Garden and fibre update

I've been digging in the garden.  The May 24th weekend is generally the weekend that we plant our gardens.  I'm usually away on that weekend so I generally wait.  This year, the long weekend was early by almost a week, so I held off planting anyway.   We had some coolish nights, but some early May weird frosts and I'd rather be safe than trying to find new plants.   I don't usually plant cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins and other squash until June, after having a huge problem with squash bugs from planting early.   

Mortgage Lifter Tomato seedling

My son in law started some tomato plants for me this spring so I've planted two varieties, Mortgage Lifter and Black cherry.   Most are planted and seem to be doing fine.  I'd looked for a couple more of the large tubs to add to my pots and raised bed collection, but no stores around here seem to sell them this year.  If I wanted fancy, expensive but not quite big enough pots, there were a fair number but of large garden planters there were none any where.   So Monday I'll grab some of husbands 5 gallon syrup collecting buckets, drill holes in the bottom and use 2 or 3 of those instead.  They'll require more frequent watering, but should do fine for my peppers, kale and Swiss chard.

The garlic is looking really good this year, with strong, thick, dark green stems.  It's in the front of one of the raised beds.  Behind it I've planted tomatoes.   In the other raised bed, the front is full of lettuce, a couple of volunteer onions, cilantro and a hot pepper plant.  Once I know the weather is consistently warm enough at nights, I'll plant green beans in the rest of the raised bed.  Once the garlic is harvested, if I have enough time, I'll replant beans in that space, otherwise, I'll plant  salad greens.

The blue gradient shawl is almost done.   Because the yarn had very distinctive colour changes, I wound cakes of each separate colour and dressed the loom in stripes.   The downside of this is that the weaving is all the same.   I did start with the darkest grey for weft, transitioned through to the dark blues.   If I can trust that the shawl will be about the length that I've actually woven, with about 2 inches wiggle room, then I've succeeded in using the remaining yarn from the weft.  Otherwise, I'll have lost at yarn chicken and have to use that medium blue for the last couple of inches.  My brain is telling me that I might look odd with only that little bit at the end.  I'm happy to get this one off the loom though, because there wasn't a lot of interesting colour changes weaving this.   That's why I like colour effects like short colour changes, log cabin and things like that.  Lots of interesting things happening without a lot of effort weaving.

I've been washing more fleece.  One of the new fleeces was a little musty smelling.   The fleece was strong and not damaged, so I washed it all up over several days.   It washed up nicely.  The only issue is my own fault, because the lingerie bags I was using were fairly fine meshed and probably took an extra wash to get them clean.   If I processed them with combs, all the trashy vm bits would come out, but I've run some of it through the drum carder to make batts that I've been then hand carding.  Mainly this is because I'm doing a demo of spinning, possibly on a great wheel, and it's easier to  make the rolags with pre-carded fibres when you have to talk with people at the same time.

There is usually a larger patch of poppies but this year there were only 3 buds.  The first one to bloom was the prettiest.   I think the last one will bloom tomorrow.  With the Allium, some sort of little white star shaped flower, the woad and the lilacs, there are lots of little and big bees around,  I hope they stay and do their pollinating thing!

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.

2 Busy Weeks

Colours have been slow to start in our area, and apparently due to the weather.  The slow and mild decent into autumn, is the reason our colours aren't nearly as bright as usual.    My trips to Westfield have been interesting as the leaves coloured there earlier and have been falling.   I've gotten to tromp through the leaves on the way to my building, which is always fun.   

This is one of our favourite local trails, which overlooks a small lake.    The sky really was that blue that day.   Our winter skies, and sometimes our late autumn skies tend to be pale and watery grey blue.   

One of the invasive weeds in our area is Virginia Creeper.   It takes over fence lines and grows into any nearby trees.    I pulled a couple of vines from a large pine tree near our fence line and the rest pulled off the back part of our deck.   I took a couple of bittersweet vines as well because they were growing up in a space between decking boards.   They were all still fairly green, so I wove them into wreaths.  They need to dry flat before I bring them in to decorate them.  I checked them this morning as was surprised how damp the underside felt, so I flipped them over.   I put them in the gazebo to keep any rain or dew off them.

I wove a scarf on the rigid heddle loom using some lovely yarn I'd picked up.   I did the calculations for the sett before I dressed the loom and using 10 dents per inch worked out perfectly .  However, the yarn was fuzzy, not quite as bad as a mohair yarn, but noticeably fuzzy.    Hindsight, after only weaving a few rows, says I should have gone down to a 7.5 dent to make the fuzzy yarn easier to weave.   I had to open every shed with a pick up stick before weaving.    I have more yarn, so I'll try that next time.

Regardless, the scarf, while taking a bit longer to weave, was quite nice until a quick check of the underside showed that I had some small floats from skipped threads: about 5 of them.  Instead of bothering to fix them, I ironed some lightweight interfacing on the back and cut up some  shapes to make stuffed woven strawberries.   I stitched them by machine, cut little leafy top green bits free hand from felt and sewed them on by hand, adding some hemp twine for hangers.   I'm going to see if the guild wants them for their $5 ornament fundraiser.  If they don't, I have lots more materials and there will be strawberry ornaments for everyone this year!

