fancy just some pics, patterned paper, eyelets and a ring from the office store.Did not turn out exactly as I'd imagined, but it works.
So, there you go, a few crafty things I have been working on. Next up is probably some spinning or socks. Course I should really be packing...

Silk

So while the babies slept yesterday I decided to pull my silk back out and give it a go again. Silk is kinda a pain in the butt to work with since it catches on everything. I thought I'd try a new way to wrangle it this time to see if it did me any good.

So here is my process:

1. This is a silk hankie...it is made up of layers of individual whole silk cacoons that have been stretched one by one over a frame. Because it is the whole cacoon there will be both long and short fibers so don't expect a perfectly smooth yarn.2. Isolate ande peel off one layer.

3. Poke a hole in the middle.

4. Stretch.5. Keep stretching until it's fairly close to the diameter you want your single to be. In this case I am spinning it very fine so I went a long way with the stretching. With silk you want to keep your hands fairly far apart...8-12 inches I'd say, moving closer as neccesary. Also, the more you predraft the more luster your yarn will have. Oh and don't forget to soften up your hands with some lotion first or you'll think you'd just coated your hands in glue with the way silk clings.
6. Break the ring at some point. You can do this anywhere you want, if you have hankies that are dyed multiple colors, you may choose to always break at the same point in the colors to keep your pattern the same.7. Spin. I wrapped my silk around my papertowel holder. I thought it would be smooth enough to allow the silk to come away freely but it did snag quite a bit. Next time I think I will just pile it into a bowl and see how that works. Oh and because the staple length is so long you don't need a ton of twist it holds together really well.Here it is spun up on the spindle - There are about 4 cacoons already spun on there.I must say you do get a lot of bang for your buck with silk hankies. Plus you can get them cheaper if you buy them undyed and you can use kool-aid to dye them too.
Anyway, there you go, a mini tutorial on spinning silk hankies.

This is the way we wash our wool...

So I have been spending the last week washing wool. It is done. Well, the washing is - there is still a bit of work to do to get it ready to spin.

If you have no interest in wool, feel free to click away otherwise, if ya wanna know how it gets from sheep to sweater (or sock or blanket or whatever) read on.

On Saturday (of last week) I bought a fleece at the Spring Fair.

I brought it home and layed it out on the kitchen floor. It was already 'skirted' (someone had gone around and taken out all of the icky bad clumps on the edges of the fleece) but it is always prudent to do your on checking. You can see the shape of the sheep if you look for it...The bit up on the Seahawks mat there in the top left corner is what would have been on the right front leg of the sheep.

A gratuitous close up of the locks:


The locks are about 4 inches long. Next they got divided up - ended up with 4 58qt tubs of wool prewashing (weight about 6.75lbs).


Next the locks got a dip in soapy water for about a half an hour. I got smart after the first batch and bought some tuelle to use as a net for moving, draining and drying the wool.


After a couple of rounds of soapy soaks it gets a rinse soak and then I spun the wad of wool in the tuelle to get the water out (washing machine is much more efficient tho) and then spread it out in the yard to dry:
Next comes the waiting. and waiting and waiting for it to dry. It washed out to be a pretty brilliant white.
I spun up a small sample from the locks just as soon as they were dry. I didn't take pics of the spun yarn until after I got out the kool-aid. However, after a dip in some kool-aid baths and a heat set in the microwave this is what my samples looked like:

That is Lemon-Lime and Pink Lemonade for anyone who wants to know...
Of course I had to see it knit up so I made another key-chain sock. The sample was just enough to get a sock out of (I had about 6 inches of yarn left over):


Overall I am really happy with the wool I bought. I ended up with a 73% yeild of the original weight..so 4lbs 14oz. I split this fleece with my friend Andrew and we are just playing around with the fiber seeing what we get when we try different things. Andrew carded the trimmings from his son's haircut with some of his wool and spun it up into a course yarn. Personally I love the color blend but won't touch it because it itches to high heaven. I think it would make a great rug but I think he is going to make a belt out of it. I have also combed some of my wool into roving and dyed those with the same colors. I can't wait for them to be dry because I really want to make aroving braid just to see it all done up pretty.