Ticking All the Right Boxes

I imagine many of you are aware that I sell what I weave and so have an eye on my Etsy shop for what is running low and prepare warps with that in mind. I also weave something that interests me personally and so don't call myself a production weaver.   Going down that road is like turning weaving into a J.O.B.   I have no interest in that at all.

I get bored very quickly and so short runs of 7 to 10 yards are perfect for me. 

I got to playing around in the stash closet and discovered I have some really nice coloured 10/2 cottons that are really rich colours.   It was a toss up between towels and runners, but runners won out and I wound 9 yards of Valley yarns black, shell, lizard green (now discontinued), golden ochre and eggplant.   The sett is 28 ends per inch.

Here it is under way on the loom with black weft. The centre of the larger blocks can be as large as you'd like. This version shows two repeats of the required treadling as shown in the draft.

Then here's the lizard green as weft. It actually works quite well.  I wove one runner using the eggplant and a test run of the golden ochre didn't work very well for my eye and so was UNwoven quickly.  😳

I found the draft at Handweaving.net but didn't make a note of the number (sorry)....    So weaving this project took a long time for a few reasons.    I got started well enough but soon ran into some tension issues, so after a runner was complete, I cut off and re-lashed on again.    Now the tension was just fine but the shed was misbehaving. It wasn't as large and I had threads out of alignment.   I struggled to finish a short runner and cut off once again. 

We lifted the loom back up onto crates, and with the locking pin in place, I went through the tie up and checked the cord lengths.  Some were off by a hole or so and some treadles were too high over all.   I fiddled and tweaked and the next runner was woven much more successfully and I was much happier !

So now that this warp is all done, the plan is to thoroughly clean the loom and then slowly but surely make sure all lamms are level. Then I'm going to double check treadle heights and cut new tie up cords cut to the right length.   The loom was brand new in 2008 and so a tune up of this scale after 12 years isn't  too bad!   I also use a Woolhouse Tools commuter bench and so that will be cleaned and given a fresh oiling of the wood while we still have sunny days outside. 

In short, I really enjoy this loom and don't want to fight with it.   I guess you could say it was crying out for attention !  😊    Simply tightening nuts and bolts isn't enough.... 

So here are some 'beauty shots' of the completed runners.   Yes, all the fringe twisting  took some time to do.

Black weft -above and below.

Olive green weft- above and below.

and finally.... eggplant purple weft below

So before fall  and the traditional weaving season truly sets in, plan to make a list of what your loom's needs are so you can tweak away and get it in the best condition for your winter weaving.

• cords checked for fraying / replacing
• pulleys cleaned and oiled
• new tie up cords?
• nuts and bolts replaced and /or tightened
• clean the wood finish with Murphy's Oil Soap

I've heard some weavers wax poetic about the lovely patina the wood surfaces have ..... um, patina is just oils, dust and dirt  and that's all.  I clean my beater about once a month as its creepy how it can build up despite all the hand washing going on around here!

So the Spring loom  is naked for the time being and there are scarves under way on the Megado.   I have to wind some new warps for the Spring as well so there is always something on the go here.  But time is about to get precious here .... because.....

🍼 🐶 🍼

Puppy watch:    It seems we'll be getting our new little girl sometime around September 2nd, so have launched into acquiring all the items you need to have on hand. It reminds me of having a new (human) baby and carrying around vast quantities of diaper bags and  car seats and changes of clothing.   How can something so small, need so much??

The pups are 6 weeks old this Wednesday  the 26th and so we will be driving down island a week or so after that to get her. They release them between 7 and 8 weeks old.

Here are some pictures taken last week at age 5 weeks. They were introduced to an outside pen to get familiar with real grass and to check out lots of new smells!   Their mum is only nursing them twice daily now and they are being fed a special puppy food soaked in goats milk and so they will be getting puppy kibble soaked in goats milk to start with  here at home.   They are giving us full food recommendations and feeding instructions which we will follow carefully.

Still debating names.... but I  have my favourites of course.  We may end up waiting to meet her to see which name suits her best. 

 🍼 🐶  🍼

Inspired by Nature

A view of a coastal region somewhere on Earth as viewed from the International Space Station.

Maupiti, in the French Polynesian Islands

Kalamalka Lake, and Rattlesnake Point, near Vernon, BC, Canada

Maligne Lake, with Spirit Island, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

So with these natural beauties in mind, I  have this warp from Iridescent Fibers  in my stash that they call "Across the Universe."   

I had this 8 shaft crackle draft that showed great potential!   The white sections in the draft are where the painted warp would go, along with a soft gold and dark teal tencel borders. Its rather difficult to translate a diverse painted warp to colours in a weaving draft.

