Advancing Twills Study

I finally finished the hems on my placemats from the Advancing Twills study. So proud was I, thinking to myself, "these don't look bad for a beginning weaver". Time for pictures. I start laying them out trying to figure out which one was which. Lo and behold, I did the treadling wrong on #3 and it turned out looking just like #2! ARRGGGH!! Don't ask me how I managed that, but I did. Oh well, it was a learning experience after all and I was wanting to make another set that were about 2" wider. Not that it's going to happen anytime soon, but I do have enough supplies to accomplish it. So without further adieu, here are photos of the finished project.

Spinning Flax on a Drop Spindle

Since we weren't able to start warping the big loom for our next weaving guild project, Clarice gave us a great demo on spinning flax. One of our members had received some free unidentified fiber when she bought her spinning wheel. Just in looking at it, I thought it was probably flax. So we did a burn test to really find out what it was. Clarice grabbed some water, a spindle, and showed us how to load the distaff (the thing that holds the fiber for you). She made it look much simpler than I have heard from others. It's not the nicest feeling stuff in your hands, so I'll probably stick to wool! Below is the slideshow that I couldn't get in this post.

My little cotton patch

I'm finally starting to get come cotton from my little backyard plot! And green is coming in first. It got rained on, so it's a little matted looking. I was hoping it would be all green, but the outside is definitely on the brownish side. Which makes me wonder if it's going to be colorfast, or if it's going to fade with time. I guess I'll take some samples and put on a window sill to see what happens. My two plants are covered with bolls, so I should get enough this summer to start spinning. The plan is to make a 3-ply yarn in green, brown, and white. I bought a charkha for cotton spinning, but I'm not proficient enough yet to take a chance on wasting any of the colored cotton. So I'll be doing all the spinning on the Lendrum with the very fast flyer. In my spare time. Ha-ha!!



edited 8/30/2009 to add photo showing white and green cotton for contrast.

Finished Baskets

After many distractions in July, I'm finally getting around to posting pics of the finished baskets. The wine basket is always a good gift, but I wasn't too sure how the big urn was going to turn out. Overall, I'm happy with it. But it was a pain working with so many pieces of such long pieces of small reed.





Now I'm looking forward to picking Riley up this weekend for a week-long visit. He's bringing his motorcycle, so I'm sure he and James will be spending a lot of time at the track with that and the carts. We don't really have a lot of stuff planned, so we'll just do whatever he wants. Isn't that they way it's supposed to work?

Weaving Weekend!

A long 3-day weekend, and no chores! Priceless! So yesterday I started the "Double Chief's Daughter Urn" from The Ultimate Basket Book by Lyn Siler. So far it's looking ok, but it sure is hard to work with all this thin reed! This may be gifted if it turns out symmetrical. It's is pretty difficult to control the shape. We'll see.





I've also finished rethreading and resleying the loom, and have started the first placemat again. The weaving definitly shows some beginner weaver errors, but the selvedges are nice and the threading is correct. By the time I get to the end of this 5-yard warp, my weaving should improve tremendously!


This is the first placemat in progress.

The advancing twills saga continues...

I had the 20/2 linen for the weft in my stash, and ordered navy 10/2 cotton for the warp so that I can do this project on my loom at home. So by last Sunday I have the loom warped and ready to go. I sit down, start weaving, and a glaring threading error appears. In retrospect, I thought it was odd that I didn't have a couple of threads left over as I was warping (I threw in a couple extra in case I miscounted). But I marched blindly along without checking my work. You know the old adage, "measure twice, cut once". Well it applies to weaving too.



So there was nothing to do at this point but cut it off, pull everything out, and rethread and resley the loom. Six miserable hours later, I was back at the point I was at when the weekend started. But hey, I learned another hard lesson. And I've got a three day weekend coming up and plan to spend it weaving. I do really like the hand of the fabric and am looking forward to seeing all the patterns reveal themselves. There should be enough warp for 4 placemats and a table runner. But I may use the table runner yardage for a cushion on Gran's old rocker. Wish me luck, and hopefully it will be a productive weekend!