An Ending and a Beginning

I walked in the door this morning, and John Paul waved for me to come over to his loom. Sure enough, he was at the end of his rug warp, and it was time to cut it off.

He took it off the clothbeam and rolled it out. There were 10 rugs on the beam, Patty had woven 2 of them and John Paul had woven 8.

Judith will be taking over the rug loom for awhile, so we talked over what pattern and colors she wanted to work with. Patty suggested the Anderson Rug pattern from Janet Meaney's Rag Rug book. Judith chose 6 colors and with Karin's Iweaveit program on her ipad we set to work plugging in the pattern first then adding the colors. Since I will be warping sectionally I am trying to make it easy on myself. ( I am still working on the pattern at home this afternoon). Once we confirmed the colors we pulled them from the shelf and loaded them on the spool rack, next week we will probably to a 40 yard warp.

The shawl warp that Patty wound a few weeks ago is underway!

Now for Show and Tell, Laura brought in a tool that she has come across, we don't know what it is so I thought I would put it on the blog to see if any of our readers knows.

Carol brought in a project that she had done in a class. The technique is called "Split Shed Weaving". Mark brought in a stack of fun napkins that he has recently finished.

That is it for now, until next week this is Tina, for all

Sheep Shearing Days

Over the last 3 Fridays Karin and I were at the Museum of Appalachia for Sheep Shearing Days. We were joined by our friend Darlene and also Mark and Judith were able to join us for one of the days. One of the pieces of equipment that Karin and I like to have on hand is an ancient drumcarder that lives either at one of our homes or at the Center in our weaving supply anexx. We had a problem with it the first Friday (loose screws) and Karin took it home for her Hubby to take a look at and fix if it could be done.

More on the drum carder later. The first Friday was really rainy and that meant that some of the school busses didn't make the trip and we got a little bit cold and wet. The second Friday they gave us some inside space and some outside space so we could dodge the rain if it got too wet. The last Friday was lovely weather and we were able to explain the process from shearing sheep to finished object. I demonstrated how I wash wool, and some fiber combing and carding as well as spindle spinning. Karin brought her spinning wheel so we were able to show the kids a bit of the progression in the world of yarn making. Mark and Judith demonstrated the craft of weaving for us, it was so nice to have someone do that since that was a job that LouAnn usually did for us.

Now back to the drumcarder. It looked good when Karin put it on the table and we couldn't wait to start adding fiber to it however, something wasn't quite right and it took me a minute to figure out what was going on. Turns out the licker in drum was turned around the wrong way and it wouldn't feed the wool onto the large drum! Karin had a tool kit in her bag, but it didn't have quite the pieces we needed to fix the problem. We finally decided to use our handcards and take the drum carder back to the shop.

We had a wonderfull 3 days teaching and demonstrating the crafts that we love so well to hundreds of students and the adults that came with them. Until Tuesday, this it Tina for the Museum crew

We are Back!

Well, techically I am back, the others never missed a beat! Here is a couple of pictures of the room as I walked in.

I saw that our order of Bamboo yarn had come in and that Kris had cut off her warp before I arrived,and Carol was already at the serger cutting the pieces apart. (Thanks Mark for the Pic!)

Karin was hard at work finishing a narrow band for Barbara to use as button loops, and I happened to catch Liz under a loom!

There was a warp to be put on one of the looms. Marie and Kris took the job in hand and found that there were a couple of warp winding errors. (Dana and Susan got pulled in on the job then) Then they found out that the brake on the loom that we thought we had fixed was not fixed after all! Next week they will be winding this warp from one loom to the another loom. Should be fun!

Speaking of Susan, she is warping her loom with wool for a scarf. She also brought in some hatching eggs. They needed to not be left in the car where they would have gotten too warm.

Patty's pretty shawl warp is almost ready to weave, Shirley is weaving yet another towel and Susan (another Susan, who I called Kris last week!) and Jenny are immersed in the job of dressing the loom.

Joycelyn is weaving her shawl warp and Alice is weaving placemats in Ellen's Pattern.

It is time for Show and Tell! Susan brought in her first towel project, and Shannon brought in a set of bowl cozies she had woven and made for some new friends.

Patty has some towels she wove with a new to her twill pattern and I brought in some rugs that I have woven for LouAnn's family out of one of her dresses and some of the fabric from her stash.

John Paul has made some new stick shuttles for the weaving studio, and Mark brought in a scarf he wove at the Museum of Appalachia during the second of 3 Sheep Shearing Fridays.

Speaking of Sheep Shearing days, watch out on Saturday for a few pictures of our adventures at the Museum over the last 3 Fridays. That is it for today, see you on Saturday! Tina, for all