Summer is winding up!

 The summer is slipping by far too quickly.  The ridiculous heat and humidity we've had so much of this year, is something I'm not sure I'll adapt to easily.   However, there are already signs showing how short our summers are.  I drove down a nearby road the other day and there was a tree with a lone branch already turning colours.   I know this could also be due to lack of moisture, but I'm still not sure I'm ready for the leaves to turn colour.   Hubby also brought in a load of kindling yesterday.  I asked if it wasn't too early for that, but he pointed out that we'll likely have to have our first fire in 4 to 6 weeks.  Plus there are the crickets.  They are an end of summer bug; a noisy, loud, end of summer bug.

Speaking of bugs.   I noticed 3 big caterpillars on my parsley plant.  I looked them up and they were parsley worms, or the caterpillars that turn into Swallowtail Butterflies.   The next day there were only 2 of them, and today there aren't any.  They were very slow and hardly moving and large enough that a friend who has watched some all summer, said they were ready to spin their cocoons.   I looked around a bit but didn't see any cocoons, so I'm hoping they found a safe place and weren't dinner for the chooks, who have been hanging around begging for leftovers and treats!   I also hope if they did spin cocoons that they have time to complete their metamorphosis  before it turns too cold here.

With only 1 tomato plant, which was supposed to be a cherry tomato but has turned out to give large,
yellow albeit delicious fruit, I purchased a couple of baskets of tomatoes.  I quickly peeled them, chopped them up and tossed them into the canner.   I've done 2 batches this way.  It means 2 hours at most at one time for canning, unlike having a bushel and it taking 2 full days to do them up.   I remembered how easy it was that year that my tomatoes ripened slowly and I had a canner load every 3 days or so.   That was really the best way to do it.

I'm passing on my big counter balance loom.   I have a smaller jack loom which has been unused for well over a decade.  I've decided to clean it up and switch them out since the counter balance is just a bit too big to be comfortable these days.   A friend wants it so hopefully two of us will be happy about this.

I put this on the rigid heddle loom last night.   Mary Maxim is having their tent sale and while they tend to have a lot of middle of the road yarns for quality, nice but not exceptional, their prices, especially at the sale are decent.   They didn't have much sock yarn, but this stuff was nice.   The  only thing is that it is DK weight, and sort of in-between reed sizes.   It's interesting because of the way the colour changes are painted.  I thought it might be more serendipitous plaid like but it's not at all.  It's lovely in this part, with the section which is mainly white, but a little different in the next colour change with the darker blue and the little black bits.    This photo was taken at night, so despite the flash, it is dull.   The white is nice and creamy and the blue parts area. really nice shade.  The vertical black spots are great, but the part I'm not sure about is when the black and blue are in the weft, and go horizontally.  I don't have enough of this yarn to cut out the blue and black sections, and have enough yarn for the weft left and it wasn't cheap enough to grab another ball to play with, so I'm going with it.  I won't really know what it's like until it's off the loom and washed.  It could end up being lovely.

A new weaving project.

I warped up the rigid heddle loom.   I purchased some Sugarbush Drizzle, a mohair/silk yarn which is really thin a couple of years ago.  I bought 2 different colourways and since I had no idea how much I'd need, I bought 4 or 5 skeins of each colour.   It was $3 a skein, so it wasn't a huge outlay to be prepared.   I wove up a purple scarf which was lovely.  It wove up quickly and easily.   I ended up giving it away as a gift.   Two nights ago, I had finished the novel I was reading and didn't have a new one chosen yet.   So I dug up the second colour way of the Drizzle and warped up the loom.  This yarn is perfect for the rigid heddle loom.   I'm using the 7.5 ends per inch reed and the yarn, although very fuzzy, works up well at this sett.   It wasn't quite as easy to start weaving with as I remember the purple being, although time does tend to soften some of the memories.   Once I got into a rhythm, it's working up quite quickly.   The colour way is called Sailor's Sunset, and it really is a lovely combination.

The first photo doesn't show the colour variations very well or at all really.   It's also a photo I should have colour corrected because there is virtually no pink in the yarn at all.   

I did make a stupid mistake, totally my doing.  I forgot to attach a tape measure when I started weaving.  I usually pin one into the centre of the item I'm weaving to try for a fairly accurate idea of the length that I've woven.  I didn't notice this until after I'd advanced the weaving more than a couple of times.   I could unroll the weaving from the front beam, but my experience is that it doesn't always re-roll up with the same nice even tension.   I'm going to guesstimate its length and it might end up being a long scarf!

