Double Weave and New Shoes!

I'm finally weaving.  It's been slow going though.   First, I had the worst time threading the single stripe which is on the bottom layer.   I ended up rethreading it 5 times.   Then, when I thought I was good to go, Phil, my sweet orange kitty helper, wouldn't be persuaded to leave the loom alone.   In the end, I re-threaded ALL the heddles and re-sleyed the whole thing.  I very quickly tied everything on so that no more kitty helping could interfere!

Then I waffled about warp colours.  Originally I was going to do the red, so as to have a solid red stripe.   After sampling, I then thought that the red was a little to bright, so was going to switch out for green.  However after checking out my supplies, I didn't have enough green, so I went back to the red.  Now, seeing how much red I've actually used, I probably did have enough green.   I don't really like playing yarn chicken with my projects though, so I'm happy enough with the colour choices.

Then, the 1st treadle in my pattern, started getting caught in the loops of the treadle beside it.  Since it was an unused treadle, I pulled out the pin holding the cords and set it on the ground the way we do with some beginner classes.   Next, the first shaft kept unhooking from the lam.   Then once in a while the second one would unhook.  Talk about a nuisance.   I had to crawl under the loom, re-attach the hook and then unweave what ever few rows I had done because there was invariably a skipped thread.    Finally the brake spring slipped off.   How does that even happen?  The result of that was having to wait for someone stronger than myself to hook it back up.     ARGH! 

So far I've been pretty thrilled that I can slip my hand between both layers and thus working like it's intended to work.   I've also been using a temple.   I'm actually enjoying it.   There is definitely a learning curve for selvedges, but even if the only benefit is that there is less abrasion on the outer threads I think it is worth it.

New shoes!  Runners are almost as good as new boots, almost but not quite.  Still, they are comfortable, although maybe a bit bright.   They were on sale but of course the blue ones were already sold out in my size.    They are very spring-like and are happy coloured shoes.

Soon I'll have a picture of my seedlings.  Japanese Indigo seeds have sprouted.  They were a bit unevenly timed as some seemed to start right away while other seeds took their sweet time.  I ended up soaking some seeds overnight which helped a lot.  I also planted 4 white cotton seeds.  I think I have some green ones around as well.  If I can find them, I will try to start them also.  The green cotton seeds are a few years old though so might not still be viable.   Still, things growing always makes me happy!

Tracks in our yard

The weather lately has been unpredictable and strange.   One day it will be bitterly cold and then two days later, we'll have rain and mild temps.   In between we've had freezing rain, more freezing rain, and a bit of snow.    Last night, it snowed.   Only about 10 cm or 4 inches, but enough to cover up the inch or more of ice all over the ground.   This morning, though it was bright and almost sunny, in that washed out winter sky sort of way that we get a lot around here.  

Outside our livingroom window, we could see tracks running from a large spruce tree in the front yard.   Because there were no tracks that we could see elsewhere around the tree, I went outside to investigate.   It's only -5 today, but with the bits of sunshine and lack of wind, it was a glorious day to go and play outside, well, if there weren't all that ice underneath the snow.   Anyway, after checking out the whole tree, the tracks did indeed only go one way.  However, only going outside and following the tracks did you see the whole story.   I'm guessing it was one of our squirrels.  He ran from an oak tree, across the garden to a pine tree.  Then from the pine to the spruce tree and then back again.

Here it looked like the little creature did a little dance and checked things out.   There is enough snow, that parts of the lower branches of the fir trees are covered with snow and not really accessible at the moment.

The tracks almost look like cat tracks, however, the tracks from our woodpile to the compost are cat tracks and they are substantially larger.    I know they are cat tracks, since I see him hanging out there a lot, and have watched him take that route to see what is for dinner. 

There were racoon tracks from the bottom step of the deck to the bird feeder as well but oddly enough, only one way so I have no idea where he went from there.   Since the bird feeder was pretty much untouched, I don't think he ate much.

There there were these tracks.   These are rodent trails.  They tunnel under the snow leaving lacy trails all over the yard.   Then, the crows come along and strut along the trails, leaving little lacy trenches in their wake.   When the snow is a little bit wet, you can see their footprints in the tracks.   Today though, there were just little indentations from their foot prints, making it look as though someone was stitching along the lines.

 At some point, there is a messy tangle of rodent trails and crow tracks, so I'm assuming that the crow found his breakfast.

