Cold Day and a Long Warp

Months ago Laura finished the long black warp on the Norwood loom, and it has been waiting for a new warp for ages! Now that the show is over and Thanksgiving is behind us we are going to get busy and do it.

We like to use long warps for our signature "Ellens Pattern" placemats and runners, and for long warps we need looms that have sectional warping racks built in. We usually have a loom with a white warp and one with a black warp, this time we decided to do a navy warp. Dana will be weaving on this warp and she has selected a group of colors that is going to be so cool! The navy is more true on the loom pictures than it is in the box picture. By lunch time we had 5 sections warped with 40 yards, and only 3 more sections to do after lunch. By the time I left at 2:30pm I had threaded the heddles. It is now ready for Dana to sley the reed and tie on next week.

Liz is working on weft strips for placemats. She has taken a length of fabric and made a tube out of it, now she is cutting around and around the tube to make a one long strip of fabric.

Time for Show and Tell! Joanna brought in some placemats she made especially for her oval dining room table.

Marilyn did some keychains using the Krokbrag method on her inkle loom! It is sheeps! I was so focused on the cute little sheep I didn't notice my little sister Amy in the background!

I finished another skein this last week, BFL spun in a fractal manner, low twist single and high twist ply.

That is all for today, until next week, Tina for all!

A Gray Rainy Day in the Studio

We are so glad to have a rainy day! It is a great excuse to be inside doing all the things we like to do of course, but it will also help extinguish some troubling wildfires that have been popping up all over the Southeast this last week! I was late getting to the center today, and when I walked in there were tiny conferences going on all over the place! Patty was talking to Phyllis, Jenny was bringing in tubs from Carols car and they were talking about what we were going to do with all this fabric and stuff, Shannon was talking with Betsy about something, but in all that confusion Diana was working patiently on her table loom.

Carol was then helping Bella with the first steps of putting a warp on the loom, while a new student looks on.

Dana is choosing colors to weave on a Navy warp. (Next week we will get that loom warped using the sectional warping method.)

Patty is working with boucle and eyelash yarn on this shawl warp!

Here is another shot of Shannon and Jenny going through tubs of stuff!

Time for Show and tell! Shannon swears that this is not the same towels she showed and told the last 2 weeks! You know how you learn something new everytime you weave on a new loom? Shannon learned that she just couldn't beat the yarn in well enough on this warp using a rigid heddle.

Jenny brought in the warp that she finished weaving last week and some handspun yarn.

I also had show and tell, this week I finished spinning a fleece! I ended up with 2 lbs of bouncy squishy light worsted yarn from a Finn sheep. I had bought the fleece at Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2018! I bought it because it was so cheap! It was so cheap because it was the filthiest fleece in the whole room! Doesn't scare me!!!! It has been a quest of mine this year to spin thicker softer bouncier yarn, partially because the yarn feels so good but mostly to use up more of the fleeces that I have in my studio more quickly! This is only 2 of the skeins...

that is all for today, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Tina for all!

Lots of Finished Warps (and other things)

Shirley is busy threading a towel project on her loom. I caught sight of the inspiration pictures and I just had to show you!

Shannon is continuing with her red and white towels that were so popular that they sold before the show! She had finished a set last Tuesday afternoon after I left and she is back at it again today!

Joycelyn is working on a shawl, and finding it challenging to keep her concentration in this busy studio!

Linda has finished several towels and was asking me what colors I thought she should use. I asked her what she had used before and she proceeded to unroll what was on her cloth beam so that we could see the colors that she had already used.

Now, on to the warps that are coming to the end. Betsy is on her final beach towel.

Jenny has finished the 14 yard placemat/runner warp I put on ages ago! Thank you Jenny!

After lunch we enjoyed a cake that Patty had brought in to celebrate her Birthday.

Barbara brought in some scarves she had finished on a bamboo warp. One of them she wove with cotton and the other one with bamboo. She was really pleased with how and accidental shifting of the warp threads caused a perfect stripe in the scarf all the way down.

Dana brought in the last towels she will be weaving on a rigid heddle, because she has a floor loom!!!!!

Mark wove a scarf for his son this week, he had put a stripe of a different yarn on the side of this one to make sure it would be wide enough.

Patty put a mixed warp on her loom at home, using up a lot of bobbins in a lot of different colors. She wove a variety of twills and plain weave. It was astonishing what a single warp can be just by changing those two things and then adding in colors. She emptied all of her bobbins!

Shannon rounded out her week by making a backpack with a subtle Winnie the Pooh theme. There is honeycomb fabric and bee fabric and a sweet button of Pooh!

That wraps it up for today, until next week, Tina for all

Wrapping up the Show and Potluck too!

It was a busy day at the Weaving Center today! I got there early because I had all of the show inventory in my car, and the first order of business is checking in the merchendise to make sure that everything that hadn't sold was there, and it was! Yay! We had a pretty good show even though we felt like there wasn't as much public as there has been in years past.

Last week we were supposed to have the pot luck that we normally have on the 5th Tuesday of the month. We decided to do it this week since checking in inventory is a lot quicker than checking out inventory. So here is the spread today.....

Once lunch was finished it was time for show and tell. Peggy brought in a shawl that she wove using a warp that Sharon had wound before she left us early this year.

Peggy also showed us a scarf she had woven from one of our hand dyed scarf kits and the next bowl cozy warp ready to go on a loom.

Charlotte brought in her latest creations, placemats and table mats.

Jenny showed us a couple of small bags she picked up at SAFF this year. She thought it might be something we could think about doing with some of our small pieces of woven fabric.

Patty showed us a couple of different ways to wear a wrap she had bought from our booth at the show. (I had a hard time keeping up!)

Patty had also been busy at her circular sock machine! It looks like a wreath but it is several pairs of socks.

Mark brought it a couple of bookmarks he made this week. He also cut a warp off today!

That's it for this week! We will see you next Tuesday, Tina for all