The corn is being harvested.  It's been dry for ages now, partially because we had such a dry end of the summer.   I found a partial cob in the yard, perhaps missed and thrown by the harvester, or dragged out of their field by a persistent raccoon.   It's a good yellow colour and really hard.  I thought the squirrels would have gotten it, or the chooks, but it's was just sitting there.   Then what interested me, is that the neighbour baled up all the corn stalks.  I'd never seen that done before.   I had to look it up to see why it's done.  Apparently it's used as feed.  It's fairly low in protein though and some of the websites considered it a very low quality fodder, that is usually only fed to cattle in desperation.  However, other websites said that if it's slightly damp, it will start fermenting.  This would make it more like silage, so maybe increase the nutrients a bit.   When I was a 4-H leader, we had a great trip to a dairy farm and good silage smell very much like fermenting beer!  I guess at least the cows would be happy.

A lot of fibre projects getting finished up!

Last weekend's maple syrup production was just over 2 litres.  Not a lot, but enough for a nice taste now and again.  The partial jar was taste tested for my lunch, and then for a batch of Maple Butter Tarts that I made a few days ago.  It's very good.  Of course we haven't had a year where it was awful, so I'm not sure that the pronouncement of very good means very much.   

On a good weekend we can process up to 9, 23 litre buckets (5 gallons) of sap.  The weather on the weekend was ideal, but the temperatures bounced around.  The sap only flows when the temperatures are above freezing, so those cold days, not a single drop of sap dripped into the buckets.  We only had 5  buckets of sap so this was a fairly good result.   We have 7 buckets of sap this weekend to process, despite having 2 days of freezing weather.   We're hoping for 3 1/2 litres from this  It's a 40:1 ratio of sap to syrup.  It won't be one of our better years, but we missed the first window and the way the trees are budding, it will be a short season.  Once the trees bud, the sap loses it's sweetness and gets bitter.

I made some socks.  I didn't count in any I made for myself, like the one's I finished from the handspun yarn, which were so very soft and warm!   These are for my kids.  I need to do some finishing of the socks, kitchenering up the toes and sewing in the loose ends.   The three folded pairs on the right are ready to go.  I'm happy that I found a compromise for my daughter who has specified that she only wants black, grey or dark blue socks - boring to knit!  I found the grey and black yarn, the solid blue that I added a coloured heel and toe to make the production interesting and the blue/wine coloured yarn was found in the bottom of a bin.  It's a nice yarn and it's too bad that they don't make it anymore.   

The sparkly shawl is off the loom.  It looks striped  in the photo and in person.  However, I separated all the colours out and wove it up as a plaid or checked pattern.   I separated out the purples and the darker blues and wove them in blocks with the reddish stripe in between.   You can't tell that I went to all that work to do so.   It all just blends in seamlessly.   If I were to use a yarn like this again, even without the sparkle, I might just not separate the colours and use it in the manufactured gradient in the original sequence.  They weren't equal, so the variation would be in there.  If I could find that yarn without the sparkle, I'd  maybe try it see see the difference.    The sparkle is one of the plies of the yarn, which runs the whole of the yarn.   You couldn't really tell that from the skein.   The effect was different depending on the light.   A lot of the time it was as though there were rain drops on it or a layer of frost at other times.  Always though, the darned things sparkled!

Summery projects

 I'm waiting for a parcel.   It's my birthday present and is supposed to arrive next week.   I just got the tracking number so the estimated delivery date is probably correct.   However, once in a while when I order things, they come early.  My fingers are crossed that this is one of those times.  We're also taking a family trip to Dundurn Castle.  I've been before but it was a number of years ago.  This time we'll be taking my daughter and her husband, so it will be fun.  I bought the tickets online.   I got a barcode for a ticket.   I used to be able to save my ticket stubs as memorabilia.   Barcodes just don't evoke the same memories.

I used an old sheet to fit the bodice pattern of Sew Liberty's Hinterland dress.   Then I found this piece of fabric which was enough to cut out the dress for a wearable mockup.  I've no idea why I purchased this, except that I remember it being crazy cheap on sale.  It's nice enough but not normally my style.  I do however, have a similar fabric but in blue stripes which I do like.   Once I know of any other changes need to be made to the pattern, I'll use the fabric I really like to make a second dress.

The Hinterland has been pretty easy to fit and assemble.  One of the hints was to use masking tape to mark the right side of the fabric.  Usually I use tailor's chalk, but it hasn't stopped the occasional  mistake.  But with the masking tape, I've had no issues at all.  It's now my new go to for making sure I have the right sides of the fabric marked.  Because it's green low tack painters tape, it hasn't left any residue yet.

