The Very Beginning

 

These are members of the Richmond Weavers and Spinners (of Richmond, BC) working away at their drop in....  

In the fall of 1995 I stood in front of these windows as a total newbie and looked in and admired the looms they have all arranged like bait I was 2 days late for their monthly meeting and 5 days later my Hub told me he was being transferred to the Okanagan.  By the spring of 1996 I was making a start on my weaving journey. All I knew was that I saw the looms and wanted to learn how to do that!

In the years since, I took to weaving, then spinning, then some dyeing.... you know how it goes, but the start of my marvelous journey was all their fault.... 

Thank you so much! 🌹

Swan Song

 Today, my Spring loom hit the road in a comfortable ride to its new home about 2-3 hours drive south of us here on Vancouver Island.   It was hard to feel sad when the new owner, a lovely lady and friend, was so darn excited!

Here's the loom in her little nook, and photographed from outside.  Looks cozy huh?  

Her start began 16 years ago in October 2008 when two large boxes were delivered and I began to set her up.  She came pretty well trussed up!

Louet does things very well and even use combinations of very heavy cardboard with sections of wood for strength.  It's a long and sometimes rough road from Holland to their destinations.

With a 90 cm or 34 inch weaving width, she handled many projects but this was her widest. A blanket for my new grand daughter. I had to tie back the unused heddles!

Her narrowest project was 2 inch wide book marks, sett 50 epi.    I'm doing the tie up in this shot.

As you can see, with the Spring 90 being lighter, lifting her up to do tie up's is a big help for those of us with creaky joints.  She maybe small, and light on her feet, but she can do anything the Big Boys do!

This was her last lift for a tie up.... and that tie up is in place for the new owner to try out. 

All cleaned up and stripped down (to a point) and ready to go.  Bench and assorted stuff to go along.

Today, She was carried out to a comfy trailer to travel in comfort and stay dry.

Big supply of pillows, blankets to cover any bare spots!

And as I wrote this last part, the phone rang and they are now home after a long day and the loom is sitting next to her Fanny loom and settling in.   

I'll share the Spring's last weaving project in my next post..... we have had dark skies and atmospheric rivers of rain so not conducive to taking pictures lately. 

EDIT:   The morning after......  going to have to think on some decorating ideas.....

Helping Hands 3: Conclusion

So... to refresh our collective minds: This is the project where I was using my new Helping Hands to beam a warp and then thread on my Louet Spring loom. (Please read part 1 and part 2 if you haven't already.)  I must say that in spite of my newbie mistake of clipping the lease sticks in the wrong spots with the pegs, it all went smoothly after that. I'm sure it will get easier with each new warp and become a valued addition to the 'tool kit'.

I bought a set of the Helping Hands for the Megado loom too and will report on that experience at a later post.

So this third post is to conclude what happened with the warp that I beamed onto the Spring using the Helping Hands.    

I had an interesting 10 shaft crackle diamond draft # 13414 from Handweaving.net and when I started to weave, I decided very quickly that I did not like it at all. The weft floats were all raised up like an old chenille bedspread and it was very "not me" at all.    It also had a threading error mid way to condemn it further. I had been so slow and careful threading too, and so I took it personal.   🥺

So UN wove and removed it, reinstalled my lease sticks (for which the Helping Hands holder was  quite perfect really)  and pulled back the warp and was ready to start all over again.    EXCEPT the tie up.  That's the big part I really didn't want to do all over again.

So I went in search of a 10 shaft draft that looked good with the old tie up left in place.   I found this:

The new threading is draft # 13889, and actually the tie up for this draft and the old one were very similar. I also went stash diving and found a pretty lace weight / 20/2  silk alpaca yarn that is soft and has soft muted mix of colours and it seems to go very nicely with the navy 8/2 tencel. The yarn has a bit of loft to it.    It's a large over all pattern that up close is actually hard to see, but pops out when you step back. It's also a very long repeat of 238 or 7 1/2 inches of weaving. So no phone calls please, and don't talk to me unless you are on fire! 🔥

As I have mentioned before, I use the automatic settings on my DSLR camera and so not that smart when it comes to adjusting settings to compensate for shade or strong sunlight.   So I took pictures in sun and shade and hope that the overall scarf comes through.    Shade shows the truer colours and the bigger pattern is revealed above but the close up below shows a more diffuse patterning.    The 70% silk / 30% alpaca makes for a lovely soft hand.

Then in the sunshine, you can see the sheen of the yarns, although it doesn't do the colours justice.

