Whiling away the time….

Took a tumble on the stairs at work yesterday, nothing major, just missed the bottom step. But whacked my arm pretty hard and it swelled up impressively 😀 Got to come home, and stay home again today. Hopefully I will be back to work tomorrow….. I’m planning on it, but it all depends on what the boss says. She wanted me to go in for an ex-ray, but everybody who has looked at it seems to think it’s just a bad contusion and not a broken arm (I even called the doctor who treated my broken arm a couple of years ago and he seems to think, from what I told him and no loss of mobility, that it is in all likelihood not broken)….. I am not in a hurry to waste money and time in Urgent Care.

Other than that little boo-boo life is good! I got into a class/workshop with Irit Dulman this summer in Portland!! Yippee!! A double blessing since I will also get to spend time with my kids and my little grand daughter (who is growing like a weed and changing by the moment!).

I think that the workshop with Irit will propel me into another level of eco printing. I’m okay at it, but she is so far ahead of me that I will come away will a new fervor and momentum. PLUS, she is more discriminate with her leaves….. a discussion we had a few years ago. I tend to pour the leaves onto the fabric, like fallen leaves on the forest floor, while she seems more contemplative with her placement.

Here are a few of my latest eco print scarves……

This one is handwoven out of raw silk, then eco printed. I thought about over printing it, it seems a bit insipid to me, but Jeph talked me out of it.

 

And these two are more circular sanded silk charmeuse scarves.

I am also working on a top for myself….. it’s almost done. And a purse…. ha ha ha, the purse is taking it’s time. I wove a length of fabric out of hemp, cottolin and raw silk…… making 4 inch squares down the middle that would just be raw silk, that I then eco printed. All went well so far. BUT I am finding myself spatially challenged with the folding up of the fabric (turning it into the purse). It’s the purse that was found here  http://donisdelis.blogspot.com/2009/01/little-tutorial.html  AND I have made it before, although it has been a few years. Each time I make it, I find myself scratching my head and thinking “huh?” You would think that it would come back to me….. 🙂 it will!

Jeph’s CD pouches…..

I really thought that 20 C.D. pouches could be made quickly, after all, I had already printed the fabric for them!

But no. He ended up having his Christmas present presented to him in various  stages of completion. Some were totally done. Some had their side closure stitched and were waiting for the sides to be hand stitched. And the rest were sewn and turned right side out, but with the hand stitching still to be done.

The outside is raw silk printed with eucalyptus. The inner cloth is old madras fabric that was purchased over a decade ago (intended as rags for a rug). There is batting between the two layers….. making a nice soft pouch for the C.D.s

Now all he has to do is create the music 🙂

 

Some close ups

 

Did some weaving too, during the pre holiday rush. A scarf for each of the kids. Alas, I didn’t get photos of them before I packed them up and shipped them off. 😦

Lilly did send a couple of photos of her scarf…. on her, and draped around Ellie. Her scarf was inspired Susan’s scarves (aka avalanchelooms) ….. I was showing her photos of Susan’s, and she said that she always liked my old samplers (from 30+ years ago). So I combined the great rose path patterns that Susan uses, with all the odds and ends of Harrisville yarns I had left. It actually turned out to be a bright, happy scarf! We were both pleased with it.

Done in time for Christmas…..

It took me long enough to weave this little lap blanket!! Actually the weaving itself took no time at all. The spinning (not all of the warp is hand spun, but a good portion of it is), the dyeing, the procrastination, the baby, distractions. 😉

Woven double. Remembered to sley the fold side a bit more open…. but should’ve done it more so, there is a dark line running down the middle when I hold it up to the light. It had been a long time since I did any double weave. Only one mistake! A treadling one where I hooked the open side together in one spot…… silly me!

HUGE shrinkage!! The warp was 30 inches wide on the loom (60 open) and the finished width (after weaving and washing) is 50 inches. The length of the blanket went from 84 inches to 72 inches. If there was a hole in the middle, it would make the perfect poncho (size wise)!! A thing to remember when I go to weave a poncho or ruana.

All in all I am very pleased with it!!

Oh…. the yarn was mostly cochineal dyed, with some madder and brazilwood dyed yarns thrown in. The grey and light brown yarns are not dyed.

Eco Print Silk Slip….

Such a nice day I had today!

Two of my children were here for a few days….. Lilly was up from Phoenix (she went home tonight), and Cooper is here from Portland (he flies home on Thursday).

Today we did a mini photo shoot in Oak Creek Canyon of my cochineal dyed shawl and an eco print slip I made for Lilly. It was pleasant to be amongst the greenery and listen to the water burble by. And I snagged a few oak leaves to use at a later time!!

The day had a perfect surprise ending….. as we were driving home from Flagstaff, we saw a wondrous sight! A flock of 2000 sheep being herded from Cortes, Colorado to Williams, Arizona (they were on the last bit of a LONG journey!). We stopped to take photos, of course.