My old but really nice Pfaff sewing machine is being cranky.  I haven't been able to get the tension set properly.   It probably needs a tune up, but since I have several old black Singers and an old Kenmore which all work well right now, I'm just using one of those instead.  This is mainly because I need some new socks, so that means a trip to the yarn store.

I found a skein and a half of this Paton's Lace yarn.  It's acrylic and a little fuzzy, so it acts a bit like mohair, getting caught up on itself.   I made a scarf on the floor loom a while ago, and had no problems.  This one though, I put on the rigid heddle loom and had to fuss about a bit to figure out how to weave it without having to unstick the shed every throw of the shuttle.   I found it needed a lot of tension and very easy beating, just gently placing the weft rather than pushing it down.   It's much faster now and I'm enjoying weaving it.

The rippenkopper cotton/hemp tea towels are still on the table loom.  I'm still not enjoying the 3/1 twill and having to use a stick shuttle..  But if I can weave them off, I have a fun tea towel project to do next.  I'm not sure I have allowed enough loom waste to do them on the floor loom, but that would be even easier.

The weather has been either hot and dry, or cool and wet.   Our pond almost dried up because we had no rain for so long.   Then it rained, and rained and rained.  The pond almost overflowed!   When conditions get hot and dry during the summer, our grass goes dormant.  It may look like it's dying, but it's just turned off until it rains.   And rain it has.   We even had a whole day of steady rain.  We couldn't remember when we last had a rain like this.  So after days of rain on and off,  the grass is green and the garden has gone wild with growth.

These are slicing tomato plants that my son in law started for me.  I don't think we've ever had fruit starting so early in the season.  The cherry tomatoes or maybe grape tomatoes are also fruiting already.   I've been harvesting zucchini already.  I staggered planting the green beans to hopefully have a continuous harvest.  However with the rain and heat, the second planting has almost caught up with the first.   I have space for a 3rd row of beans.   The potatoes I forgot to dig up last fall, have survived the winter and are growing like crazy too.   So yay for that! 

We found a fly strip that works.  It's a sticky paper, but it's not gloppy, doesn't drip and actually catches the flies.  Since we live in a rural area, there are flies.  There are so many fewer in the house this summer because of this new fly strip.   That makes me happy.

 

Scarves and Cookery books

The grey scarf is off the loom.   I've twisted the fringe and it just needs a quick wet finish.  I may hold off wet finishing for a bit and just save up whatever I weave that needs to dry on a line or flat, until the weather warms up.   It will be much easier to dry them outside than find a place where the cats won't decide to sit on them inside.   It turned out quite nicely.  It was a fairly sticky yarn because it was loosely spun.  It didn't really cause an issue until the last bit of the scarf, when I'd woven about 3/4 of the scarf.   Then the fuzzy bits on the yarn started sticking together and I had to watch for skipped stitches.   The yarn is really soft and it drapes nicely, plus the greys are pretty neutral, so they should go with almost anything. 

This pretty blue scarf is an acrylic wool mix.  It's exceedingly lovely to work with.  It's soft, well spun, and the colour is nice.   I decided it had too much white in it though, so I'm cutting the white out of the weft as I'm winding the shuttle.  The white was washing it out too much and didn't make me happy.  The yarns feels really nice.  There is enough wool in there to make me want to touch it, which makes it a yarn that I enjoy working with.  I started dressing the loom almost right after the grey one was off the loom.   

We had a weather watch out for yesterday, but I think the system mainly hit someplace else.   There was a short bit of freezing rain, but by the time I needed to head out to the rug hookers meeting it was just raining.   Raining a lot actually.   People were getting drenched just coming in from the parking lot.  One of my friends there found this little book that she thought I might like.  It's a 1911 edition of Soyer's Paper Bag Cookery.   

This cookery book is touted as being ideal for flat dwellers, girls and women living alone in single rooms, clerks, typists and teachers.   It promises good results if you can but procure the new paper bags and remember to use a broiler.   This sounds more like a broiler pan, rather than putting the oven on broil! 

  So far it's been an interesting read, with recipes which sound fine to the bizarre, such as cooking 3 or 4 eggs in a cup of ketchup!   Also, for all these girls and women living in single rooms, what would you do with an 18 lb roast of beef?   It's a really interesting bit of insight into a kitchey little cookery book, that must have cause a few oven fires.  I'm totally enjoying reading it.  I'm starting to totally understand the lure of original cook books.  It's a tangible link to the past.

 

Weaving update

 The double weave project is off the loom!   Yay.   I thought it would take me much longer than it did to finish it.   I played around with how much I could weave without hurting my healing hip and straining my muscles, and then kept to that schedule most days.   As I was more comfortable with the process, it became faster and easier.

