Daryl and Dust Bunnies!

Last month while Carol was in Canada, she got the call that they wanted her to pick up Daryl Lancaster at the airport when she flies in for the Southeast Fiber Forum.  Of course she said yes!  She then promptly emailed all of us about having lunch together, before they hurried off to the Forum.  There were only 4 of us that could make it.

Here we are just after the plates arrived.  It is almost exactly the same photo from yesterday, just taken with a different camera.

The conversation went from one end of the spectrum to the other.  My favorite part was when Linda asked Daryl how many looms she had.  Daryl started in, " Let's see I have the 4 Tools of the Trade floor looms, and one that is a table loom.  Then there are all the table looms for the classes I do, then I have this many inkle looms,.......actually" she said finally, "I don't really know how many looms I have."  ( think she wins!)

After a wonderful lunch and a fond farewell, I had a quick trip with the other 3 girls to an antique dealer that just happened to be on the way home.  I had been there earlier in the day while I was waiting for them to come to the rondevouz.  I had seen a Great Wheel in the back room and just had to have another look.  They all agreed she was beautiful!

Back home again, I decided to tackle the 100 yd white warp that  has a real mess in the middle.  I have anchored both ends on each side of the tangle so that it won't travel any more.  One end on the rocking chair so that I can seperate them as the tangle gets worked free.   The other end is on the Glimakra. 

 

What a mess!  If I ever do get it worked out, this warp will have a big red ribbon on it to remind me to use it at my own risk.  I have considered just cutting it off, but the tangle is, of course in the middle, and I would be wasting so much yarn!  If I can figure out a way to use the the part without a cross I just might do it. 

The part that is on  the cross side is only about a 20 yds. so that means that the bulk of it is on the part that wouldn't have a cross.  Hmm, I will be thinking about that.  Any ideas?

Somehow the neat and tidy parts are so restful , almost cool to the touch.  The tangles however, are angry and resist my gentle loosening of their knots.  I work on a section in the middle of the mess, and as it loosens it goes slack, and I see the next knot easily because it rises to the top.  When the mess is almost to the floor, I scoot the chair over a bit to raise it up again.  When the chair is over as far as I can scoot it, I begin to work closer to the chained end.  As each section calms down and falls into place I will add it to the chain, and start all over again.

If I need to I can easily put it all away in the tub, chain on the bottom, mess in the middle on a piece of cardboard and the rest of the warp in it's bag sits on top.  You should have seen the dust bunnies I vacuumed up this morning from it.  It was almost bunny sized!

That is all for now, I will be up in the studio this afternoon, my goal for today is to finish the second Baby Blanket in Sage that  I started on Wednesday, using the Kings Flower pattern,  and maybe start the third blanket in the same color, but  switch over to the other loom that has the Cat Tracks and Snail Trails pattern.  Once I have done 2 of each pattern in Sage, I believe I will do it again, but use one of the yellows that I have.  I have got to get some inventory!

Until next time, Happy Weaving, Tina

What a fun day!

Whew, I am getting a late start on my blog today! This was such a fun day. Some of the Tuesday Weavers and I had lunch with Daryl Lancaster! Daryl was on her way to the Southeast Fiber Forum. http://sefiberforum.org/  Carol picked her up at the airport while LouAnn, Bonnie, Tina and I drove to the restaurant to wait on their arrival. Can you just imagine the conversations we had? Six weavers at the same table! We found plenty to talk about and the time went so quickly. I will leave some for the other bloggers to talk about while I tell you what else happened today.

I cut four rugs off the loom. These are the two shaggy ones.

These are the two wool ones. I should have taken the picture outside so  you could see the real color of the wool rugs. One is green and the other green and white alternating shots.

There are other things I did today like go to an antique shop, grocery store and do farm chores. Somehow my day went so quickly. But what a wonderful memory I will have of our lunch! I can't think of a better way to spend some time than to be with fellow weavers!



Linda

Weave a Little, Plow a Lot

  First, thanks to Carol for switching days with me!  Mondays at work are currently 5 a.m. until the bread's all done, and I keep falling asleep without blogging.  I feel guilty on Tuesday but by then, it's too late to do anything else.

  I started this morning before dawn broke, rethreading the baby blanket warp.  The plan for the second baby blanket has changed since the recipient's father quit, and left his last day without saying goodbye to any of us!  After seeing how lovely the drape is on the first baby blanket, the second might very well morph into a lovely shawl for the weaver.  The green clip indicates one repeat of the pattern.  Since then, I've finished another repeat, and while it's going quickly, thanks to my ipod, I have a long way to go.  Remember, it's 708 threads!