Now, I had wound pirns of magenta tencel to do the other draft that I disliked and so decided to use them for the second scarf. I've used magenta and navy before with great results so I hoped to do so again.   So these two shots are the sunshine version:

Then the shade:  The colours are richer, the sheen more evident.

The Spring has been reloaded and then next four warps (two  on the Spring, and two on the Megado) are all about kitchen towels.  Lots of them.    I'm busy setting things up and winding warps.   I'm also enjoying our summer and spinning outside.

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Happy Canada Day!  

    

and.....

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Happy 4th of July!

A Fresh Start 🌱

🌱 So this doesn't look like much, and it isn't,  but its been a long time coming.  5-6 weeks in fact.   For a time it felt like I'd never weave again but I knew it would just take time and heck of a lot of patience. A bad back is a miserable thing. 

This is a repeat project of a scarf I wove last year and it sold very quickly. So quickly that I had a customer literally plead with me to make another for her.  The trouble was, the weft yarn was unavailable and I had to hunt for a suitable alternative.    A big thank you to Susan at Treenway Silks for her patience as we found the right shade and happily, the colour is a regular in her colour line up.   Spiced Cognac. 

I finished weaving scarf number 1 for the client, then had the muscle spasm or whatever hit me, and so spent time slowly twisting fringe as I was well medicated and it was finally mailed away.     Then the loom has sat waiting until I  sat down today and  retied on again, and wove this beginning.     

This time,  the scarf is for me!   I actually don't have a scarf that I made after all these years.   Trouble is, I also don't have anything that I can wear with it so I'll have to go shopping.    Darn.   😁

During the time off from weaving I had a birthday and I also received a gift around the same time from another weaver in Illinois.     Last year I sold my entire multi year collection of Complex Weaver Journals to Vicki. A very large and very heavy box was mailed away and it appeared gift wrapped under the Christmas tree to herself.   😉🎁     Vicki had just acquired a 32 shaft loom and so was eager to get tucked into the journals.

Then in mid March, she sent me this lovely 32 shaft non-parallel interleave towel as a gift!     The second picture shows both sides of the towel.    I joked with her that my kitchen towel drawer is full of my seconds and shorty ends of warp specials.   Its nice to have a full sized, perfectly woven towel to celebrate my new induction cook top and  convection wall oven with.   The old ones gave up the ghost at Christmas after 27 years. Rather inconvenient timing to say the least!

During my enforced time off from weaving I enjoyed my Hansen e-spinner  and got a lot of spinning done and the resulting plying. This led to an overhaul of all my hand spun yarns with measuring yardage accurately and making records. Something I have had on my to-do list for a long time.   I also got lots of paperwork caught up and even spent time with Hubby.   So taking the break from weaving was okay in the long run and now I feel refreshed.    

I will ease back into the saddle as I don't want a repeat of my back issue, but take more time to smell the flowers..... it is spring after all!  🌱

 

Fresh Starts 🥂 🍾

 New Years Day, and we have more snow falling.  Our back yard looks like a clean white slate.

Today its being blown in by gusty winds, so a stormy start to the year.   It's calm and warm in the house. Perfect day for reading by the fire or work on a weaving project.   Yes, I'm still weaving but really have just made a start again.   Why is that?

Well, not trying to sound whiney or anything but it was my left big toe.  It started last May and became infected.  I'd do a ten day course of antibiotics and it would be fine.... then after a week to ten days of being okay, it would start all over again.  With no in person Doctor visits, it became  a cycle of phone calls, prescriptions and repeat.  Not good but with covid, there are many people dealing with far worse on their own and more in need of care than my big toe.  Canadians are like that and wait their turn.  It never gave any painful indication of being a hang nail and I have been cutting my nails 'properly' for years.  It meant I wasn't able to treadle with my left foot and so I wove using my right leg on the Megado and completed the set of towels you saw in my last post in October.   

I also pulled a muscle in my back that interfered with me throwing a shuttle so ice packs and anti-inflammatories became my new best friends.   Needless to say I got rather discouraged about it all and basically lost my weaving 'mojo'.  🥺  I just needed time and a more definite medical  fix.    So I booked a small medical procedure for December 7th and a doctor froze my toe and cut down the side of the nail to the base and took that section out.  Then they cauterized it and wrapped it up and sent me home.  I wore sandals to navigate home with snow on the ground. I haven't been able to wear shoes, and it does get me out of snow shovelling and other activities.    We also don't heal as well at a more (ahem) advanced age so its been a slow recovery.   I'm happy to report that I have recently resumed weaving on the Spring loom and some runners  are under way again.  The toe feels good, even if it looks awful still. (My apologies for the nasty picture. This is the least icky one and current. Oh for a pedicure!)    By the way.... there was NO hangnail. The doctor said it was just bad luck.