I had my sock machine, a Legare 400 in at Westfield to demo.  It was a slow day, but the people who did come in were really interested in both the building and the machine.   I had some really great conversations with people which made a somewhat slow day actually good fun and interesting.  Plus the day went by fairly quickly.    I'm going to need to make a nice little acceptable travel table though as finding an antique  table which can support the machine really securely and not wobble, or fit properly has been difficult.   Still it was a great day and I got a pair of socks made in-between conversations.

 

Walking and Weaving

We had a lot of rain a little while back, which was on top of snow.   If the snow pack is deep enough,  it will absorb a lot of the rain and hold it.   It wasn't though, and the temperatures were unseasonably mild, so a bit of rain made the snow heavy with the extra moisture.  Then the excess rain started collecting and running in little streams on top of the frozen ground.   Then, because it's been above freezing the snow melted, creating more water running.   The water ran from the fields beside our house, through our back yard and into the chicken coop soaking their bedding and then out to the neighbour's fields on the other side.   This is now the second time this winter we've had to change out the wet  bedding.

  Usually we use a deep bedding process in the chicken coop, where the chook droppings mix with the bedding and slowly start to compost, giving off a bit of heat in the cold. We just toss in a bit of fresh shavings periodically to cover eveything.  Not this year though.  Luckily chooks are pretty hardy animals.   They don't like the winter, that's for sure.  I let them out to free range and if there is no snow on the ground, they run to the bird feeder to see if there is a snack for the on the ground.   If there is snow, they barely peek out of the barn and they won't leave the area to feed anywhere else while the ground is cold.   

We went for a walk down one of our favourite trails a few days ago.  All this rain has left the area rivers and streams running high and in low areas there has been flooding.  This part of the trail was impassible due to the flooding.   You can see that the water level has already started dropping by the dark, wet marks on the tree trunks.  The water is flowing quite quickly too.  

Today we were at another trail, which has a much higher elevation.  There were a few muddy bits and one shady area which was a bit icy because the sun hasn't reached there yet.   Mostly though, it was easy to traverse.  We had sunshine today (gasp!), which was lovely.  We don't get a lot of sunshine here during the winter, so the trail parking lot was full of people out enjoying the weather.  The little lake is still mostly frozen.   There is one area that is open and another where you can see it starting.   It's not safe to walk on or play on although it can look deceiving. 

 I bought some pretty yarn a few days ago.  It was on sale for a good price.  It was purples and blues, with a silver metallic sparkle running through it.   I got only 2 balls because I'm pretty sure this won't sell or be a hit, but I really wondered what it would look like woven up.  The yarn is good acrylic and has a lovely hand: soft and drapey.    I separated all the colours and did a stripe to make a checky pattern.  I think this might have been better served leaving it as it was and just having random stripes as the amounts of each yarn varied.  As well some had a clear demarcation between colours and others had a long transition with the colours blending.   There was only enough of the teal to do those thin stripes, while there is tons of paler purple left.   I'm doing random weft stripes of the light purple and the darker blues, with a couple of the purple/red colour in between.  You can't really see the purple red stripes in the busyness of the other colours and all that freaking sparkly silver.  There is so much of it.  It sure didn't look like that in the skein. I'd be all over this yarn if it didn't have the sparkly ply because it's so easy to weave with.  I think so much sparkle takes away from the lovely colours and how they work together, and the softness of the yarn.

SO MUCH SPARKLE!

Don't Do What I Did!

Way before my hip replacement, I planned a project to put on the loom for my recovery. I'd totally forgotten that it would be weeks before I'd be cleared to weave again, so it was kind of a useless idea.  In the end though, it meant I had the warp almost ready to go when I needed it months later.

  It was 2/8 cotton and I did stripes, navy with painted warp stripes in between.   The painting of the warp was very successful.  It was a beautiful warp.  I started winding the navy stripes but only got halfway done before climbing up and down to the basement to my warping board  became difficult.   The project was left, semi-forgotten in a bag on the back of my desk chair.   Eventually though, time passed and I realized that I had 3 1/2 weeks left before the guild sale.    Discussion at the last meeting suggested that our stock of tea towels was low, so I decided to get this project on the loom.   It's an easy to weave project, the ubiquitous "friendship towels", from Schacht.  It's a delightful project, fun and fast, and also easy to change up the colour for each towel.  They've also provided the draft free, which was really nice of them.

See the twisting!  The navy was so much worse!

So step one -  When I dye warps I put tight figure 8 ties in the cross and also one at each end, to keep the yarns from slipping.   However all the rest of the figure 8 ties are tied loosely in a bow, so that a) it will be easy to dye the whole length without those white marks from a tight choke tie and b) using a bow so that when the warp is dry, I can tighten up the figure 8 ties to keep the warp contained and straight.  

  First mistake was not retying the figure 8 ties to make firm choke ties.   This allowed the painted warp to twist around itself, making for not so fun warping.   Secondly, I know that I painted the warp in a particular order.  I neither marked each of the painted warp chains with the order number, nor did I take proper notes.  I have a basic explanation of the project, a quick diagram with numbers etc, but absolutely none of the details which tell me what I was truly planning at the time.  My third mistake when starting this project, is that while I wound each stripe in the painted warp separately, I didn't do that for the navy stripes.  I wound about half of it in one bunch, and then because I neglected to note how many warp threads I'd wound, when I went to finish winding the warp 3 weeks ago, I figured it was easier to wind the second half of the navy stripes in one bunch too.   I'd counted my navy warp 3 times, and had 3 different numbers, so took the average and wound the rest of the stripes together as one warp.  This wouldn't have been such an issue if the navy cotton yarn hadn't been really over twisted, so it wound around itself something fierce and was so difficult to work with.   

painted warp and navy stripes, black weft.