Lilly wished that she could follow along with the flock for the entire trip, documenting it throughout. I said that I would love to join her on such a journey!

I get a ‘gold star’ for procrastination!

I’m very good at dragging my feet when I am starting a project that I’m not excited by…….

Like dish towels. I promised my brother and sister-in-law some for their Christmas present….. and here it is almost March and I’m just getting around to making them. 😦 bad Julie!!

 

When I went into my ‘studio’ to pick out the yarn colors a couple of weeks ago I got distracted by cleaning (a bit)…….. then I started looking at fiber! I started throwing all sorts of different clumps together and thinking….. I’m going to card! I had to put that thought on hold while I decided on which old cotton threads I was going to use.

But after choosing my colors…… my arms gathered up the heap of fiber and I happily plopped down in front of my drum carder….. instead of winding a warp.

Then of course I had to see what it looked like spun up! Then I decided to ply it with some of the hemp yarn I recently bought…… next week I’ll weave it on a hemp warp……. and then eco print it!

 

Oh what? Dish towels!? Dang.

Yesterday I finally said….. thread your loom!! Then proceeded to putz around dyeing some raw silk to make my son-in-law a scarf for his birthday.

Ahhhh Julie…….

 

And The Winner is…..

Laura Mayotte!!!

I put all of the names on card stock labels, folded them over and taped them shut. Then I put them into my old trusty wool felt hat….. and had my partner draw one (yes, I know, it’s an hour and a half until the 20th….. but I really didn’t think that there would be any more names in that time). There ended up being 15 names in the hat! I was very surprised.

So Laura….. send me your address and I will get your new cowl off to you in tomorrow’s mail!

Here’s the link to Laura wearing her new cowl!

And here is a photo of the shawl from last week.

I’m not sure why they are shrinking up so much widthwise…… maybe I’m  rinsing/agitating them too much trying to get all of the residual dye out. I could use synthrapol …… but I am trying to avoid chemicals.  Or it could be the new yarns that I’m using?

P.S. The drawing was fun……. I should do this more frequently!!

“You’re making a windsock?”

…… was what Jeph asked me.

No silly…. it’s a cowl! Just let me turn it right side out. Hummmm….. not too smart! I did make a windsock! So with a little unstitching and refiguring, it is now the cowl it started out to be!!

My machine is still not sewing well (and why would it be? there are no sewing machine fairies fluttering around in the night repairing whacky machines!) So I am not feeling confident in putting this up for sale……

SO, I decided that I haven’t had a ‘give-away’ in a LONG time…… it is now time! If you want to be entered in the give-away just leave a comment to that effect and I’ll toss your name into a hat. The lucky winner will be drawn on February 20th.

And yet again I have over shrunk, instead of merely fulling, a scarf! It went from 16 inches wide to 5 inches wide in the blink of an eye! Ah well….. I had woven it to eco print, so I did that anyway. It’s too dense and thick for a scarf, but I’ll put it to use somehow!

And I’m sort of finishing a vest I started last winter. I wore it to work last week, but the lining is wonky….. maybe I should take the lining out? It’s made from an eco printed old wool blanket (complete with small moth holes). An attempt to make a pattern from a favorite old vest.

Now…. off to clean house  😦

Two Little Scarves

Not feeling very wordy at the moment….. but I can still post photos of the two scarves I wove this ‘weekend’!!

The first one is just a plain weave scarf…… but lush colors and so so soft and warm!

 

And the second one is a collapse weave scarf. Made a few judgement errors on this one. I should’ve spaced the center wool stripe a bit more openly…… it was too tight and took FOREVER to collapse! I lost a lot of color in the extended long hot wash. It was supposed to be called ‘mirage’ with the dark rust giving the blue a hazy unreal feel. But it is instead called ‘unexpected delights’ because I like the way the colors faded and blended together!

And now…. back to tending my eco print scarves in the pot! 🙂

 

First project using some of the yarn I was just dyeing

Handwoven shawl…..

a great melange of blues and greens interspersed by a burst of deep oranges and golden yellow.

 

It’s a good thing this scarf is for a tiny person!

Wanted to try out the new hemp yarn I bought….. and had a birthday present to make for my son’s girlfriend, who doesn’t like the ‘itch’ of wool! Perfect!

So I wove a collapse weave scarf using the hemp as the warp…. with stripes of a merino/silk bordered by a tiny mohair boucle. A shiny bright single ply silk was used as the weft.

The merino/silk shrunk up a lot more than I expected it too…. making the scarf fairly short. But she’s only 5 feet tall, so it should be okay.

If I had it to do over….. I would’ve made the scarf narrower, with only a single collapse stripe and ruffled edges. Will try to remember that for the next one I weave!