I wove it to 74 inches long and it lost almost 4 inches when I took it off the loom.    It was 24 inches wide single and opened up to and 46 inches wide. I fixed about 3 errors on the top layer and a good few more than that on the bottom layer.   This included 2 skipped warp threads which were easily repaired by threading an extra warp thread between them. Because it was fairly loosely woven, it was the easiest fix.   There were some other skipped threads from my not picking up the 1st shed on the bottom layer.   

It didn't take long to fix the skips though.   My biggest issue was a big, furry kitty butt that parked itself on top of the new blanket and tried to claim it.   So after the repairs were made, and I'd double checked the machine stitching on the ends to secure the threads, I tossed it in the washer to slightly full the blanket.   This was before hemming, because I really wanted it safe from kitties and the loose thread ends would have created all kinds of interest for the kitties. 

   I tossed it in the top loader washer and set it on a light load wash cycle, made a cup of tea and promptly forgot to check it.  I pulled it out of the washer and it was well fulled, although not horribly felted.  The looseness of the weave allowed for a lot of loss though and it ended up at 40 inches wide and 60 inches long.  However, that size was in the ballpark of what I was aiming for so I'm not sad.   It's soft and cozy and the perfect size for a lap blanket.  It needs a bit of a press and steam as the cats dragged it down while it was drying and slept on it.

I took a couple of days off from weaving and tossed on this simple scarf.  It's Ferris Wheel by Lion Brand.  It's a bit loosely spun to make it a really easy weave.   I had to cut a scarf off earlier because it was so sticky, it made for miserable weaving.  However the scarf I'd woven  before it, with the same yarn was okay to weave, although a bit delicate.   This is the same as the first one.  It requires a bit of care as the yarn is subject to a bit of abrasion  and  drifting apart when the spinning loosens.   Both of these are easy to deal with as long as you watch for them.    Advance the warp every few inches of weaving, which is reasonably good advice anyway and if the yarn is drifting apart, mainly while hem stitching  or winding on the shuttle, then manually add the twist back in. 

 I do like the greys though.   It's a soft, easy care acrylic and works nicely enough on the rigid heddle loom.  I wouldn't use that yarn on my floor loom though. 

Finally able to do things again!

 Finally!  Off the crutches and able to put full weight on my leg.   When you can't put your weight on your leg, you can hardly do anything.   Plus, the other restrictions like not bending the leg more than 90 degrees, no twisting etc, are gone, so I can slowly return to normal activities.  Just before they were lifted though, I was unable to weave, and spin.  Cooking was difficult and I couldn't even practice the banjo unless someone brought it to me.   However, I got a somewhat harebrained idea to warp up the rigid heddle loom.   I figured I could do it slowly, with a simple project and weaving, would be no issue.

Hubby moved the loom so it was accessible.   Then, after fishing through my Rigid Heddle Project yarn bin, I realized that I didn't really have any yarn for a project, that didn't need dyeing.   So here's the harebrained part.   I had some of the yarn I use for blankets that was accessible.  That really means I hadn't put it away before the surgery.   It's a lovely pink colour, like a Madder exhaust dye.   I decided to make a blanket.   I'd been planning on trying double weave on the rigid heddle loom and had the second reed for the correct set.  Instead of making a blanket in two parts and sewing it together (which would have been fast, efficient and smart!), I warped the rigid heddle loom for double weave.

Setting up the loom for double weave isn't difficult, just a bit fussy.  With a rigid heddle reed, you have holes and slots.  The threads in the slots are static, while the threads in the holes do all the work, moving up and down.  With two reeds, you thread the first one normally, starting with a thread in a hole, plus you run the two threads for the second reed through the slots.   The the second reed, you thread with the two extra threads, starting with the slot and run the two threads from the first reed through the slot.  Much less complicated to just do it than try to explain.  I had this crazy idea to make it a plaid as I have some lovely burgundy wool, which looked great with the pink.   I vetoed this idea, because I was direct warping using my cane ( not fully transitioned from crutches, but desperate) and still couldn't bend to pick up the inevitable dropped threads.  So, single colour warp it was, just to show that I had some common sense.

Because I kind of overdid it by winding the warp in one day, I took two days to wind the warp on, thread the reeds, tension and tie it off.  That was the easy part.  Then I had to run two pick up sticks to create two sheds that can't be done with the reeds.   However, I didn't have any pick up sticks the right size.  The project in the reed is 25 inches wide and I have a single pick up stick that is 15 inches long.  Sigh...   I used a 30 inch stick shuttle for one pick up stick and then had to wait almost a week before I could get  to the big box store to pick up a piece of 1/4 in oak 1 3/8 wide to make another pick up stick.  It's still not a pick up stick, but it's working admirably for creating the extra shed.   