After much fussing, winding, a few crossed threads and some broken threads from the over spun yarns twisting in the heddles, the warp was on the loom.  This was not a fun process and if I didn't absolutely love that warp, if it wasn't maybe 7 feet long, so 6 tea towels, so a lot of thread to waste, I might have cut it off.  Once it was on the loom though, it was very pretty.  I wove off two in a teal colour, one in a lighter green which was nice but not spectacular, two in purple which were awesome and one in black which is stunning.   I hadn't realized that I had any 2/8 black cotton in my stash or their would have been more of them.  I used all the purple I had.  My initial thoughts were to use the navy for the weft, thinking the navy on navy would give a sold stripe against the painted stripes.  However to my eye, because the navy is a broken twill, it just looked a bit messy to me.

1- take lots of notes, even if you don't think you'll need them.   If you put that project aside for a bit, you'll really want to know those details that don't jump out at you, including warp length, that the yarn is over twisted or delicate or just fine etc.

2- document numbers - how many are in each stripe, how long, did you add extra threads for use in breakage etc.

3 - don't wait until last minute and have to rush.  Give yourself time to enjoy the process. 

4- sometimes it's best to wind your stripes in the right number of threads to facilitate that enjoying the process bit :)

The towels have been washed and dried.  They are waiting for me to hem them.    I'm happy with the outcome.

Happy May!

 We've had day after day of wet, grey, dreary weather.   I'm looking forward to later in the week when we're supposed to get some sunshine.   I've been trying to move some plants from the old raised beds in preparation for the new ones being built.  I'm half done, but it's been too wet to finish up for almost a week now.

Twice now I've seen a bald eagle flying over us.   They are huge and fly very fast.  At least they fly quickly when the crows appear out of nowhere to chase them away.     We also heard an odd bird call the other day.  We were in the garage and this odd trilling was very loud. It was a sound I'd never heard before.  I popped out to see what it was, as it was definitely close, and there in the tree was a Raven.  Then several crows appeared and chased it off.   I checked the Raven call on-line and it was exactly what we'd heard.   I've seen it a couple of times since then as well.   Large predator birds overhead  does make me a little more careful about letting my chooks out though.   The hens don't like the wet weather though, so I don't feel quite so badly about keeping them locked in for the day when it's cold and rainy.

The plaid shawl is finally off the loom.   Really, I got busy and chose to do something other than weave.  It's pretty and I love the look of the plaid, but it is really a pain to weave.   It's a very subtle combination of colours.  More subtle than I'd have normally chosen.   I'm not sure what type of lights were in the shop where I purchased the main colour.   It looked grey in the shop.   I realized that it would be very dull unless I had an accent colour.   I found the same yarn  brand at a local store, and thought the grey they had was similar to the one I had at home.  It wasn't. While there was lots of contrast at the local store with their grey, mine is a different shade.  Maybe that's why it was on super sale!   So back to the store to pick up the yellow, to give the whole look some definition.   Regardless, I do like it.   It's 23 inches wide and 72 inches long, so a good size for a shawl.

I'm thinking it's time to warp up the floor loom and give it a go.  My hip is healed up enough and as long as I don't over do it, it should keep any swelling and inflammation down according to the surgeon.  

  We went to a concert on Saturday and I got to play with the camera on my phone.  We got our tickets late and had crazy nose bleed high seats.  We had a good line of site, so we got to see the show quite nicely.  Plus there was no-one beside us as we were tucked away in our own little alcove, so there were benefits.   We were about 200 metres away from the stage though, so I'm pretty happy that my little phone was able to take half-decent photos from that far away.   This is Joss Ross who was the opening act.   He had a good raport with the crowd and put on a great show.

The main performer was Lee Brice who also put on a great show.  I really liked the fact that the bass didn't over shadow the music.

There were a lot more people checking their phones during the concert than I normally see.   That was because it was game 5 for the Maple Leafs playoff hockey.  When that winning goal was won, right after that song ended, the crowd spontaneously erupted in "Go Leafs Go", which was particularly funny.  It lasted until he acknowledged the play off game win and thanked people for coming to the concert instead of watching the game.

 

Gratuitous cat photo of Phil, who sometimes gets cold and dives under blankets until he gets warm.  At night he either sneaks totally under the covers, or he just sleeps at your side, with his body under the covers and his head either on, or near the pillow.  He'll sleep that way for hours, but only until he's warm if he's completely under the blankets.

Autumnal Craziness abounds

Argh, it's been crazy busy around here.  The past weekend was the weavers guild sale.  We had amazing participation from members willing to come out to man our booth.   It was part of a greater community art sale.  The location has been moving around for a number of years, even before Covid, and sales have been pretty iffy at times, depending on the spot.   One location was well attended by a huge number of people who commented each time we tried to engage them, that they were only here for an afternoon out and to look.  It was so frustrating.   This weekend though, the location was such that the people came ready to shop.   Even though they shopped at all the different booths, it was lovely to see the artists happy at the sale.  