Off and On the Loom

Done and done!  The sparkly scarves are off the loom.   They look pretty good if I do say so myself.   I'm happy with them.   I measured up the second similar warp I'd wound; the one that I'd thought I'd made a mistake on.   It turns out that I did indeed wind the whole warp incorrectly.   I had intended to tie it on to the warp still on the loom.   I didn't feel like rewinding it right then.  What a mess that would be - putting it back on the warping board, skeining it up and then winding a new warp.   So, instead, I set it aside, cut off the remaining warp and started putting the blanket/cloak warp on. 

That one is the green warp which I'd tried to dye brown, but only managed to get a splotchy darker green.  It's actually a nice colour green and I can live with the splotches.   The project is using double weave.  That means dressing the loom with 2 layers at once, and in this case, attaching them at one side.  I'm using the left side since that is where I get my best selvedges.   If I can find some fishing line, I'll run a heavily weighted floating selvedge on the left side, to help minimize the draw in where the two layers join.

I put in a single stripe along one side.   I did make the mistake of winding it with the skein of green, when I'd already wound and dyed that bit of green.  So I pulled out the undyed green and have added in the dyed bit.  I got it right since the added in green bit matched numbers exactly with the red.    It will be a bit of a pain to pull the undyed green out the rest of the way, but if I do it slowly and as I go, it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

I've never done double weave before for a whole project.  I've sampled a bit during a guild meeting.  I've read about it.  I've watched a couple of videos of which some were good and some were rather iffy and not horribly useful.   However I think I've got a reasonable idea of what I should be doing.  It's going to take forever to dress the loom and thread those heddles.  Gosh, I've been threading for what seems like half the day and have maybe 1/5 done.  Of course I'm checking my threading each inch or so, which takes a bit more time.  I'm hoping that saves time in the long run. 

New to me bands I've discovered -  The Dead South, Poor Man's Poison and The Haunted Windchimes.   Something new to listen to while I'm threading heddles.

Scarves

The plague has run rampant through our family the past couple of weeks.   I imagine it's hit everyone in our area though as I was out looking for cold meds for a family member, and there was a crowd around the picked over packages on the shop shelf.  Luckily it seems to be on the end of it's tyranny and things are slowly getting back to normal.

Before the invasion of the plague virus upon our family, I wound two warps.   I was only going to wind one, but for some reason I thought I'd wound the first one incorrectly, so I wound a second one.    Now though, I'm not sure I was off so I'm going to have to count and measure everything in the first warp.   Neither here nor there though...  I tied on the second warp to part of the last tea towel project warp.   I wanted a plain twill and it was threaded 1,2,3,4 for a tabby so no issues there. 

It was easy to wind on.   I'm only doing 2 scarves with this yarn.  It's some large corporation blend of mainly man made fibres and a bit of glittery stuff.   The local store had a 40% off sale 2 days before Christmas. My aim was for yarn that I didn't have to order special, was easily available and something I'd not normally use.  Ideally, I was looking for something mohair like fluffy, but didn't find it.  Instead I got this varigated, slightly fuzzy blend.      I had picked up some black of a similar weight during a tent sale in the summer, for a crazy low price and thought it would work well for the weft.   

The black looked awful with the pale greys.   I wove about 15 rows and then stared at it for a day and a half.   I went back to the shop, picked up 2 skeins of same weight but more subdued colours, came home and unwove the black.    The black will look good with the other warp, which is bright colours but while this one looked okay with the strands being wound together, the contrast was too high for my liking.

The first scarf weft was a skein of varigated, muted blues running from white to a blue a bit deeper than the grey.    It was pretty amazing luck to have the white in the warp work well with the white in the weft, considering I hadn't noticed the white tucked inside the skein.   I wound the bobbins and then rewound them onto a second bobbin to try to keep the transitions from colour to colour smooth and in the same order of the skein.  Except for one bobbin, where there was a knot in the skein, with an abrupt colour change. Still it's so much nicer than the original black weft.    


 The second scarf is being woven with a solid grey which is quite similar to the grey on the warp.   But it has sequins!   The yarn is a little fussy to work with, and I was wearing a few sequins for the first little bit until I figured it out, but it's pretty fun.   The kitties are enjoying the project too, from playing with the dangling floating selvedge threads to "helping" me wind bobbins.   Yesterday one of them was going after the packing paper as it unwound on the back.   It created much excitment on my end as the loom weights bounced around while I tried to weave.  

The scarves aren't off the loom yet.   You'd think that something this narrow would be a faster weave, but  I'm sort of passing the shuttle back and forth, which seems to take the same time as throwing a shuttle for a larger project.   Still, it's not wool, while I'm rather surprised that I'm enjoying weaving with the man made fibres and cheap knitting yarn, the bonus is that the cats aren't actually interested in the woven fabric itself.  This means that no kitty has tried to sit or nap on it!   Yay!