There are specific steps you need to take to set up double weave on the rigid heddle, like on any loom.  You need to get two threads set for the top layer and two for the bottom.   I mixed up the labelling on both the pick up sticks and reeds, which made for some experimenting until I figured that out.  Then my instructions worked perfectly.   The first three steps and sheds work well.  The fourth is a bit tricky as the yarn is a bit sticky and the last step/shed is on the bottom.   So it's a small shed and I have to run through and separate it with my fingers before I can run the shuttle through.

I've woven the header and it's two separate layers.   My procedure works perfectly, now that I know that both pick up stick A and pick up stick B, and reed 1 and reed 2 are both the opposite of what I thought they were.

It's going to take longer than I planned to weave it off.  I had this crazy idea that it would be only a little bit slower than on my floor loom.   Nope, it's going to be much slower as the rigid heddle loom isn't really designed for this.  The sheds are smaller and you can't clear the shed as well with the beater - ha! - since there isn't a beater, just the reed.   Still, even if I can get a few inches a day woven off, it shouldn't take too many months.

For those of you who aren't really interested in weaving and stuck through the post, here is a photo of the
ginger kitties synchronized sleeping.  They were in my spot on the couch and refused to move :)

November Wrap Up

 November has been a busy month.  It's passed by in a whirl of activities and waiting.  It seemed to both speed by in a blink and be interminably long at the same time.  The waiting is almost over though and tomorrow we'll see if it was worth it.   The activities though have been pretty successful.  The weather has been weird to say the least.  We've had snow.  We've had more snow.  We've had rain.  We've had almost record breaking warmth and sunshine.  I hung laundry out the other day because it was so nice.  Yup, totally weird weather.

This year's Christmas cards are finished.   I made 10 of them.   Sadly the tape I used to hold the cards to
the workspace, ripped a bit of the paint off one of them, so only 9 survived.     I was going to make a few more, but these turned out to be fairly time consuming.  In the past, I taped up 3 at a time to paint in stages.  The process for these made it easier to do only 2 at a time.  It was 4 steps, with complete drying time in between the steps, so they weren't really able to be done assembly line fashion.  I liked them enough to inital them this year.  I did enjoy the process though and have already had some thoughts about next year's cards.

I warped up the rigid heddle loom with some kid mohair /silk yarn.   It was $3 tiny ball, of less than 50g and with 219 yards.     It's very fine and I struggled to figure out what reed to use.   I found a single article with actual details on weaving mohair on a rigid heddle loom.   There were lots of  "hey look what I did" articles, but not so much on the "here's how I did it" articles.    So I ran with the single article information and tried it at a sett of 7.5.  It wasn't perfect, but it worked nicely enough.

Mohair is fuzzy and has quite a halo.  If you don't take that into account when you dress the loom, those fuzzy bits catch on each other and are difficult to weave.   Then also can start stick up instead of laying flat, which makes for a scratchier fabric.   The idea is to use a sett which takes into account the extra width created by the mohair halo, and then this allows it to lay flatter and lock together, creating a stable, but light, gauzy fabric.  

The silk core made this a bit slippery but the sett allowed me to weave it easily.  I had to place each weft

shot into place, rather than push the reed to the fell line, or it became to thick and stiff.  The resulting fabric is not quite as stable as I'd hoped, but I only lightly wet finished it, due to days of wet weather.  I will redo it before it becomes a gift.  It's very pretty though, light and the colour is fun.  It's also fairly soft and very drapey. 

It took just under 2 balls of yarn for this scarf - 9 in x 76 in, plus 7 inch fringes.  I have 3 more in this colourway and 5 more in a second colourway.  Lots of yarn to experiment with!

After the Pumpkin Festival at Westfield, which was crazy busy and so much fun, I came home with 2 lovely pie pumpkins.  I recently processed them and ended up with 6 packets of pumpkin for the freezer.  There are 5 with 2 cups in them, perfect for pies and 1 with just over a cup of pumpkin, which works for a pumpkin loaf recipe.  

It was really nice pumpkin, better than I found around here.  The flesh was thick and dry, so it didn't need a lot of draining.  I do like having these ready to go packets in the freezer.   There is little waste when the quantity fits a single recipe, unlike commercial tins, which leave me making either double what I want, having to freeze the leftovers, which for some reason, doesn't work quite as well, or some of it ends up as waste.

Rigid Heddle with 2 Reeds and cooking!