There were a couple of potters with lovely wares.  One was a little too softly coloured, with their good smaller and pastel glazed.  The other however, had pieces with lots of cobalt, white and copper glazes with beautiful shapes.  There were mugs big enough for my tea mug.   Since my currant tea mug has suddenly acquired a chip in the base, I was getting worried about it breaking and not having a replacement.  One of those lovely mugs came home with me.  I really liked the cobalt and copper look, but the mugs were smaller, so I came home with a white and cobalt mug, big with a nice shape.  I got to have one cup of tea in it to test it and then hubby put it away.

 I still adore my tea mug that I've used for almost 14 years.  It's the perfect size and weight for me.   It's made by Oneida and it's obviously from a Christmas collection since the cat is wearing a pine wreath or circlet on it's head and a red scarf with stars.  I've looked on and off over the years for a replacement on various sites and not even found a reference to this pattern.  I think of the 100's of cuppas I've had in this over the years and it does make me sad that one day that chip will crack the cup.   Still, it's been a good journey with this cute cup. 

I've been on a weaving binge, although my hip has complained excessively.   With the sale on the horizon, I had a commission for blankets.  They had to be done before the sale though.  I'll admit that one night we ate frozen chicken burgers for supper, and another night I made a quiche in the name of expediency so I could finish the projects.   Much crazyiness ensued for two weeks but my family was okay with it.  Blankets were finished in time and handed off to the new owner.  That was a sigh of relief.

Yesterday morning I put a scarf warp on the rigid heddle loom.    I went to the sale at Spinrite and they had this kid mohair/silk on for $3 a skein.   It's absolutely lovely and I wish I'd purchased more.  This one is about 8 inches wide.   It's very soft and weaving up nicely.   

My research suggests that mohair needs to be woven with a wider sett, to keep the fuzzy halo, soft and not itchy. It's supposed to catch and and can be tough to weave.  It's weaving beautifully however.   I read  that mohair yarn that is 1000yds per 100g, should be sett at 7 or 8.   I'm using my 7.5 reed, so I'm hoping it will be good.   It's certainly pretty enough.  

This is Phil and Dion, the feral kitties who chose to live with us.  Literally, Phil (on the left) hung around all summer, then screamed at me one day when I went to hang laundry when the weather was cooling.   I looked after him and the next day he brought Dion with him.  They didn't leave.  They are now spoiled house cats.  They sleep together when the weather cools down.  

  In the cold weather, Phil really likes to be warm at night.  He wakes me up so that I can lift the covers and give him a space to crawl underneath.   A lot of times he seems to decide to spend the whole night there, so he slips his head on my pillow so his body stays warm.  I've woken up and he's in the same place he was when I went to sleep.  If he's just cold though, he just curls up underneath the blankets.  Once his nose and feet are warm, he hops out.   Believe me, sometimes his feet get cold to be felt through jeans and long johns, so I can understand why he wants to warm up under the covers.

Matching socks!

I think I did it!  When putting these two socks, exactly side by side, it looks like the stripes match up exactly.   I think I even got it matched to the number of final rows in the toe decrease.  I couldn't find a way to photograph  them with the stripes perfect though.  Maybe if I had sock blockers.   However I don't really want to spend the money to purchase sock blockers, so I may just soak these and then pin them to shape on a rubber mat, like one would do with other pieces of knitting.  Not quite as simple and effective as a sock blocker, but I don't have to buy anything either.

The sock yarn was nice to knit with.  It wasn't splitty and didn't tangle.   Once I figured out where the repeat was, it was easy to find my starting point and I had a minimal amount of waste, which was also nice.  I managed to toss the ball band out by accident though, so I have no idea what the sock yarn that I used was called!  Despite the matching and constant checking to make sure my tension was the same, it was a fairly fun knit.

The solid socks which are a grey/brown colour haven't been quite
as much fun.    A lot of it has been my fault because I knit the first sock and then knit the blue striped pair before I did the second sock.   I also didn't think to write down the details as I was going, which did make it more difficult.   It's not a difficult pattern, but I started off the second sock with making the cables the wrong size and had to rip back half the top part, back to the ribbing.   Then I dropped a stitch in a cable and had to rip back to where I could pick it up because it was too difficult to try to hook it back over several cables.  Then I started turning the heel before I did the heel flap!  Argh, that was such a careless error because I had counted out the heel, meant to knit the heel flap, told myself to do it and then got distracted by something DH was watching on the telly.  Thankfully I found my mistake before I'd turned the whole heel.  To top it off, this yarn is splitty.   It doesn't seem to have much stretch or forgiveness to it, so it's not quite so much fun to knit with.   I wish now I'd gone for a more complicated pattern.  At least that would make the end result more worthwhile for all this fussing over a single sock that I've been doing.

My hip has been cranky lately and weaving on my Fanny floor loom has been difficult.  However there is a little Artisat loom in the guild room.   It's smaller than the Fanny loom, and has a smaller width to the treadle setup, which means less lateral movement for my cranky hip.   I was able to weave pain free on that little baby.   

This was a leftover warp from a tea towel class.   I just did a straight twill treadling and wove off this towel in about 2 hours, with little to no effort or pain.   I'd love to purchase a loom like this so that I could get back to weaving.   Not happening though because we need to replace our furnace!   That's been priced out so far to $7200 because we don't have a fuel tank, so are switching from oil to propane.  That's without a/c too!   It's not available right now due to back orders and increased demand.   We haven't had central heating for a decade or more, so it will be a change.   We'll still use the woodstoves, but it means we don't have to get up in the middle of the night to load the stoves and can be away from home for more than 3 hours if we so choose.  That will be an interesting change.