From the initial start of weaving, I was very pleased with the results! I used dark teal as my weft colour on the first scarf. On the second scarf I used the colour azure which is a medium bright blue. 

Finally they were woven and final finishing completed. Yesterday I took "Judy" outside into the garden for a photoshoot. It was a lovely day with a breeze blowing, so you might notice the fringe looks like its moved or the bottom of the scarf as ballooned out a bit.

So the next three images are of the scarf woven with dark teal as my weft. Its difficult to get the colours shown to their best advantage  as depending on the light, the  camera settings, and your computer screen.... it changes colour!   Its quite the chameleon!

I call this scarf Kalamalka Lake as we used to live nearby to it and go and dabble our toes in this gorgeous coloured water in the summer.

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Now, all the pictures below the line of asterisks are of the scarf woven with the azure blue weft

The greens are still there but more subtle now.   I call this scarf "Blue Lagoon" after all the beautiful atolls and coral reefs in the south Pacific.  I was lucky to walk a beach like that near Fiji many years ago as a 14 year old wondering how the water got to be that colour.

I also took some pictures of our snap dragons and irises in full bloom. Its such a lovely time in the gardens right now with all the flowers and all the greenery out and looking lush.    Our back yard has a few nests and lots of babies (who are as large as the parents) running behind them begging for food.   We had a baby robin sitting on our front doorstep who clearly was too young to have left the nest.  His or her feathers were just coming in and the poor thing had no tail feathers at all.    I sure hope it makes it!

Weaving in the studio is carrying on at a leisurely pace as both looms have ten yard warps under way.  I have been taking advantage of the better weather to open up the French doors and sit outside and keeping busy oiling some of my wooden tools for their annual spruce up, which is only three years late!  Oops...    My warping mill looks brand new again.    I've decided that once the warp is off the Louet Spring, that loom is getting a tune up and resetting of shafts and lamms.  Something is a bit off and I'm not enjoying the weave as much.  Its been 12 years since I got it brand new so its well overdue for the overhaul.

I hope you continue to be safe out there..... the virus hasn't gone away.  😳   Not yet anyhow....

Snow Roses 🌹

Yesterday we took a drive south of our town of Campbell River to Oyster Bay and this was our view  at sunset.  Those are the coastal mountain ranges over on the mainland and the fresh snowfall from the day before was being kissed by the last rays of sunshine.  Click on the pictures to enlarge.

There are literally miles of beach like this here and you can pull over and sit on a log and enjoy the view and wildlife.  We just love living here....

The one below is cropped to see more detail of the mountains.  We only had our cell phone with us so I hope you can see the beauty of the moment. The full moon was rising behind the mountains too.

The rosy tones of that sunset remind me of the pink tones of this cone of rose yarn.  So what is it exactly?   

Rose fibre is very similar to bamboo in appearance and feel. Silky and shiny. It is a new cellulose fibre made from rose bushes. The rose fibre has been extracted from the natural waste of rose bushes and stems.  This fibre is an environmentally friendly, green eco fibre and it is bio-degradable.

The cellulose is basically a neutral white and so the pink has been added. It's available as both yarn and as spinning fibre.  No, there is no rose scent! 

I'm going to pair up this new yarn with an old favourite.   Its been a couple of years since I last wove snowflake twill and decided to dust off the draft and weave up a couple of scarves.   I have literally woven a mile of snowflake twill in the past 24 years and so can recite the treadling in my sleep!  

It can be both visually complex and intense and I tend to go with softer, more neutral colours.  Where the play of light can reveal the pattern, and so using undyed tencel was my first choice of weft yarn.  Both warp and weft are 8/2 in size and my sett was 24 epi.

I always snap a picture at the start of a project so I have a record of how it looks and what I did for the starting runs.  Notes can get lost!   Photographs are also a valuable tool for discovering if there are any threading errors your eye may have missed.  They will stand out and wave a flag at you!   Happily, this time all was good. Always a good feeling....

Scarf number two: well, I made a commitment to dig into and use my silk stash more and so after a search through a couple of storage bins I found this pink variegated 20/2 silk called 'candy'.  I had two 50 gram skeins from an Etsy shop called Sericin.  I wound up both skeins into cakes and then onto pirns.  The pink has some purple hints through out which gives it some interest.  Its also a bolder choice for the pattern too.

They were woven up on my Spring loom and it sits with two windows with views onto the back garden.  Just before this last weekend we found the chestnut tree was full of redwings blackbirds as they took a rest on their way through.   They were all 'boys' heading to find the perfect nesting spots ahead of the ladies who follow at a slower pace.  We also have primroses, crocus and lots of new shoots coming up for the gardening season to come.

The scarves are all done, fringes twisted, washed and pressed.   I wove them to approx 74 or 75 inches on the loom, but they now measure up at 69 and 71 inches after wet finishing. The take up in length came as a surprise to me!