On the rigid heddle loom right now, are a couple of tea towels using 2/8 cotton.   The sett for a tabby weave with 2/8 cotton should be 18-22 epi.   To get that range with my rigid heddle, I'm using 2 10 dent reeds, for a sett of 20.   This has been an interesting experiment, using double reeds.   The way this particular one is set up, is to use both reeds at the same time, as they are threaded in alternate order.  This is giving me a sett of 20.  However, even with beating with a closed shed, I'm having a hard time getting 20 ppi.   It is a few picks less than that, and not ideal.  I'm hoping it will be fine and just make for a soft tea towel.   This was relatively quick to dress the loom.  It took me a bit of time to get started because there is some definite technique needed to make weaving with 2 reeds on a rigid heddle loom easier.

I made a batch of plum jam.  I usually make it with prune plums which come out in late summer.   When you first start the batch up, the cooking plums have a rather odd yellowish colour.  If you chop them up a bit before starting the jam, the skins will not only release their colour, but start to dissolve into the jam, making it a lovely purple/red colour.   I'm a bit sad that I ended up using pectin for this recipe, because I don't normally do so.   It was however, weirdly 32⁰ C, with a humidex of  over 40 C and we don't have AC.  The kitchen was so uncomfortably warm that I used the pectin to make the jam, rather than risk the plums going to waste.   The result is a lot more jam than I needed and a bit sweeter than I usually get.   It's still yummy though.

 

Hearth cooking again on Sunday past.  I was making gingerbread cookies on the griddle.  Not so much of a success this time as I let the  griddle get too hot.  The cookie dough was also a bit soft, so started to burn before I could flip them.    Live and learn

In the dutch oven, is a loaf of pumpkin bread, from an 1854 recipe.   I wish I'd taken a photo of the bread itself, because it was a beautiful, round braided loaf.  The interior was a pale yellow and it had a lovely taste.   

Next Monday I'm cooking at the Misener House, which has an amazing cook stove.  It has 6 burners, a functional oven and throws lots of heat to keep the little house warm.   I'll be cooking up pumpkin goodies for the staff Thanksgiving potluck on Monday after the village closes.

New Rigid Heddle Loom projects

 

This was such a fun and easy weave!  It's fabric that will be turned into a project bag.  It was a short warp of 4/8 cotton or maybe a tad larger.   I think it was a smallish cone of thread that someone passed on to me because they didn't want it.   It was perfect for this.   The weft was a ball of a synthetic tube yarn stuffed with a soft cord or filling.   It was leftover from placemats I'd made ages ago. 

  Now if the weather will cool down a bit so I can start up the iron. It's been so hot and humid here.  The humidex has been over 40C several days and close to the rest.   Too hot and muggy for me to iron.  I have this project bag, which needs interfacing ironed on, then to be sewn to shape.  The lining needs to have some interfacing for pockets, and a welt pocket in the lining.  I also need to figure out what to do for a handle, or if it needs a closure.   But it should be pretty when done.

Now on the loom is a 100% wool warp for a blanket.  It will be woven in two pieces and sewn together up the middle to make a blanket.   There are three stripes on this, so three on each side.  I mucked up the placement because with a bit more effort, I could have made it so the sides to be sewn together had a smaller teal section, and the wide stripes would appear to be even.    

This isn't quite so much fun to weave.  It's wider, so it's slower going.  Plus the wool is  a bit sticky, so I have to be careful about skipped threads.   I'm not 100% happy about the sett.  However the next larger reed I had for this loom was 10 dents, so I went with the 7.5 dent reed.  I'll be fulling it up when it's all said and done, so it will be fine.   It will soften up as well.

This is a more accurate colour of the yarn.   Direct warping is quick and easy.  I didn't get the tension quite right this time though, despite tensioning it twice over several hours, leaving it overnight and checking again before tying it on, and then fixing it again.    I think it might be an issue with using the cardboard slats as separators as I've never had this issue with a good paper warp.  Years ago, I purchased a roll of heavyish, but not high quality water colour paper.   The poor sales person at the shop was warning me about results with that paper, and yes, I did try some water colours on it, and it was awful paper for painting on.  However, it made fabulous packing paper and sewing patterning paper.  I ran out recently and haven't got an art store near me to see about replacing it.

The lawn tractor died.  We put a huge amount of $ getting it fixed last year and it didn't even last the summer.   The timing sucks though as not only have we had to replace all of our kitchen appliances, we also had to replace our non-functioning furnace and tank.  Then a critter chewed through the cable from the wifi dish to the house and that took a couple of days to fix  What is next I wonder? 