 

Weaving and wool cutting

The pink tea towels are wet finished.   They washed up nicely, although there was a bit more shrinkage than I anticipated.   I don't imagine it was any different from other towels I've made, but just that I haven't woven tea towels in a long while so had forgotten.

I just piled the towels up, without matching the outside colours.  Still, it's easy to see the difference that the weft colours made on the towels.   I wasn't fond of the changes that the darker green made on the colours.  My favourite was using the pale pink.  I ended up weaving the extra towel in the pale pink as well.  I think it kept with the intended colour scheme better.

The next set of towels is on the loom.  I tied on to the old warp.  Usually this is fairly quick and effortless to do.  However, I managed to find a sleying error and had to resley about 1/4 of the warp.  Luckily it was near the last stripe so it wasn't too fussy or overly time consuming.  When I was winding it on, I came to the end of the roll of cheap watercolour paper I'd been using as packing paper.  It worked really well for weaving, pattern making and anything else, except of course when I tried it for watercolours.   But there was something icky on the inside of the roll and I didn't want it touching the yarn, so I snipped it off.  All was good until I couldn't reach the end properly.  A few threads caught on the paper and yep, I snipped them off when I trimmed the last bit of the paper.  After doing a rough measuring, I simply knotted the cut ends together as it was right in the general area of the end of the second tea towel.  We'll see soon if I was correct.

Here you can see the end of the first towel, with the light grey warp of the first stripe and the start of the second towel with the medium blue of the third stripe.  It sure makes a huge difference!

This is a Fraser cutter, used for cutting wool strips for rug hooking.    I have been looking for one for a while so that I could stop cutting my strips by hand.  That is pretty tedious.   My first choice would have been a Bolivar or a Townsend, but neither was in the budget, so I had to wait.  Over the summer I found a Fraser, but it only had a # 4 wheel that worked.   The wheel number determines the width of the wool strip which is cut.   A #4 is 1/8 in. wide.   It makes for a lot of detail and is a little more difficult to work with than a #6 which is 3/16 in. wide or a #8 which is 1/4 in. wide.   My favourite so far is the #6, which seems to be the hardest cutter wheel to find second hand.  But our local Hooking guild had a silent auction and they put their spare cutter up with a 3, 4,5,6 cutter wheels included.   I bid and won this for about the same price as a single new cutter wheel would cost.   It works well and I had a lovely time playing with it to cut strips for the rug I'm working on.

The cutter came in this box, which is likely the original shipping box.   It was originally destined for a rug hooking class at a secondary school.  I looked up the stamps and they are from 1956.  The stamps were issued to honour the chemical industry and the pulp and paper industry.  I wonder if they'd do the same today.  

  I can't find the original price of the cutter from that year, but I know that a friend purchased one in the 70's for $66.   So these cutters hold and increase their value!  They cost about $600 and up new and still look almost exactly them same.  The cutter works beautifully regardless of it's age.    I'm really happy that I got this as it means I can get some work done on my rug. 

New Tea Towels - Kevin update

 I finally cut off the scarf project that I hated, wound a warp of 2/8 cotton for tea towels and dressed the loom, in quick order.  The pink and green warp had 2 colours I wasn't fond of, the greens, plus the pinks aren't colour I often use, for weaving at least.   I had grabbed a cone of the pale pink and challenged myself to build a tea towel project around it.  This colour combination felt very spring time to me.

Kevin liked the towels!  We've had a few sunny days and he would situate himself on the loom to enjoy the sun streaming inside.   Usually he just sits on the front beam, but this time he kept sitting on the towels as well.  Luckily, it didn't affect the tension of the project, although it did cut into my weaving time.  I realize I could have just shooed him off, but he doesn't get a sunny spot to himself too often.  Usually one of the ginger kitties bumps him away, so I let him enjoy his moments in the sun.

I planned the project for 4 towels.   I used 2/8 unmercerized cotton, sett 18, tabby weave.   I used only a single colour for the weft, but I rotated through the 4 main colours I'd used for the warp.  These towels flew off the loom.  Please note, there are 5 towels shown.  That is because I had so much loom waste left, I wove off another towel.  I had enough left for a napkin as well, however because I'm going to tie on another towel, with the same details and pattern, but in blues, I left the extra warp length to make tying on easier.

I stitched between each towel, on both sides of the dividing marker and at each end of the length of towels.  Interestingly, there was virtually no shrinkage off the loom.   They are 18 inches wide by 32 inches long before hemming and wet finishing. I've tossed them in the washing machine and will then machine dry them before hemming, which I will do by machine.

 I played around a bit with different warp tensions while weaving.  I learned a fair bit.   I did this because we have a jack loom in the Guild studio that people have complained about being really difficult to treadle.   A couple of us have had no issues with this though and I figured out that for that loom, if you ratchet up the warp tension too high, you can't easily lift the shafts and get a really small  shed.    With my counterbalance loom, the same issue happens but to a much lesser extent.  However, if you don't get the warp tight enough, the bottom threads in the open shed are too loose and skipped threads both upper and lower, happen more often.   I found tension more of a personal preference with the counter balance loom.  However, with the jack loom, tension definitely affects usability.

Finally, time to update!

I just cut this part scarf off the loom.   I found some Paton's Lace yarn on sale and picked some up to weave a shawl and a couple of scarves.   It's lovely in the skein, not so much in the woven fabric.   A master weaver friend told me once that if you think there is something off with your fabric, or you don't like it and don't know why, it's probably your sett.