So weaving has resumed on the Spring:

10/2 cotton, 28 epi and draft from Strickler's 8 shaft pattern book #246 for table runners.  There are two blocks woven and one is all left foot and one all right.  I haven't been pushing it but it feels good to be able to use the Spring again.

I normally do a weaving year in review for January 1st but I will have to forgo it this time.   I had a computer 'issue' and lost 6,000 pictures  which included all my weaving photos, family pictures, along with all my weaving drafts on Fiberworks.   That was quite the loss and took me a few days to adjust to.  I do have a back up drive and the plan is to get the drive and my elderly Mac to the computer geeks soon and have them work their magic.  *fingers crossed*    So I have been hanging around handweaving.net again and anything I really need has been accessible as I print up a copy of all my drafts and store them with a sample.  The ultimate back up!

This computer loss also caused issues for my Megado as the new operating system would not run the loom so I had to bribe my husband with a newer 2020 Mac to get hold of his old 2013 Mac that still had a suitable operating system on it to run the loom.  Naturally, he's a happy man!  

I got it all set up and immediately turned off wifi and all updates to ensure the old Mac stays isolated and happy.  Its a dedicated computer just for that loom.    My other Mac (2015) is the one that lost all the pictures etc.  First world problems eh?     You might be beginning to understand why I lost my weaving mojo.....

I have two 16 shaft scarves that came off the Megado and completed and waiting for better days ahead to photograph for you.  I also put on a warp for two shawls:

 I'm half way through the first shawl and mulling over colour choices for the second!   I'm having issues with a continually fraying right floating selvedge which seems related to the hanging thread unwinding and then making it more prone to fraying with the reed abrasion.  Its annoying as heck but I do plan to cut off the first and re-lace back on again.  I'm not happy with the tension in some areas.    To that end, I have a set of soft weights and large S hooks coming to assist with even tension while winding on.

Fresh starts and new beginnings ......   I wish you all much happiness and good health in the coming year.  Smooth warps and fast shuttles.   

I'll close for now with more new beginnings.... our granddaughter Madison showing us her new teeth  over FaceTime.  The Tooth Faerie has been hit hard in the last month and she's a happy little girl.   💰

Friendly Fences

Its January, and winter.
In Canada no less.

Yet here we are replacing two runs of fencing on the east and west sides of our back yard in January with relatively mild temperatures for this time of year.  We had a fence panel on the east side blow down last winter and its been 'juried rigged fixed' for some time.  It was all due to start last fall, but it got too late in the season.  So now we are ahead of the curve for 2019's busy spring season and fencing contractors' schedules and also before the gardens spring to life again. (Which is any time now given how mild it is!)

Below is the west side of the yard, shared with our neighbour Dave. Its a nice open look as they remove the old fence panels which are well and truly all done. Most likely the original fence from 20 years ago.

The east side has been cleared, new cedar fence posts set into concrete, and five foot cedar boards installed.  It goes quite quickly once the posts are in place.  They have connected it nicely to our run of black picket fencing across the back, and also the side gates near the house.  I took this picture while they were at lunch yesterday.

close up view

An old tired panel waiting to be taken to its final rest

 Then this picture (below) was taken about 3:30 pm yesterday ....and the east side is all done.  Just finials for the post tops to be added.  Our neighbours on either side have been great and participating in this project fully.  The fence is a foot taller than the old one and we'll adjust quickly to the new view.

 Meanwhile I kept busy inside the studio with Bruce helping me to beam on  an eight yard warp of 8/2 cotton for some tartan towels.   I haven't woven towels in some time so this will be fun.   'Dress Stewart' anyone?

All good to go!  By the days end, we had it all loaded onto the warp beam. I'm going to weave it as one long piece and then cut apart into towels later.

Meanwhile over at the desk I'm busy twisting fringes on the completed scarves.   Its been really hard to get a decent picture so I'm hoping for a sunny day (sunny moment?)  once they are complete and pressed.

Purple weft above, and black weft below

So, who's this I hear you asking?

This is a stock photo I found on line of a young Irish Terrier pup.   We are hopefully expecting to be new parents to a pup to be born in March, and newly homed with us in May.   We have requested a female and now wait to see how this all works out. Irish terriers have 4-6 pups per litter and we are on a list with other prospective parents...... so *fingers crossed*!  The kennel where we are dealing, raise both Airedale and Irish terriers and it just so happens that the Irish mum is first to have her litter and the Airedale pups won't be ready until late October.

