Puppy Love

I can't believe that I haven't posted on my blog since July. Wow. I get a little weaving done here and there and have done some knitting this winter. I always get the urge to knit when the weather turns cold.

We now have a new member of the family - Vince Lombardi. (My husband, a Packer fan, named him) He was supposed to be an Australian Shepherd/Lab mix but everyone who sees him, including our vet, thinks he's a St. Bernard mix.

Only crazy people get a puppy in the winter. There's no joy like taking a puppy out to pee at 3am when it is below zero. But, I'm seeing a lot more of the moon and stars than I usually do and I appreciate the wonderful quiet in the middle of the night outside.

He is a cutie. He's gained a few pounds since this was taken and he now has a Green Bay collar to match his tag. A friend of mine told me to take a picture of his paw so here it is. He's a big boy.

And I'll try to post a little sooner next time!

Buttons and such

More dyeing . . . Now the yarns for the rug are ready and I have started weaving . . barely. Today I am adjusting the tieups on this new to me loom for a better shed. Then I can start weaving in earnest.

And we now have a robin who has taken up residence in the pergola. She started 3 different nests and I thought she had abandoned them, but she flew out when I was standing next to the pergola last night and scared the heck out of me as I was watching the raccoon in the neighbor's yard. 

And here is the raccoon. It was only about 6:30, so I thought it was early for him or her to be out and about but what do I know?

I have been going through boxes of "stuff". Stuff from my aunt who passed away a few years ago, stuff in my fiber closet, stuff I have just accumulated over the years to pass things on to people I know will enjoy them, or donate them.

I came across a shoebox, filled with little boxes of buttons and found these beauties. It's mother of pearl and abalone. There were 2 large buttons and 4 smaller ones.  They are gorgeous. I think I will have to sew something with handwoven fabric that needs some buttons.

    

More Color!

I did more dyeing over the weekend. The teal is darker than it looks on my monitor. I wanted gradations of color, so had 2 dyepots going with the teal. When I bought the Cranbrook, I got a lot of great yarn with it, and some colors that aren't what I would normally use.

 The yarns above on the left are overdyed yarns. The yarns below are the ones that I dyed over with teal.

I have one more color to dye this weekend and then I'll be ready to weave the rug!

Love my Cranbrook!

I just took the sampler off the loom and I am going to love weaving on this loom. I was able to start dyeing some wool yarn this weekend but have more left to do.

Go for it!

For years, I have thought that I would like to have an orchid. But I never bought one because I thought it wouldn't grow well, since I might not have enough humidity, or the right amount of light. 

This past winter it was so cold and snowy for so long and I saw this orchid sitting in a display at Walmart for $10 and I thought, "why not?". Even if the blooms lasted for only a couple of weeks, the beauty of the flowers would be well worth it. 

I have sometimes forgotten to water it for a couple of weeks. It sits on the windowsill in my home office and it got kind of chilly up there when it was cold outside. 

It just keeps blooming. It has been blooming now for at least 4 months. It seems to be happy where it's at. 

There is a lesson in this for me. That I can sometimes just do something that might not be sensible or seem like a logical thing to do and it can bring a lot of unexpected joy into my life if I will take that leap of faith. 

And maybe since it's going to be sticking around for a while, it's time to get it a real pot. 

Sampling

First I did some sampling with the shaft switcher, which didn't work well because I used nails instead of eye hooks and the doups slid right off - which I thought they might. But I tied the ss warps to either harness 2 or 3, just to see how the spacing of 5epi worked with various yarns and after all, that's what I really wanted to know. This portion is plain weave. Because I warped this up in a 4 end block weave, I am also able to do plain weave, just using 2 other treadles tied up 1&4 and 2&3. I'm going to start a rug using that and I wanted to see how various colors worked with each other. I washed my skeins of white yarn yesterday and ordered the dyes which should be here by next weekend. It's good to be doing weft-faced weaving again. And I got another towel done on the David loom.
By the time I have woven this rug, the shaft switching device should be finished and then I'll have levers!

Shaft Switching Sampler

It's been several years since I took Jason Collingwood's class at Juanita Hofstrom's Vavning Studio. So I had to reread my notes and look over Peter Collingwood's books again to figure out what I was doing. I have the new Cranbrook warped with linen for a sampler and I made some shaft switchers out of some wood strips with nails. All I have left to do is make the doups and I'm ready to weave.

I want to try out some different sized weft yarns to determine the best epi. Then I can make the shaft switching device using levers. 

Freedom to try new things!