  I definitely had the sett just a tad tight.  The fabric was too dense and felt a bit stiff.  Not only that, but the outside threads started shredding.   I've woven with this commercial knitting yarn before without issues, and know a friend who did so with lovely results, so I'm not sure what was going on with the shredding.  However, I cut off the bit that I was weaving and re-sleyed it in a crammed thread/loose thread pattern, trying to get a bit of life and whimsy into the pattern.   This has worked really well, except the outside threads are still shredding and I've not decided what to do about it.  I will either put some floating selvedges on it, or sacrifice the yarn and cut it off.   I just noticed this morning that it's awfully close to Christmas and I haven't even thought about the tea towels my kids requested.   I've not thought about the pattern, colours, any design.  The warp isn't wound and eeek.. I'm running out of time.

My Christmas cards are done.   This year instead of carving a design for block printing, I tried my hand at water colours.   I have some ancient gouache paints from previous experiments and although they are opaque, rather than transparent, like true water colours, they can be used in a similar way.   I'd like to try some real water colours and see how they differ.  However that will be for another time.  My son, who is a talented artist, declared that they were okay, and the people who received them would appreciate them.  I got a giggle out of his effort to be supportive.

We got one last hike in before it snowed again.  It was brisk out, hovering just above freezing.  It was however sunny and there was almost no wind, so it was a great day to be out.  This is a trail we haven't taken in a while.  It was a nice change to be walking on soil, leaves and grass instead of the gravel that most of the well groomed walking trails have in this area.

I've been spinning in the evenings.   I've been mainly using up bits and pieces of stash. The blue merino superwash was a bit compacted and I probably should have run it through the carder or hand carded it before I spun it.  It was a fast spin and I didn't really worry too much about it.  I was just happy to have it spun and out of the way.   

On the last nice day, we got yard work done.   I got all the leaves off the deck, the hose put away, which is a bigger job than you'd expect since there is about 100 feet of hose, maybe more, and it was frozen stiff.    The part of the roof we had redone is finished, with new eavestrough and because it's the very high part of the house, we had that eavestrough leaf guard installed - yay!  

The bad things are that the mowing deck on the lawn tractor just rotted away.  The paint started bubbling  and this spring my sweetie had to get a friend to weld part of it back together.  Now it has rusted through in multiple places, so it needs to be replaced.   However, the part has been on backorder forever,  and we aren't holding out any hope that it might available anytime soon.  Luckily it's winter and we won't need to mow the lawn for a while.   The second thing is that t is just a nuisance.  The wood guy stopped by and commented on how quickly the last load of wood was cut up and split.   My sweetie laughed and said it was a perfect load and he'd take another like that any day.   Well of course two days later, we had another load of wood, not quite as perfect though, dumped beside the driveway.  The weather hasn't been conducive to getting it processed though, so it's just sitting there, almost in my parking spot.  I can't imagine that there will be time to get it processed and stacked for drying anytime soon, at least with just himself doing it.   I could be a winter driveway decoration!

                                                                                                   

 

 

Colours of September

 I dressed the loom with the Kool-aid dyed warp using the Wall of Troy pattern from Margarite Davison's green book.  It's a fairly striking pattern but still an easy pattern to both thread and weave.   I'm done the first scarf and there is another left to weave.   Progress has been interrupted by helping my son-in-law build garage doors, canning, teaching a socially distanced rug hooking class at the park, hydro issues which mean the whole electrical panel needs to be replaced and a scary and irritating trip to the car dealer for a simple service on my cute little car, where they made all the motions of masking and social distancing, except for the part where they actually did it.  

The new hens have settled in nicely.  It only took them a couple of days to fully integrate.   After months of waiting for new birds, the feed store was able to get ready to lay hens delivered two weeks in a row.   Yay, to him finding independent breeders to supply us with hens!

 These ones are laying little pullet eggs.  Pullets are young layers.  They should start off laying tiny eggs like these, and gradually their eggs should increase in size.   Sadly, some of the hybrids we've had start off laying huge eggs and it can't be healthy for them.

I found prune plums in the stores, although not at the market. They were wonderfully ripe and two containers came home with me.   They make a wonderful jam or preserve.  I didn't chop them up, so my jam has chunks of peel and fruit in it.  Normally I chop the plum halves up a bit, and then the skins seem to just dissolve completely.  Still, the jam this year is pretty awesome.  It finished to a deep reddish purple colour, from the skins.  It's so pretty.

I dragged out the blending board.  I played with some colours of commercial corriedale.   They're not quite felted and they look fine, but they were just not quite easy enough to pull off the rolags, so slightly compacted perhaps, from sitting in a drawer for however long it's been.  Still it was fun to do.  

Blogger has been switched over to the new version, which I didn't want to use whenver they first introduced it.  I liked the old Blogger format and it was easy to use.  Now I'm finding a new learning curve and having to figure out new glitches.  It doesn't seem as easy to drop photos where I want them amongst a few other things I need to figure out.   This means that my layouts and formatting may be a little off until I muddle through it all.  I'm sure it will all come together at some point.

A Kool Aid dyed experiment

One of my weaving guild members is part of a study group in another town.  She recently lead a socially distanced class on "fun" dyeing.  They used Kool Aid.   You need to use the unsweetened Kool Aid drink powder in the little packets.  It's no longer sold in Canada, unless you luck out and find it at a discount or outlet store.  Last winter I found some packets at a dollar store and stashed a bunch of them for future use. 

