Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Woven scarf is done - yay!

The woven scarf is done..Ta Da!

Even though I warped it up on the 20th, the majority of the weaving was done the last couple of days. I'm guesstimating 7 hours of weaving with the overshot technique. I now thoroughly understand how it works..you need a 2nd shuttle doing an alternating tabby after every row of weft so that if there are multiple rows stacked up one after the other, they stay there instead of pulling back out.
Here it is in the sun today pre-block:


Still have to do the hemming, which I wish I'd done while the scarf was still one the loom. I was so excited when the warp hit the back of the heddles, that I just cut the scarf off the loom, and now, I have to do the hemstitching on the end, so I can block it. This might have to wait until I can get a clear picture how to do it to match the nice stitching that Kathy made on the other end of the scarf.
It looks gorgeous - hope I did not beat too close so that the yarn has a chance to plump in the right places. This is one scarf that I wish I'd done blocking of the sample before I continued.

I discovered that I tend to make stupid mistakes like dipping the shuttle down and under threads instead of through the open shed when I'm tired or hungry. yuck. lots of twisting and untwisting going on. I think it took me about 45mins to do each pattern repeat. Since the tie-up was the spaces, I really should have been putting the pattern sheet on my loom upside down so I could see the pattern as I was weaving it in the right direction. Now, I understand why the previous owners numbered the pedals 1 to 4 from right to left, to match the shading of the squares when the pattern is upside down. It actually made it a lot easier to weave from, rather than numbers, since I'm visual, and much easier than trying to put the pattern on a post next to the loom.
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Lots of end of the year sales on yarn..see my Yarn enabler tab for updates.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

weaving in the works..

Trying out the overshot technique now..





This ia a laceweight black 100% Jaggerspun Merino, and the weft is Verdant Gryphon Bugga (Sportweight) in Orchid Inspiration 07 which is a variegated pink. It is weaving up like velvet.
Pattern is from the Miniature Overshot Pattern book by Bertha Hayes.
Really lovely.

Sportweight Cardi Water and Stone has been split at the armholes, and I'm working on the waist decreases/increases now. This to be tried on, as I'm not sure how well it's doing. I'm only knitting on fridays these days.




Monday, December 08, 2014

Christmas is coming...

I have been a busy gal. I've been exploring weaving on a borrowed loom. Mostly yarns from my stash - sportweight and made a couple of scarves. I'm very happy with them. They take a couple of evenings, plus time to wind warp, warp the loom, and finishing, including twisting the fringe (which is quite a thrill).

Halcyon yarn is having a Win your Wishlist contest through Dec. 12th.
Here's mine - mostly weaving yarns and equipment for my new love. Any jeweltones for yarns and laceweight (since I don't have a lot of lacweight knitting yarns).

Of course, I still am slogging away at my old love...Water and Stone Cardi. I unknit and re-knit about 2-3 cable repeats, and ended up dropping ends down and picking them back up in cable pattern to fix the hiccup. Now, I've split for the armholes, and I've knit 1.5" of 3". Pretty much very slow going.

My tree is up and sparkling, and I am also interested to explore a bit of painting over the Christmas holidays..Also, doing some destashing on Ravelry...hope to have a page up here shortly.




black friday

I've updated the sale page with some key sales for Black Friday. I'm not doing a lot of yarn buying these days, so these are the on...