I do love to organize things. Sometimes, when cleaning, I get so caught up in the details of organization, the bigger picture gets lost in the shuffle.
When I purchased the Cranbrook, a lot of yarn came with it. A lot. Bags and bags and boxes and boxes. It was all packed kind of hodgepode by the seller, so I ended up piling it all up in the dining room on a couple of clean sheets and have been picking through it.
I've been so impressed by how wonderful some of this yarn is, some of it decades old judging by the old plastic bags they were in that I ordered some of my own plastic bags. I found some in reasonably small quantities at Good Quality Paper Goods in NY and it arrived yesterday. I already had a large package of mailing labels so I got to work. I have 59 pounds of various sized wool rug yarn in natural white and fawn color. Those are skeined, so I have those in big plastic bins.
Here's some of the yarn all packaged up and labeled. This is mostly wool yarns and rayon yarns. About 41 pounds of just those types just on those 2 shelves.  And there is more to do yet.

I've always had a relatively small yarn stash and this has limited my weaving to some extent. I would only buy something for a particular project and wasn't able to experiment the way I would like to. Now I feel like I can try all sorts of things because I have all this yarn to play with! It's wonderful!!!

Bexell Loom progress

The loom has been assembled and the chains removed and replaced with texsolv cords. The bottom tie up cords had been cut by the previous owner when disassembling, but I have a pretty good idea of the length they were. I replaced all of those cords with texsolv too. The original heddles were string, very dirty and yellow, so when the new heddles arrived from Yarn Barn yesterday, I put those on right away.

Here she is after being washed with Murphy's oil soap and outfitted with texsolv. I bought 600 heddles but on a 60" loom, they look lost! But that will be plenty for doing the rugs and saddle blankets I plan on using this loom for.

This loom is very old, possibly one of the early Bexells? There isn't a metal plate on the beater support that you usually see, but it is stamped instead. 

Right now, I'm working on a design for a shaft switching device. On my old Toika, I made one with eye screws and 2 pieces of wood and lots of texsolv, but I would like to have levers on this one. I want to weave with 4 end blocks using 5 ends per inch, so I'm using Peter Colllingwood's design from his book, but figuring out the best way to make it work with narrower levers. When I start working on that, I'll post pictures.
I also need to do some sampling with a new wool weft yarn to see if that is the sett that will work. I've used that before on yarns that I got 10 years ago, but I don't know if that manufacturer is still in business, so am doing some checking around to determine what yarn I'm going to use, then I'll know what sett will work, and how to space the levers on the SS device.

For some reason, I have been getting lots of ideas in the middle of the night! A few nights ago, I had an idea for a silver pendant design and didn't want to forget, so I downloaded a sketching app on my phone, then sketched the idea out to save. The next night at 3:30am, I had an idea for a rug design for my living room, so grabbed my phone again to sketch it. I've been having so many ideas lately that I am keeping a list with what I want to accomplish each day and then checking it off as I go. There's too many ideas and not enough time!!
Today, I'm working through more of the yarn stash to see what is usable and what isn't.

Yesterday, I also worked on the reeds that came with the loom to see if I can get the rust off. I used naval jelly and it removed some, but I need to work on those again today and see if I can get the rest off. They don't seem to be pitted, just have some surface rust.

Then there is a part that I wonder about.

It came with the loom but I'm not familiar with any loom part that this could be. One of the things that was included with the loom was a large vertical warping mill that only had one piece with dowels, instead of the usual 2 - one for each end of the warp. At first I thought the other end was missing, but now I wonder if the loose dowel in the box of parts was meant to go in this hole and then bolted towards the bottom of the warping mill to hold the end of the warp? There's too much yarn in the dining room right now to set up the mill and check out my theory, but once I get through some of that, I can see if that's what this part is for.

Re-cluttering

Well, I had been so proud of myself for getting rid of so much clutter and now my dining room and part of my office are filled with boxes and bags of yarn. There is a new
giant loom in my living room, along with a Tissart tapestry loom which as been sold, but waiting to be shipped by the buyer, 30-40 5' warp sticks on a sheet in the  middle of the room which are waiting to be cleaned, and a batch of stick and ski shuttles on a towel that I cleaned last night. :)



 I am making progress going through all of this but I will be glad when I have gotten it all sorted out and stored. There is a lot of yarn that isn't marked as to content, but I have found big cones of cotton and several large skeins of wool rug yarn.

Michigan Road Trip

Bill and I went up to Michigan yesterday to pick up the new to me Bexell Cranbrook Loom. It had belonged to a weaver's estate and they were including all of her yarn, books, etc.
The cargo van we rented was almost filled to the ceiling.

There is a lot of wool rug yarn that is in great shape and I'm looking forward to weaving rugs and saddle blankets again. There is a lot to go through and the loom and reeds need to be cleaned, but I am so happy to have found her! I had been looking for a 48" loom because we don't have a lot of space and this one is 60", but I'm sure I'll be happy to have the extra weaving width. Now I'm off to Walmart and the local home stores to find some shelving units to put the yarn on!

