Stripping, sewing and weaving ....

I'm taking a break from stripping wallpaper. I went to the large box hardware store and asked for a scoring tool.. and he gave me a scraper, insisting it had the scoring tool in it. It doesn't, so I either have to peel each layer off and curse as I'm fighting the fact that there is a heavily glued on layer of wallpaper under the first that I can't get to easily or I have to go back into town and pick up the correct tool. I really didn't want to have to take a second trip to town today.

I am hoping to make a new dress for an SCA ceremony in September. A friend gave me a lovely length of herringbone linen. It was white, so I dyed it and it came out in a colour I seem to be very good at getting... pink. I finally had time to overdye it and have at least toned down the pink to almost red. Much more satisfactory. Although the pink was nice, I wasn't actually after a pink dress!

In my spare time, I've hacked up a piece of diamond twill yardage I made last fall. It's turning into a coat. Rectangular construction, it is based on the little we know about Anglo-Scandinavian outerwear. Mainly needed 'cause it gets really cold and blustery here in the winter, I also thought that if I didn't get the Elevation ceremony dress done, I could wear the coat. However the coat is lined with wool. The fashion fabric is a wool/silk blend and that sucker is heavy and warm. Definately too warm for September, in Ontario.

I can't find the boxes I packed the weaving threads in. I've found a few cones of wool, but they are slated for projects later this year. I really just wanted to warp up the loom with something I could whip off some simple and fun to weave projects. There are some lovely green dyed wools hiding which are to be scarves for friends, but that box is well hidden. I was also thinking about making a few gift bag type things up. Well, all I could find were 2 balls of #8 crochet cotton, one in red and the other in off white. Since the off white was a double sized ball, I figured I had enough warp for something useful. I started up with the white warp in a width which would have been wide enough for towels, but ran out of thread 3/4 of the way there. So a narrower width should be fine for rather bright gift bags. At least with it being an off white, the colours aren't quite so optically jarring as a pure white would be. It sure is easy to catch treadling errors though!