At our last Zoom meeting, Barb had shown her results which was a huge pile of skeins that she had dyed with Kool Aid, at 1 packet to 1 ounce of wool yarn.  It was lovely, colourful and inspiring.

Not wanting to duplicate her results, I tried something a bit different.  I had picked up a packet of Guar Gum about the same time I purchased the Kool Aid packets.  Guar Gum is a thickener and one of it's many uses is to thicken dye for painting skeins.  It helps prevent the dyes from running together too much, allowing for techniques which might need more distinct lines.   I found it at the bulk food store, in the gluten free section. 

You don't need a lot of it. I used 5 ml in a litre of water.  I buzzed it up in a blender.  Since it was food grade, I didn't worry about extra equipment but used the seldom used smoothie blender in the back of the cupboard.   It was thickish, but from a couple of videos I'd watched, I thought it should have been thicker.   However, I decided to try it as it was, so if it didn't work, I had a definite starting point to work from   I divided the liquid into 7 disposable cups which had been sitting in a box for years.  I added a single packet of Kool Aid powder to 6 of the cups and left the 7th cup uncoloured, to use as an extender if I needed it.

The Kool Aid powder blended in quickly and gave fairly bright colours.   I used my acid dye syringes since I couldn't find my husbands stash of foam brushes which I sometimes use to paint fibre with.  Earlier in the day I'd wound a wool/silk blend warp for 2 scarves. I tied a tight choke tie in the middle, where the fringe from one scarf ended and the other began.  I tied looser figure 8 ties on the rest of the warp, except for the cross.  It was tightly tied too.

 I soaked the warp in warm water with about 1/4 cup of vinegar.  It's not really necessary, but I wanted the dye to take quickly.  As well, it was a lot of warp for a little dye, and I wasn't sure how diluting it with the guar gum would affect the dye to acid ratio.  I felt comfortable with a little extra security.

I used a lot of plastic wrap and ran it in long lengths, to put my warp on.  This protects the work surface to some extent but also protects the yarn when you steam it.   Since I was working on the glass topped patio table, I didn't put down any other protection on the table.  Kool Aid and Guar Gum are food safe, plus the glass table is super easy to clean.   I used syringes and spoons to paint the warp.  The syringes were discards from my husbands workplace and a friend who breeds Alpaca.  They are easily available at the farm supply store though.

Once I had the colour on, I wrapped the plastic wrap tightly around the warp threads.   I tucked one side in, around the warp and then rolled it up.   Amazingly, the guar gum did stop most of the leakage from where the plastic wrap pieces joined.   I dyed one scarf, rolled the plastic around it and then did the second one, as my table wasn't large enough to do both at once. I rolled the whole kit and kaboodle up like a jelly roll.  I popped it into a dye pot, with a steamer rack in the bottom, added a few inches of water and let it steam for about an hour.  I added water a couple of times during the process, to make sure the pot didn't run dry.   It doesn't need an hour, but my pot lid had gone missing, so the one I had to use didn't fit quite tightly enough.  This way I made sure it had enough steam time.

I turned off the stove after the steaming time was up.  I let the warp cool down overnight. If the wool yarn, or roving or fibre cools down too quickly, it will likely cause the fibre to felt up.  Since this was a wool silk blend, it could not only felt the wool, but damage the silk, if I didn't let it cool slowly.

The final colours are fun.  I'd read someplace that the purple Kool Aid was an ugly colour, but I rather like the purplish-grey colour.  The guar gum did prevent any major blending of colours from one colour to another, even if it wasn't quite as thick as I'd thought it should have been.  The warp is now on my loom, waiting for me to start weaving.

So, why did I use a wool/silk warp, luxury fibres for a Kool Aid experiment?  Kool Aid, and food colours in general (Wilton's Paste food colours work well too), act as weak acid dyes.  That is dyes which are easily fixed with vinegar or citric acid.  However, they need a protein or animal fibre to work.   The only pure wool I had was blanket wool.   I didn't have enough of any one white fibre to wind a scarf warp, let alone a warp for two scarves.   I did however have enough white wool/silk blend for the warp and the weft for at least one of the scarves.   Since I know that food colours, when heat processed at the proper temperature and time are stable, I wasn't too worried.

Friday was cool, with a high of only 16C.   I used the cool weather as an excuse to make some black cherry jam.   I had frozen berries which needed to be used up.  I chopped them up in the food processor and used them for jam.  The jam is spectacular.   I love apricot and cherry jams.   I can't find them in the supermarkets, so I have to make them myself.  It's better jam albeit more work than purchasing a jar.  I can't decide which one I love better though.  It depends on which jam is on my toast at the time.  Last year there weren't any apricots available locally, so I hope I can find them this year.  Then I'll be set for favourite jam for the whole year, for me,  for gifts and then some.