Rigid Heddle Loom Adventures

 The rigid heddle loom experience is quite interesting.  It's slow weaving.  The loom design allows only short warps and you have to manually lift or lower the reed to create the shed.    I've found it to be quite relaxing because there is absolutely no way to rush the process.   

It's also been interesting to read rigid heddle forums to see what others are doing.   Because of the price and easy availability, rigid heddle looms are being purchased by people with no weaving experience, no lessons and no rules.   This means that they weave for the sake of weaving.   While there are some projects that make me cringe a bit because of my own notions about things like sett, yarn content and finishing, I find that there are even more that impress me because people just go for it.   All of a sudden, sleezy fabric becomes very drapey.  Stretchy acrylic yarn which would be difficult to weave with on a floor loom, is easily manageable on the rigid heddle loom.  So this whole experience has been fun, eye opening and very experimental.  Sometimes I still cringe, but people are enjoying the process of weaving.  They are making things they love.  They are playing, which is something that I've found more than a couple of weavers and spinners forget in their fibre journey.  This is what I think we need more of: playing not cringing.

This is my second project on the rigid heddle.  It has been slow weaving because it's set up in the mud room and with the stupidly cold weather, the room is cool too.  So I weave until my hands get cold, or while waiting for the water to boil for tea or dinner preparations.   The weaving eventually gets done.  This is an acrylic yarn, Lion Brand Mandala, which is in a lovely wide gradient colourway.  This one is called Centaur.   It was easy to weave and only took me a few inches to adjust to the stretch.   It is very soft though and has a lovely drape to it, without being sett too loosely :)  The colours are nice too. There is enough colour for interest, but not overwhelming.

New Year Projects

The first scarf woven on the rigid heddle loom is done.   I'm super happy with it.  This photo doesn't quite show the colours accurately, but it's a denim or greyed blue in several different tones and some rusty oranges and reds.   It's quite pretty and wove up even nicer than I expected.   It wasn't quite what I was going for when I dyed the yarn, but I used a warm colour tone set, rather than the cool colours that I normally use.     The colours were a warmer blue, which I adored and a soft red, rather than the cool fuchsia.   The denim blue is a great colour, soft and warm.     The scarf is long enough that I can double it and weave the ends in the resulting loop, for a cozy and fancy scarf tie.   It has enough drape to make it hang nicely, but not so much that it scrunches into a scarf that won't keep you warm.  It is wool though, so I'd expect that.    Being that it was $12.99 for an 8 oz ball, with 465 m, it's really cost effective for a single scarf.   And it was unexpectedly soft for the double win!

These are the mittens I knit from the fibre exchange.   I got some shetland/blue faced leicester cross and some of the same blended 50/50 with alpaca.   I'm still of the opinion that crossing the shetland and the BFL doesn't make a nicer fibre.  However, blending it with the alpaca blend did improve it a lot.

The shetland/BFL was a very, very dark navy.   The alpaca blend was a natural colour.   It was all carded into rolags, although the natural coloured rolags were quite fat and didn't hold together in the roll.   As I was going to re-card the natural anyway, I took both colours and randomly added them to the hand cards and carded them.   If I'd wanted a homogeneously coloured yarn, I would have weighed out the rolags and divided them up with exactly the same weight of each colour in each rolag.   Because I wanted some variation, I just put a bit of each colour on the cards and went to town.    I'd card up about 5 or 6 rolags at a time and then spin.    I did divide the yarn on to two bobbins, partially filling them up, making sure that one had more yardage.   Then I plied them together.  When the bobbin with the lesser yardage had emptied, I wound the rest of the singles from the 2nd bobbin into a centre pull ball or cake, and plied the ends together.   I knew I would need most of the yardage to make a pair of mittens for me, and I didn't want to waste any.

I knit it up using needles a size or two too small.   This took extra time to knit, but the tight stitches make them more wind-proof, so well worth it.   It also uses more yarn, but I have small hands so just had enough.   The mittens are warm. They are thick, stop mos of the wind and are great for hauling buckets of water and food out to the barn.   They have also become my go to mitts for our walks.

These are this year's festive Christmas socks.   This was just when I'd finished the second sock and they haven't been blocked or washed yet.   They knit up quickly and easily.   I was quite happy with them.   The price was good too, as it was just under $10 for the 100g skein, which is for 2 socks.   Considering I was also knitting a pair of socks from a skein which cost $35, I was quite impressed.  

Yes, the expensive yarn is softer.  It was a fancy hand dyed yarn.  Plus the yarn, while stunning in the skein and most alluring, knits up to a pooling pattern.   The colours which took centre front in the skein are not the ones which really show up much in the knitted fabric.  Not only that but I couldn't find any pattern which would work.   My first two socks were in my standard 3/1 ribbing pattern, and even that was too much for the pooling.  