  Once the sun was up, I mowed.  This past fall, I planted rye grass and crimson clover in the future vegetable garden space, and today, I mowed it.  I started to plow it, but the vibration was a little too much for my forearms.  I only got about 1/3 the way through before I had to stop.  I thought it might be easier to plow the flower bed, and it certainly was.  Bella and I had to take a few ball-throwing breaks, just to keep it interesting.

On Sunday, I managed to leave work early enough to enjoy brunch with Mom, and to visit one of our favorite nurseries, Stanley's.  She got her Mother's Day Dogwood early, and I found a bargain on a Jane Magnolia, only $25!  Here it is, planted and watered this afternoon.  Mom's Dogwood goes in the ground tomorrow, along with her peony from our last nursery visit.  

I leave you with a very "arty" photo of the bleeding heart in the front yard.  Squint.  Can you see it now?
Happy weaving, gardening and enjoying this beautiful spring!
Maggie

A Busy Hive of Activity!

I walked into a hive of activity today!  Nada's new loom came, and she and Carol (and other great helpers) were busy putting it together.  Carol got one just like this one to use at the Midwest Conference.  They are going to have so much fun!!!

Ms. Jane was back with us today, and she was hard at work at her loom. Ms. Bonnie, Ms. Ila and Ms. Trudy were at their looms, too.   Lots to catch up on while you weave..............

And, look at all the hard work going on at the back of the room!  Carl finished another small tote today, and Bonnie wove the handles in on her large tote.  Ann, Lanny and Pat were just weaving away on their projects.  I got another 15 inches woven on my scarf warp.

Ms. Pat did me a huge favor and wound a warp for me with 5 threads for my next small tote warp.  I get terrible twist in my threads when I try to do more than two!!!  She makes it look so easy!  Pat just had a birthday yesterday, so a big Happy Birthday to her!

Spring is coming to East Tennessee...we worker bees are busy weaving!

Happy Weaving!
LouAnn

Change and Anticipation!

First of all, changes.  Maggie's job changed a month or so ago and she found that writing on Monday just didn't work for her any longer. She asked if she could change to either Wednesday or Thursday. Well, I've been Wednesday since I was switched from Sunday months ago. Monday would work even better for me, so I was glad for the switch. So, starting today I'm Monday and Maggie is Wednesday. Change is good. Keeps you on your toes and hopefully I'll remember to post each Monday!!

What's on the loom right now? I have a peach, lemon and jade combination. It's kind of unusual but I like it. I try to see what I can work out colorwise that is a bit different and still works. This will be a jacket, couple of tops and 3 vests. Finding buttons for them from my stash will be fun. That's another interesting time. Finding buttons. I recently put buttons on my pink pieces that I"d woven. I found that all the pink ones I had were wrong, too shrimp, too something. I had added a very pale pink yarn to the warp and because of that, white worked the best. I hadn't expected to use white but the vests look nice this way and I used some interesting white buttons that I had.

On the peach, I may have peach ones that work but I can also use  any jade buttons as well if they're a bit softer color since the jade blends with the peach in the middle of the warp. I've just begun to weave this warp so I hope to have it woven by Wednesday evening. Tomorrow is Tuesday, you know!

 I did wind a warp for my other nilus leclerc that I named Thelma after the lady that owned it before me. However, it's not on there yet. Still on the warping board! I have a mental block with this loom. It's got a sectional beam on it and I'm vascillating between removing the sectional part and adding an apron or just tieing the warp on the cords that are there or should I add some mental rods and pretend there's an apron on it by joining the rod to the beam with cords?? So I've been kind of frozen with that loom. However, the warp is wound and has to go somewhere because once the peach warp is done I have to wind another one for the Nilus.... The  warp I wound is for placemats and I will be using some of that stash we got from the mountains last week. I did come home with the back of my van covered in rolls of the strips of fabric!!! Found homes for all of them in the house too!

Anticipation is for this weekend. I leave Thursday for the Southeastern Fiber Forum Association conference at Arrowmont. I am taking Catherine Ellis's class on Woven Shibori. I am soooo excited!! My wolf pup is almost threaded. We had a choice of about 6 threadings for our loom. I looked at all of them and wimped out and did the monks belt one. The reason? Most of the others had a ton of thread on one harness and I would have had to shift a ton of heddles to do it. As it was, I thought I would be short and added 25 heddles to each harness. I didn't want to shift around heddles and then have to change them back for the next warp. This threading had equal numbers of heddles per harness!
This is just a workshop, learning the process. When I add this to my production pieces, I will add heddles as needed but for just a workshop I thought this was easier and I know I'm going to learn a lot!!