 There are something like 7 trails or more within a half hour drive.  They aren't long and difficult trails but just small, local trails.  They are groomed, usually quite well groomed to make them easily accessible.  So while not challenging or difficult in any way, they are relaxing and fun to ramble over and through.  It's nice to get out of the house, even if it's a trail which is 12 minutes from your house and that's because they just graded the gravel road. We've been doing a different trail every weekend, though this weekend we did 2 of them.  This morning's ramble had some excitement.  It was through a hardwood bush and during the most recent storm a couple of trees had fallen.  They looked like ash trees, and since they are pretty much all dead, they are susceptible to the high winds.  Anyway, right after we parked our car, a guy pulled up in his truck and dragged out his chainsaw.   He told us that the ministry of whatever government agency which looks after the parkland, usually only deals with dead falls every few months.  When trees fall and he finds them, he just chops up the bit on the trail and moves that part of the log, to keep the trails open.  His daughter was pushing a stroller with a baby in it, accompanied by a very wet dog, so I can understand why he wanted to keep the trail open.

This however, has been the main time stealer.   Getting the sunset, cotton/wool yardage off the loom took much more time than anticipated.   I finally cut it off this afternoon.   I have 5 yards, 10 inches in length and 20 3/4 inches wide.   I still need to wet finish it.  I'll do that tomorrow since my son has his laundry on the clothes line today. It's soft and drapey.  It would have made lovely shawls.   I have it in my mind to make a sleeveless tunic, jumper or pinafore dress (the same garment with different names) with this, to go over winter t-shirts and jeans.    I will need to run to the fabric store, which is nice that's it's open now.  I'll need some lining fabric, a bit of interfacing, a zipper and some thread to make this into a garment.   I can also get the fabric for lining the bodices of the 1830 and 1860 gowns which are patiently waiting in the project queue.   I have everything I need for them except the bodice lining. 

Percy's Rug

 Percy and Christiana gave me two shopping bags of old t-shirts to use for weaving rugs.  Usually I cut my rug strips into continuous lengths.  This gives large sections of a particular colour and because you can trim and overlap the ends, you get a fairly uniform texture.

  This time though, I cut the strips into loops.  I stretched the loops and then looped them together randomly.  This creates little textured knobs where the loops are joined, but also gives an interesting colour variety.  I decided to try this for two reasons.  One, I wanted to try something new and two, I didn't have a backup selection of shirts in those colours, so regulated stripes was a little bit risky for symmetrical results.

I've decided that I really like this technique.  The rug was fun to weave.   The loops are easy to interlock, you stick one loop inside the other and then loop it back inside itself and pull.  The only issue was of course the helper kitties who saw grand opportunities to play with lengths of t-shirt loops.  

I started out by trimming and overlapping when one shuttle ended and I started a new one.  However I realized it was much easier to just pop the new shuttle through the ending loop and then slide it through the looped end of the new length.  A quick tug and the lengths were joined seamlessly.

I wasn't sure how many loops I'd need.   One t-shirt didn't work because I don't think it was cotton.  When you stretch the t-shirt material, it lengthens and curls in on itself, making a great weaving yarn.   This shirt material didn't do that.  However, the rest were perfect.  I had enough, with a couple of t-shirts left over to use in another project.

I have to say that weaving is a good task right now because it requires some concentration and thought.   It is weird and stressful times out there these days and focusing on an encompassing project is not a bad thing.  

Woolly activities

I've finished the hooking part of the basket weave rug.   I'm quite happy with it so far.   I still need to steam it so it's flat.   Then I will baste a cord wrapped in the backing, around the edge of the rug.  The final steps are to whip stitch wool yarn around the edge to cover the cording and backing, to give a firm finish, which will frame the rug.  

I don't have the yarn yet, which will likely be black.   I was thinking about spinning it.  It won't take a lot, maybe about 150 yards.  But it will have to be dyed.  The fibre that I have which is suitable, is still raw fleece, so it will need to be washed.   By the time I've washed the fleece, let it dry, worked out the calculations to spin it to the necessary twist and grist, and then spin, ply and dye it, spending the $7.45 for the single skein of yarn that I'd need, seems to be an easier solution.  

I'm happy with the rug though.   Now to find a local dealer for Briggs and Little yarn, Regal weight.  

This is the end of the blanket project which is on the loom.  I wove this blanket it 2 halves.  Because I only have 4 shafts and my loom is only 36 in wide, I can't do a twill double weave project.   So if I want to do a twill blanket, I weave it in two long strips and stitch them together.    It's not really sewing it together, it's more like running an extra warp thread down the middle, picking up the little loops along the selvedge, where you reverse the weft.   It's easy and takes only a long thread of warp and a tapestry or darning needle.

Joining the two halves

The seam line from joining using this technique is almost invisible.

You just pick up one loop on the selvedge of one piece, and then the next one on the selvedge on the second piece.  The reason I like joining two woven pieces this way is because the seam is nearly invisible.

My finger is on the seam.  Despite the bit of extra bulk at the selvedges, it's still really hard to see.

I thought that I wove the blanket halves to 95in, knowing there would be a lot of shrinkage when it first came off the loom.  Obviously I wove the first half to only 92 inches because the second half it a few inches longer than the first.    It's an easy fix though.  I'm joining the two halves together first.  Then I will pull a weft thread where I want a cutting line to even up the two blanket pieces.   I'll then stitch along the blanket side of the little gap to secure the threads before cutting the extra off.  

I hem my blankets these days, rather than twisting fringes.   If I were to sell blankets, I'd likely twist the fringes as people seem to like the look.  However, I want my blankets functional and I find the twisted fringes get in the way.  They tickle chins and noses, get caught up in fingers, and other things and of course are the perfect cat toys.   Hems are far more utilitarian as far as I'm concerned and I'm willing to give up a pretty finish in order to not wake up with a fringe bit caught up where I don't want it.