7 days!

A week from today we go to pick up the new loom! It's about a 5 1/2 hour trip each way so it will be just a day trip, but nice to get away, and I'm really looking forward to picking up that loom!
I've been busy decluttering still, and making more headway. It's amazing how much you can collect that you no longer use and it just sits there because it becomes almost invisible - just another part of the scenery.

It's going to be another beautiful day today after waiting so long for spring and Easter will be nicer still - in the 70's. We usually have the holiday dinners for the family at our house, but this year, we're going to barbecue burgers for Easter and be able to sit outside. Since I have taken over the dining room for fiber pursuits, there isn't a big dining room table any more!

My oldest son and his family still live close to us but it is likely they'll be moving to Arizona this year so we probably will not have as many people for Thanksgiving and Christmas later this year. We'll just have to get a few more tv trays when those holidays roll around since it will be too cold to eat outside! :)

I did get the warp wound and onto the beam for the next bunch of towels. I was going to use linen for warp and weft and about 3/4 of the way through winding the warp, realized I didn't have enough linen for the weft. Instead of ordering more, I decided to do some stash-busting and use up some of the cotton that I have and use that for weft. I'm threading it with a huck pattern. I told my youngest granddaughter I'd try to get it threaded before tomorrow because she has never woven on the floor loom yet and would like to give it a whirl. She is very interested in all of my fiber interests and has woven a few things on smaller rigid heddle looms.

A New Loom on the Horizon!

I have found a loom! I have been looking for a large countermarche loom so that I can weave saddle blankets and rugs again and have found one. We are going to pick her up a week from Saturday and I can hardly wait!

This is a loom from an estate and I am also picking lots of other things with the loom, yarn, books, accessories and I am not sure what all will be included, but the seller is pretty sure that we can fit it all in a full size cargo van. "maybe"!

When I had a Toika years ago, I built a shaft switcher for it after I had taken a class with Jason Collingwood and I'll build one for this loom too. I love the design possibilities with a SS attachment. 

Here's a picture of her at her current home - 

Woohoo!!!!!

Letting Go

I can't believe it has been so long since I blogged. My only defense is that I have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and this winter was a doozy. I didn't get anything accomplished at all and felt like doing nothing. I worked here and there on the transparency, but I found I really didn't like weaving it, so there it sat. My loom looked forlorn and lonely. Last week, I cut off what I had done, resleyed the linen to 24epi and decided to weave a couple of linen towels with that warp.

I have never worked with linen before and I found that I really like it. The first towel was just plain weave and I used the same 20/2 half bleached linen for weft as I had for warp. I found a tube of blue linen in my stash that was a little slubby, and wove a stripe at the beginning and end of the towel for a little color.

The second towel is a little shorter than I like, but I really just wanted to play around, so there is some plain weave at first, then I switched over to twill. I used some rust colored cotton for the stripe. I find it fascinating that they were both so stiff when they came off the loom, but so wonderfully soft after washing.

I ordered some natural colored linen in the same size to use as an accent color and will do a run or two of towels, maybe doing some huck lace. That should be here by the middle of the week, so I can start winding that warp.

A couple of weeks ago with the days getting a little longer, and warmer (not much, but some!), I have had a burst of energy and creativity and I am cleaning, decluttering and destashing, weaving, sewing, and handing things down to the next generation. We would like to move south in a couple of years when I retire, so as I go through all of the things I've held onto, I ask myself if I want to move it, or if it's time to sell it on eBay, a garage sale, give it away or throw it away. It feels great to let go of so much! I'm looking forward to devoting more time to creative pursuits. And as I typed that sentence, I realized that "looking forward to" is a phrase we use all the time without thinking that it means looking forward, ahead and for me that means letting go of things that are no longer important to me. Woohoo!

New Kromski Rigid Heddle Loom

I got a Kromski Rigid Heddle Harp Loom for Christmas - well actually, I got it a couple of weeks early, which was good because my David loom had the transparency warp on it and I wanted to weave a scarf for my grandson's girlfriend, Bri.
I wove it out of a merino/silk blend that I had spun up previously. It came out beautifully, and she is the type of person who really appreciates something that is handmade.

I thought it might be handy to have a little bag which would hold my stick shuttles, warping pegs and a scissors, etc, so I took some wool yardage that I had woven years ago, and I sewed this little bag with pockets. The Kromski stand has holes you can put the warping pegs into, which is really handy, but it seemed like they would just catch dust and dog hair in my house, so I made the bottom pocket deep enough for the pegs. It has a little bow to adjust how tight the top of the pocket is. 