Our love is for Airedales  but no new Airedale could replace Calli and so I had concerns on that score.  Irishes run to about 25-27 pounds which is half the size of Calli but have all the heart and love, plus quirky  personality  that terriers have.   Here's a link to more information on the breed.
They are known for being healthy, few issues with genetic type conditions, hyper allergenic and good temperaments.

Now you know why the fence must be tight !

A link to a short video on the breed:       https://youtu.be/zrLGzCoU77U

All in Good Time

 The new studio reveal.  Its been a long time coming! First for me and then for you...

We lived at our last home for nine years and despite the renovations and such, I was never truly at home there. It always felt 'temporary'.  Suffice to say its a long story which I won't go into here. We did try to sell at one point but after some months on the market, autumn arrived and we took it off. The market was too soft in our area and so we had to wait for a shift in the trends.

Then health issues arose and a couple of surgeries / recoveries later and it was spring 2016 and I told Bruce that I felt we should go for it either this year or next, and that this year would be better. The rest they say is history.... and I've covered off the house sale and our move in older posts.

What you (and me) have been waiting for is to have things finally straightened around and get things sorted back into a working studio again. 

So as of October 1st or just after... my space looked like this. Boxes crammed everywhere and even the closets were full, with more in the garage labeled 'studio'.  I had to haul everything out, open all cartons and see what was what and get rid of as much packing paper as possible.  I think one day I simply sat in the middle of my chaos and just thought things through.... figuring where things might fit best.   I have shifted things a few times and probably will do that still but its as good as it can be for now.

So from the mess above to the arrangement below:

This is opposite view towards the studio entry door. The red wall at the end houses the yarn closet and the dark doorway is the ensuite bathroom. Yup, this is supposed to be the master bedroom.

The closet: crammed full with additional shelving to maximize all available storage space.

The 'facilities' at the other end. Bonus tub after a gruelling  weaving session! It took some getting used to.  😄

Below is the Tissart tapestry loom in the only good spot for it. Thankfully its a vertical loom. I will be warping this loom up for its first time  soon. I have to study instructions on how to do it correctly  and then I can do some practise projects to build my tapestry skills.

Down at the far end of the room is a narrow space I call the alcove with windows on two of three walls. So lots of good light.  The spring loom is tucked in here and I must admit its a tight fit. I have a small folding table with my serger and sewing machine set up. Now, I prefer to keep them out and ready to use. I like to do my finishing right away after each project.  I also lack a place to store them if I was to remove the table and free up more room.

I suspect this situation will be the first in the room that will get changed in some way. (in fact, since I took the picture, I have had to add a printer and a scanner to the table today, so its not going anywhere for the time being. I'll just have to be careful with my dainty derriere!)

I'm also on the look out for a new desk. Something a bit smaller and emphasis on more functional (with maybe room for the printer and scanner?). We have found a great store in town with wonderful used and antique furniture and we'll be checking there from time to time.

This view shows the double French doors which will be lovely to have open in better weather to come.  I'm hoping to  sit outside and spin or even take the spring loom outside. Its certainly light enough to carry a few steps with help.

Directly outside the doors looks like this in summer (I saw the house in July but this picture is from the listing photos, so not our patio furniture.)

Then autumn after we moved in....

Then more recently, a true winter scene....

So that just leaves spring to come and now that we've passed the winter solstice, its on the way!

Changing subjects....

As of January 8th, 2017 I will be celebrating nine years (that's a 9 !) of keeping this blog, my Thrums Journal.  I traditionally have a little give-away to celebrate.   I have a selection of weaving samples from some of my past projects that you will recognize from past posts. 

So... weavers: please leave a comment, with an email address, on this post AND/ OR the next NY's Day post, and you will be entered to win (only one entry per weaver).   Some visitors say they have difficulty leaving messages:   click on the word 'comment' at the bottom of the post and then follow the instructions.  There is a delay seeing your message as I have enabled comment moderation to eliminate some nasty spam (which you really don't want to see!).  If this somehow doesn't work for you, click on my email address at my profile and send me a note with your message, name and address and I'll add you in later.

The draw will be held on January 8th, 2017 and the winner will be posted here. So check back to see if you won!   Its not done high tech... literally names written on slips of paper, shaken up and then one drawn.   There will be a  handwoven sample from  projects of anything from 4 shafts to 16 shafts plus project notes.     Good luck!