Rose yarn is smooth, beamed onto the loom easily and took tension very well. There was no abrasion on the floating selvedges and very little 'lint'.   It became very soft with washing and while not too shiny like bamboo or tencel, it has a crispness to it.    Both scarves are drapey and soft, with the silk weft scarf being as light as a feather. I only used 50 grams on the scarf and so have the other cake tucked away for another project.

I call this colour a 'tender pale pink'.  For those with colour experience, I can detect a just a trace of yellow in there somewhere which makes it appear a smidge salmon.   This is my favourite of the two.

The second scarf with silk weft looks a bit stiff here but let me assure you that's only due to being freshly pressed. Its buttery soft.  Its like wearing a cloud around your neck!

I have an 8 shaft crackle weave on the Spring loom now (just started) and the Megado has a warp for 16 shaft towels (also just started).   I've also been working on our tax document preparations and other office minutia which is tedious but necessary.

Spring means we have had some repairs done to the garden sheds and power washing of all walkways, patio and driveway done.  Next up? hedge trimming, pruning and then window washing.   It seems we are eager to enjoy the sunshine despite waking up to  5 centimetres of snow two days ago!     Snow roses indeed.... 🌹❄️

Winter Showers 🌷 I'm Thinking of Spring Flowers!

We just came through a very cold week to ten days, complete with snow and high winds.  Darn right nasty weather. Then it warmed up, with more snow falling before it finally turned to rain and lots of it.  That melted the snow and so we now have water everywhere.  Ah, the joys of a west coast winter!

The daylight is lengthening and you can feel the light slowly increasing and by early February it will be very obvious.... that Spring is returning.

Vancouver Island is well known for its annual flower count while many other places are still buried in snow.  We're a little north of the mid island point but we enjoy an early spring compared to others in Canada.

I have always loved pansies and violets. In the language of flowers, pansies represent "free thinking". There is a whole world of  meaning in flowers and my mother taught me some of it as a child, but its forgotten now.  A gentle lady could say much more with a small posy or bouquet than she could with a hand written note.

Pansies, Johnny Jump up's and violets are such sweet flowers. They have always been a garden staple in our family.  I was a bit dismayed to see pansies with no central pattern or 'face' in the garden shops one year and thought them sad looking. Real pansies must have a face!

I bought a 8/2 tencel painted warp, shown below,  from Carr Park Artisans on Etsy that has the same colours as in the pansies above. (Christine called it "grape expectations" if you go looking for it.)

I paired it up with 8/2 tencel in  amethyst, almond blossom (now discontinued) and a few threads of gold bamboo.  The almond blossom shows quite pink in the cone, but the rich purples sort of bleached it out.  As I has no other alternatives, I went with it anyhow.

After I wove the first scarf, I decided to change things up and change the gold bamboo for olive green tencel.  So it meant nipping off four threads on either side and pinning in place the replacements.  I went from two weighted film canisters to ten.   Then I found I had accidentally snipped a pale pink  and so make that eleven now.  Its amazing that I have that many old film canisters to use, plus weights!  It was crazy advancing the warp and unwinding every canister. I finally sat a stool at the back of the loom so I could be comfortable while working.  I took a picture to show you my loom's 'wind chimes' but it didn't turn out too well. 

Then they were woven off and all the finishing complete but we had a run of nasty weather where you had to turn the lights on in the middle of the day and so taking pictures really would be an exercise in futility. Well, it is for me not being a camera buff. 

So here is the first scarf: 12 shaft twill from Handweaving.net  #55858. Its has the gold bamboo threads on either side of the pink. It all looked so good on the warping mill and it has backed into obscurity in the cloth. Oh, well!

The transitions in the painted warp look like ripples in the cloth.

The width is 10 3/4 inches so generously wide, and 71 inches in length. So plenty of cloth to make a turn around the neck or work a fancy draping. It can be folded in half if desired and it is completely reversible. One side is a bit brighter, the other a bit darker depending on your mood and occasion.

The second scarf has the olive green threads to replace the gold, and a new treadling variation which really emphasizes the ripple effect.  Its my favourite of the two.

This picture shows a close up of the pattern and colour shifts.

So, take heart... spring will come!  In the mean time, enjoying the winter weaving time. 

⚜️ I would also like to give a warm welcome to new Vancouver Islander's  The Duke and Duchess of Sussex!   They are living about three hours drive south of me near Victoria.  They are enjoying the same quirky weather, beautiful ocean scenery and island life.  In time they may explore their new home and come up our way.  Lots of places here for a private home near the water.

This English Nana will have the kettle will be on for tea.  ☕️    Definitely no 🚫 papparazzi allowed here.....