Monday, January 6, 2014

Baby, it's cold out there!!

 
It really is cold out there, at least for us. It's just an hour or so before noon and the temperature is below 20 degrees and going down. The wind is kicking up and that wind chill will be wicked!! People here in the south aren't used to this kind of weather. The roads are covered in black ice but there's not that much snow on the ground. We got about an inch and a half but that's all. It's the rain that came beforehand that froze plus the cold, cold wind that's going to get us!
So the Tuesday Weavers won't be weaving tomorrow at the center. We'll be home, weaving on our own looms!! The Christmas party will just be postponed an extra week. Anticipation!!
 
I talked to my family last night in Moose Jaw. If we think we're cold....their wind chill when I talked to them was minus 52. Might be celsius but at those low temperatures there isn't a difference. It's very cold!! Hopefully they will warm up like we do about Wednesday!
 
The rugs are off the loom. The ends have been serged but I haven't had time to pin and hem them yet. Later this week that'll happen and then some of them will go to the Art Market Gallery for sale. The first 3 with the brown, green and gold fabric weft will be put aside to go to Canada to my sister's friend. She'll get her pick and help decide what to do with the rest.
 
 
 All three are slightly different. The first one I wove using bands of fabric just under 2 inches wide. Remember the strips were all 108 inches long, so that made a big difference in how it went together.
 The last 2 rugs had fabric widths of 3 inches. Worked nicely too!  I wove 2 strands of carpet warp for the weft on the hems. Sometimes I wove a solid brown, sometimes gold and brown and I know there are a couple with green and brown. Blending yarns is kind of fun. Seeing how they turn out looking through the camera lens is always interesting.
 I'd planned about 7 rugs on this warp. The last 4 were woven using selvedges I'd gotten. These make for heavy rugs but they are nice and plush!
 It's interesting to see how the colors work together. I wanted to use a bunch of small balls of selvedges I had, making them work across the rug. I'm hoping for someone who likes eclectic things to buy this one!!
 I have a couple of bags of fairly thick selvedges. Green and natural. I wove 2 rugs with these but the bags are still as full as ever. Doesn't look like I took anything out of them!
 The natural with green rug is a bit shorter than the others.
I'd love to just wind another warp for rugs and keep going but I have an order for curtains. I'm replacing curtains that I wove about 18 years ago. They've been up at the lodge all this time but now need replacing. We're tweaking it a bit, adding about 5 inches to the length to give them more room to shrink over the years when they wash them.
Today I'll get the warp wound and on the loom. Hopefully threaded too.
So you know what I'll be doing tomorrow instead of weaving at Norris. I'll be weaving at home! I have 10 windows to do, 20 panels. The goal is to get them woven in the next 2 weeks. We'll see how far I get!! After that will be all the handwork, measuring and stitching the casings for hanging them up on the rods.
Until next week, stay warm and keep weaving!!
Carol

1 comment:

LA said...

Rugs are so much fun to weave...and a great stress reducer. Please take pictures of the curtains on the loom. What pattern will you use?