The middle pocket holds the heddle hook, warp assist, and clamps. The upper pocket is a place for little scissors and I can just tuck a needle into the fabric to use when needed. I'm happy with the way it turned out. 

I twisted some of the same yarn on my fringe twister (which is really a battery operated hair braid twister!) to use to tie it onto the loom so it can be removed when folding up for travel. 

I have several days off for the holidays and am really looking forward to having time to weave, sew and get some organizing done! 

I hope you all have a peaceful, joyful holiday season!!!

Lou  -  the wolfmoonweaver

Transparency Progress

I haven't posted in a while. Time seems to go by so quickly. Now that all the preparation and cleanup from Thanksgiving is done, I am taking today to weave. Oh my gosh - yes, really weave! I'm putzing along on my first transparency and hope to make some real progress on it today. I'm winging it. I did make a pattern and print it out to use. You can see it under the warp in the picture. Since I no longer have a plotter and did not feel like driving to the other end of town to get it printed, I printed it out in tiles and then taped them together.
The only info I had to go on was what I gleaned from internet sources, so I am not an expert or even have any experience with this. My previous tapestry work has come in helpful though. To me, the inlay is much like tapestry except you can still see the warp and background weft.

I have the cartoon rolled up and held in a roll by a paperclip at each end. It's held close to the weaving area by a pin on each side at the bottom. I can just unroll it as I go.

And a little dog interest - here's my 2 dogs on a rug I wove years ago out of Pendleton selvedges. I have washed it a few times in the washer so it is nice and fulled - very thick and cushy and the older dog especially likes to lie on it.

Fall Days

This time of year can be so gloomy in this part of the country. It seems like the sun rarely shows itself and we have days at a stretch of grey, cloudy weather. All the colors of the fall leaves help to make up for it though. From my back door, I can see the burning bush in all it's glory, so I went out and took a picture of it, and a few other pictures, just to bring a little light into my day.

As you can see, we haven't raked up the leaves yet, but they make a colorful ground cover for now.
This is a maple tree down the street from us. It is always gorgeous this time of year. My phone's camera is making these lighter and pinker than they are in real life.

And this is our maple tree last week, before it dropped all of it's leaves.

I also picked one of the last roses of the year, to keep me company while I work at my desk. 

And today, the clouds are gone and the sun is coming up. It's going to be a beautiful day!

My first transparency

The linen came in yesterday, so I wove up a little sample on a piece of cardboard to get an idea of what sett to use, and what size yarn to use for the pattern weft. I've never worked with linen before and I'm going to enjoy weaving these. The weaving will be more consistent on my big loom, but this little sample gives me an idea of where to start. I taped this on a window to see how it would look.

I have a lot of 2 ply wool which I'd like to use, so I tried that first, then split it into a single ply, which works better. The single ply is at the top. Now, I just have to wind this warp and get it on the loom!

The Treasure of Friendship

I usually don't spin very much. Not because I don't enjoy it, but because there just aren't enough minutes in the day to do all of the things that I'd like to do! I started spinning up the merino/silk blend that I bought the other day and I just love it. Spinning and weaving are both very meditative, relaxing ways to spend my time.

Louanne is a dear friend of mine. I met her when I moved to Arizona and she taught me so much. I answered her ad in the local paper about spinning lessons and from there, our friendship grew.

 She was raised on a ranch in southern Arizona and she learned about all of the things that I knew nothing about, having grown up in the Chicago suburbs. She's the one that got me started with sheep. I remember bringing home a Targhee ewe and her lamb in an extra large dog crate in the back of our minivan! What a trip that was. Soon after, we traded in the minivan for a pickup. She taught me how to milk my new Nubian goat, sold me my first French Angora rabbits. Together we went on my first road trip to buy looms and yarn from someone who was selling their weaving stuff. She keeps a shotgun by the back door, bakes her own bread, makes her own soap and takes care of her extended family.

Friends are the glue that helps us to hold our lives together, the cheerleaders that inspire us, and keep us sane life takes a crazy turn!

I appreciate each and every one of you!

Something to spin . . .

I went up to "The Fold" in Marengo, IL to purchase some roving to spin.

Toni has so much stock there, yarns, wheels, roving, and more.

 I had one specific dyed roving in mind, but really liked a merino/silk blend even more. She has a huge inventory and I had fun checking out all of it! My granddaughter and DIL came too, and really enjoyed it.
This is the roving that I chose. I'm going to spin it up for warp to weave a ruana.

I've also ordered linen yarn from the Yarn Barn in Kansas to start on the transparencies. I have lots of wool to use for the inlay and will also use some specialty yarns for accents. As soon as that arrives, I can warp up the David and get started!