If you're in the Gatlinburg area on Saturday, come to Arrowmont. The vendors are open to the public that day and they promise to have lots of goodies to choose from!  I am sure some of it will come home to my place!
Another reason I'm excited about this conference is because there are at least half of dozen of us older weavers attending. By older I mean, having woven for a long time, used to go to conferences together or have been around the weaving world for ages. Some of them I haven't seen in quite awhile so it's going to be good to rejuvenate, see what's new and catch up on life!
I will do my best to take pictures of the process. I am not the best photographer. I forget to take pictures. That's why there aren't many in my blog. I'm not like my Dad who used to take pictures all the time we were on holiday. I used to think it was a huge distance between Jasper and Banff in the Canadian Rockies because it took 2 days for us to get there, stopping at every lookout spot and between for pictures. It's only when DH and I drove it years later that I realized you can do it in just a couple of hours!!!
So, I am heading back to finish threading my pup and getting things together for the class.
Until next Monday!!
Carol

Totes and Taxes

  All that worrying for nothing!!!!  The tea mugs that the pottery department made went beautifully with Carl's totes at the Center.  And our "Tea Party in a Tote" went together like a dream.  Isn't it wonderful how the different departments work so well together!  Now, I've got a head start on my tote inventory, and plans are swirling in my head for the next warp.

With this mixed blue warp, I tried some different prints as the weft, and I really liked the way the small flower print worked up.  Although I like the plain blue fabric, the finished tote doesn't excite me the way the print fabrics do.

I really like the way the plaid plays with the warp!  I have a bag of plaid bias balls in my stash, and I tried the light blue first.  This tote had a nice, crisp look when it was finished.  On the loom now is a Stewart plaid, which is really exciting.  I basted some mop cord in the handles for braiding, and that gave them just the right amount of weight for a sturdy handle.  So far, I've gotten five small totes from this five yard warp.  There's a little more left on the warp beam, so I've got to decide if I should go for #6 or weave some fabric.  It might be nice to add some pockets.....one for a cell phone and another inside for those "little bits" that we all carry around.  Like I said, I've got some ideas dancing around in my head for some future projects.
  But, April has now arrived, and that means TAXES.  The dreaded T word!  I'm supposed to be working on that ..... and I have the big part done.  It's the pesky little things like mileage and donations made during the year that I still need to pull together.  Hopefully, I can get all of this to the accountant next week, and be all DONE.  I'll even be ahead of the deadline!  Yeah!
 

Happy April Weaving!
LouAnn

What is keeping me busy!

This last week has been quite busy.  I have skeined off a lot of the cotton warp to pretreat it with salt water. all of the reds, coppers and several of the blues are done.  I have them hanging to dry in the bathtub.  I had some trouble with the copper still needing extra rinsing til the water ran clear.  It makes me want to rinse the others just to make sure that I didn't miss it in my hast to get them dry.

I also finished the Tulip Baby Blanket that I had already listed on the Etsy shop, and got it ready to ship when it sells.(Whew! I won't do that again!)  I also finished the Aqua Green Baby Blanket, and the two toned expirement you can see in one of the pictures posted last Tuesday, and below.  I was telling the girls that I liked part of the blanket but not others.  I like where I used two strands of the different colors, but I don't like the color progression throughout the blanket.  The colors are not as close as they appeared to be at first.  Plus I did not do a good job getting the sections the same size.   I think you can enlarge the picture to see what I mean.

Two toned blanket left and one color Aqua green right.


The Blanket to the right is one of the items we are sending to the Foothills craft guild so that the Tuesday Weavers can jury in.  We would like to participate as a group in there show this year.  Once I get it back it will go up in my shop.

I have also been plugging away this week on my Husbands sweater.  This is my third try to make him one.   The first one was beautiful, but way too big, so we just gave it to a friend.  The second try I used my handspun, and the sweater turned out too small. (It almost fit me!)    I am hoping that the third time it will be just right.  I am trying my best to follow directions!  I have the sleeves done and I have just finished the back and have started the fronts.  I hope to finish before the weather really warms up.

Along with all of that I have been learning about how to make my online shop attractive, informative and how to get people to look at my pieces.   There is a  Sellers Handbook section, that is really informative.  I have worked thru several articles, from the how to present your items, to how to invoice and ship your item.  

My daughter, Graphic designer, made a banner for me to put up across the top.  It really looks good!  I am using it as a banner on my blog too!  My other daughter is helping with the photos.  It is coming together and it really is fun!


Next week it will be back to weaving Baby Blankets for the shop, and then a few as gifts.  I also have a few crazy ideas floating around in my brain that involves a fleece that I partially felted last year,(by accident) and cotton warp.  It may be awhile before I can have anything to show for it, but I will be working on that too.

Until next time, Happy Weaving, Tina