No Shrinking Violet....

Just four days ago it was downright chilly here and we were back to wearing socks and and I even had to put the heat on in my studio to take the chill off. We didn't mind though as they promised the heavy clouds would bring some much needed rain.  Well, the rain never fell.... leastwise, not here. 

 Roll the clock ahead a few short days to today and we are now enjoying a heat wave and have fans running to cool us down!  So starts summer 2015.... which they say will be long, hot and very dry.  Our neighbour last night lit a fire in his fire pit and he was literally pounced on by the local fire department.  I'd say people are a tad bit nervous and rightfully so!

Anyhow, with the sunshine came the opportunity to finally take some pictures of the latest project off the Louet Spring.  Its a deep rich violet and so natural daylight is best to capture the pattern.

It started off as these two yummy skeins of silk I bought from an Etsy shop called Dye for Yarn in Germany.  I just loved the colours!  The violet they called "It was a dark and stormy night" and the green is called "algae".

I had been looking around at handweaving.net newly revised web site and found this nifty eight shaft draft that uses only four treadles.  I was thinking this might be a quick light treadling and be easy on my knee.  As you can see the pattern seems to give a nice balance of violet over olive green. 

Except with the way I did the tie up it was reversed and so I had to scoot underneath to see the pattern! (see picture below) I was looking at the back of the cloth the whole way and it was predominantly more violet. I also noticed that the pattern was producing a definite striped effect.  I can see it clearly in the pattern draft above now, but somehow I didn't before and so it came as a (pleasant) surprise to me.  Don't ask me where my head was when I planned this project!

Its 20/2 silk, 212 ends sett 28 epi and the width on the loom was 7.5 inches by 3 yards.

After the scarf came off the loom I quickly twisted the fringes and gently hand washed the silk.   After a night drying to just barely damp, I gave it a good hard press to bring out the shine and trimmed up the tassels with my rotary cutter.   Then I looked at it critically and decided it needed a bit of something 'extra' so I dug out my bead boxes.  I only had two olive green delica seed beads or  Swarovski crystals and nothing in the deep violet colour so that was that.

click on the pictures to see more detail

Then after waiting out the cloud cover,  yesterday I took "Madge" outside to pose pretty and get her close up.    The finished scarf is seven inches wide by seventy two inches in length. The fringe is seven inches long.  The beading is just on the outside corners of each scarf end and they add a little sparkle.

Its long enough to try some of the fancier tying methods.

I did take some shots inside under lights with a flash and here you can see the darker side on the left and the brighter top side. 

I think I would try this type of size yarn next time as 24 epi and I think this pattern would make lovely fabric for upholstery, say, dining room chair seats?  Also lovely cushion fabric too.   I made  notes in my samples.  

My next project is better thought out than the last but it still has surprises..... I'll give you a sneak peek:

I already have been well exercising my cussing vocabulary! It will be a while before you see the end results of this snarly mess but it will be tamed. I'm not one to give up !

By way of a bonus:  Bruce has a new camera he keeps handy. Its a Fuji X100S 28mm and I'm quite impressed by it! It looks like an old style 35mm film camera but its fully digital and takes great shots. Here's a doe munching away on new maple leaves by the west side of our house.  Clear huh?

Until you see its taken from inside the house through a window in his office!  That's his little model train display on the top of his cabinet. No flash used, no manipulation by computer afterwards either. Well it did help that we had just cleaned the windows inside and out....

Keep cool and enjoy the great outdoors!