  I ended up knitting most of the second sock before I realized (yes, tried it on) that it really wasn't going to fit.    I had to rip back almost two full socks.   The third sock I started using plain stockinette stitch, works better with the pooling, however that sock is too big.    Right now, the yarn is in a time out, in a ziplock and going into the sock yarn bin.   I won't let myself be lured in by spectacular dye jobs anymore.  

 

 

Pretty colours and chooks

 It has been a very odd few weeks.   Weatherwise, we've had nothing but variable weather.  From the ridiculously mild, to cold and blustery, with rain, snow and winds inbetween.   What we've had little of is sunshine.   Day after day of grey weather.   Just so difficult to get motivated when it's getting dark at 4:30 pm and isn't light until after 7 am.   Then the wind storms, wifi outages and power failures just topped it off.   On the plus side, I did finally force myself to figure out how to use my phone to make a hot spot for my computer.  It wasn't difficult.  I just hadn't really been in a situation where I needed to do it.

In between, I did some fibre blending.  I made up a bunch of packets of rolags from some bits and pieces of fibre that needed to be used up.   These are merino, corriedale, silk, with a bit of angelina or sparkle, which is a local shops nylon, sparkly stuff, similar to firestar. I didn't use a lot of sparkly stuff, just a tad to make it interesting.

Then I blended up some rolags for a new hooked rug.  I didn't want to go out and buy wool yardage for this rug.  It's not an original design and is a guild challenge project.   The photo to the right shows the start of the rug yarn project.   I had to do a bit of concentrating for the first few yards to make sure that I had the grist suitable.   I need a bulky yarn for this project.  It's better if it's a bit uneven in grist (sigh, not my favourite) and has a nice mix of colours.   It spun up quickly because I used a long draw and forced myself to not pay a lot of attention while spinning   It worked though, I got the results I was looking for.

first skeins of rug hooking yarn

I swapped a couple of bags of the first rolags, for a similar amount of roving from a friend.   One bag was a super dark blue shetland/blue faced leicester crossbred fibre and the other was undyed shetland/bfl, and alpaca.    I wasn't too thrilled with the shetland/bfl cross.   From what I could tell, it didn't result in a better fibre.   BFL is long, and quite soft.   This was more shetland-like, in that had a medium crimp, wasn't quite as long, nor as soft.   However, I blended the two fibres together, hand-carded it into rolags and spun it up into a 2 ply worsted.   It's nice enough, mainly I think because it's 25% alpaca.    It's about to become mittens.  No photo right now because it's too dark for a decent photo right now.

Because of the rather scary rise in Covid numbers, my whole family opted to have a stay at home Christmas again.    In the end, I was okay with that, although I missed my kids, I'd just gotten my booster shot, and spent half of Christmas day sleeping!    I did manage to sand all these pieces of a rigid heddle loom though.

 Today, hubby set up a work station in the mud room and I taped up the rigid heddles and stained it all.   Tomorrow, I can put the first coat of finish on it.   Luckily, I still have enough tung oil on hand to put two coats on, which will hopefully be enough.  I can't get more, because I just found out that it was discontinued.  It's the finish I used for my spinning wheels.  I haven't needed to buy any in a while, which is a good thing since it was discontinued in 2010!  

Loom details - 32 in Ashford rigid heddle loom.  It's light weight - 10 lbs,  Available rigid heddle reeds from 5 dpi, 7.5 dpi, 10 dpi, 12.5 dpi, 15 dpi.   It can use 2 reeds at a time, too.  The 7.5 comes with it.  I added the 10 because it would fit in the box and no extra shipping.   At some point I'd like to add another 10, a 12.5 and 15.

I realized that lots of people use rigid heddle looms as a starting point to jump into weaving.  However, I figured that as more than a couple of people have asked me about them, I should learn how to use them.  Also, on days when arthritis means it hurts to weave on the floor loom, table looms work just fine.  They are fast to dress and weave off too, so good for demos!   32in gives a lot of leeway for project possiblities.

There were still some not snowy parts on the lawn, so I let the chooks out that day.   They are pretty wimpy and don't like to wander out of the barn when it snows.   The wild birds had picked through the food in the feeders and scattered a lot on the ground, so the girls headed out to clean it up.   I had leftovers for them too that day.   Later in the afternoon, I heard some insistent knocking at the back door.   This is what I saw!   They either wanted in or wanted me to go out, prolly with treats for them.  There were a couple of the chooks, pecking away at the door.  The rest were just in cahoots!