Shopping with the Girls

Yesterday a bunch of us met up at Heritage Park in Katy for a small craft sale that they host in one of the historic houses on the first Saturday of the month. Our main reason for being there was to check out the yarn by Mama Llama. Catherine Kerth is a member of our local knitting guild and has come out with a beautiful line of hand dyed yarns. It was a tough decision, but I finally settled on two - Super Ewe in the "Bom Dia" and "Berkley" colorways.



Sharing the porch with Catherine was Marissa Vitolo who specialized in ceramics and fused glass. I picked up a lovely green pitcher and plate.


Inside the house, ARTeach sells items handmade by people participating in their program. ARTeach brings art-related programs and services to the underpriviledged including children at risk, troubled youth, special need children and adults, and the elderly. Lots of great gift ideas at very reasonable prices! Here I bought a really cute string of stuffed calico birds with beads.


After lunch, Roddie and I stopped at Serendipity hap'ez on the way out. If you happen to be out in Katy, they're having a great sale at the moment and we did our part to help them out.




All in all, a great way to spend a Saturday!

Three Little Pigs

Finished the baby gift just in time for the shower this week! I had been wanting to make this for years, but everyone kept having summer babies, or I didn't have enough notice to get it done. I don't do much fair isle knitting because it's such a pain weaving in all the ends, and since this was done in superwash, I had to be extra vigilant that everything was tied down. The pattern was written to be knitted in pieces, but I did it in the round which saved some finishing work, but sure got confusing at times. The other problem was finding one brand of yarn, suitable for baby wear, that also came in all the colors I needed. Debbie Bliss Rialto 4ply fit the bill, but I still needed a dark pink. I bought an extra ball of cream, came up with an approximate color formula using a dye mixing program on the computer, mixed up a batch, and it worked the first time. Will wonders never cease! In retrospect I would have preferred it to be slightly lighter, but not enough to do another dye run. So without further adieu, here are the particulars and photos.

Pattern: #24 Fair-isle frog-suit from Pingouin booklet Autumn/Winter 95-96
Yarn: Debbie Bliss "Rialto 4ply"
Needles: US 2 and 3

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?