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!

Gothic Diamonds

I have been resisting climbing onto the Christmas merry-go-round this year. It just  seems far too much hype this time around. From carols being played *before* American Thanksgiving dirty dishes were washed and put away,  to ads running on the television showing perfect homes and holiday decorations and the (well dressed and coiffed)  Hostess pulling the perfect roasted turkey from a spotlessly clean oven. I'm not trying to be a "Ba Humbug"  but it seems like we have all gone slightly bonkers.  This topic could get quite socio-political, so enough said for here.

There have been just grown-ups in our immediate family for some time and while its great fun to visit family, the real sparkle in Christmas comes when there are small children. That puts the fun back!  I spent an interesting time at a Toys R Us toy store a couple of days ago shopping for our grandson who will be eight months at Christmas! We are looking forward to seeing him and his parents during the holidays.

Someone asked how my hubby was doing since his knee surgery?  Well, for the most part, he's okay but he seems to still have pain and swelling with his knee. Its a slow recovery this time round, and this is his third time for this procedure.  He's not a very patient 'patient' but has been writing his railway stories.  He's soon to publish part three of a story of a tourist train on which he was he was the engineer during 1999-2000. I had a lot of rides on that train and had a hand in some of the shenanigans!

Another person mentioned that Calli hasn't appeared for a while... well, she's doing just fine. She is well settled into our lives and has us wrapped around her paws. She is a real creature of habit and certain things MUST happen at certain times of the day, and she's quite the "Supervisor of the Day's hours".  If you are late with something (usually food related), then you get The Stare until you realize your terrible error:

Most afternoon's she stays with me in the studio in this pose:

I had the Louet Spring up on crates for a new tie up and she was close by. She really is a sweetie and is very gentle. She hardly ever barks and when she does, the squirrel was asking for it!

Weaving has been slowed by the impending Christmas prep and I didn't have anything to show you but  I do now!  Some time ago I saw a scarf somewhere on the internet where the weaver had used clear lines or borders to divide a double pattern. It seemed to throw more emphasis onto the pattern and was quite effective. Granted they had used a variegated warp which added to the drama but I thought I would give it a go myself.

I found this eight shaft twill pattern in Carol Strickler's  "The Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns" and played with it to make it fit my needs:

I used a cream 20/2 silk and a hand dyed muted violet 20/2 silk that I bought in 2000 from Treenway Silks. I used a 30 epi sett and a 15 dent reed. The 245 warp ends measured 8.16" at the reed and was 6.3 yards long.  As you can see there is something of a twill progression here and so close attention was required.  While I don't have it memorized as yet, portions of it run nicely one into the other and make sense as you treadle.

Here is the first scarf under way (all silk) and the colours here are very close to the actual scarf. I've discovered that this violet shows more gray than anything!
I quickly realized that between using some of the violet for warp and then weft, I was running short and there was not enough for scarf number two. It's a difficult match but somehow I wasn't worried (for once!)
Scarf number two was woven using an orlec yarn (yeah, I know...) but the colour was a dead match! That seemed more important this time round...

Here's one on the fringing board and with the slightly yellow halogen nearby, the scarf turns more gray. Of course that nicely demonstrates that purples and yellows are opposites on the colour wheel and where they meet is gray.

Next up was adding some glitter. It seems to be my trademark feature. These scarves have a lovely soft hand to them. You can't tell the difference between the all silk and the one that has orlec but I *know* the difference. I changed the beading arrangement so I could keep track of which is which for sale purposes.
I used 11/0 Japanese Delica beads in a soft violet that are lined with silver so they sparkle, creamy seed sized fresh water pearls and rich purple Swarovski bi-cone crystals. There's fifty six pearls per scarf alone.  Its totally feminine.

In this picture above, when you enlarge it, you can see the natural pearls, wispy little strands of silk made by the caterpillar, all along with computer made beads from Japan. Quite the amalgamation!

We had some brief sunshine this morning and so I set them up on a white background, all the lights on full and flash on the camera... but I think they are too dark. There's nothing like real daylight to show something off naturally.  (Hurry back sun!)  I think I will re-shoot them another, brighter day...

This is the all silk scarf  (above) There is cleaner colour definition between the cream and violet.

This is the orlec weft scarf. It has more of a purplish cast to it. The yarn seemed finer too.

I'm in the middle of threading the Louet Spring to weave two table runner in the same pattern (but no stripes!)  Its a slow go with all the Christmas running around going on right now but I suspect many of you are having the same difficulty.  The snowflake scarves are still under way on the big loom and calling loudly.

I just keeping thinking that weavers 'down under' don't get interruptions in the middle of their prime weaving season. Their winter is in July!