Taking My Craft Inventory

Last year at a guild meeting one of our members described herself as a "dabbler".  This was immediately met with groans and urging not to use that word.  I am not sure why that is a term of derision but it has been an apt description of me as a crafter.

I started early and have tried a little bit of everything.  I don't know why it is surprising that my crafting habits and tastes change.  My taste in clothes and my hairstyles have certainly evolved.  It is a saving grace that there are no pictures of the disastrous perm of 1981.

I want to direct my focus and pare down my craft stuff.  It isn't productive for me to hang on to all the someday ideas and someday supplies.

Here is what I love..

Cleaning and processing fiber and interacting with fiber animals
Tapestry weaving
Knitting socks
Reading about knitting, spinning and weaving
Spending time with fiber friends

Here is what I enjoy....
Seamless, raglan sweaters knit in the round

Dyeing, especially with natural materials
Rug hooking
Knitting "easy" lace
Making batts

Here is what I want to love but don't...
Floor loom weaving
Sewing
Knitalongs or any competitive or deadline crafting

Little Booboos and Big Lessons

I am working on a small tapestry sampler, loosely following the Joanne Mattera's book Navajo Techniques for Today's Weaver.  This was published in 1975 and has really good diagrams and explanations.  I have actually attempted this twice before.

There were some issues with the color.  I bought some single ply naturally dyed churro. I  thought it would be perfect but the colors were too muted.  Blah.

I tried again with some random yarns from an estate sale of a talented tapestry weaver.  Maybe a little of Martha's magic would be present.

Much better contrast as evidenced by the black and white photo below.  This is a tip learned from Tommye Scanlon.  During the class in Raleigh she had us use our phones to take pictures of yarn we were choosing for tapestry.

Very basic design concepts like value, contrast and hue are not easily understood by me.  This visual helps.

I played with meet and separate, slits, shading, wedge weave and lazy lines.  But wait...

Do you see it?  As I built the areas up separately for eccentric weft I lost track of my "overs and unders".  The two adjacent warp threads in the aqua and purple are going through the same shed.

No worries this is a play learning warp and I am going to keep playing and learning.

Tapestry, Ikat and Inspiration

The three day tapestry workshop is over, so thankful to have had this opportunity to learn from Tommye.  Today, at lunch this was the state of my tapestry.

I learned so much.  One of the problems with telling yourself you have no drawing or artistic ability at a very early age is you are never exposed to basic concepts.  Tommye took us through basics on color and how to judge light, medium and dark values.   She also covered basic design elements and principles.  Tommye does a tapestry diary every year.  Below is 2015.

It is hard to see the beauty of this in a photo.  Tommye is inspired by the things in her landscape in Georgia, black walnuts, pecans, gingko leaves and many more.

This is Mary Kirchner.  She was the class organizer and assistant.  Mary is also a  talented   artist weaver with a studio in Artspace.  Below are some shots of her  work.

Mary specializes in ikat.



Mary's ikat board with dyeing work in progress.  The yellow you see is a section of yarn taped off so it will not absorb any dye.

The yarns are dyed and numbered to be woven in a sequence to achieve outstanding and dramatic results.

Mt Holly Farmer's Market

The Piedmont Fiber Guild did a demonstration at the Mt. Holly farmer's market today.  It was a beautiful day to be outside spinning and talking fiber.

Good Morning!  Unfortunately this involved getting up and out early on a Saturday but it was worth it!

 

 

Our creative space for the morning.

 

We had weaving, spinning, knitting and wool prep demonstrations.  Sallie got some youngsters spinning on her wheel and Maurice had quite a lot of interest in his loom.



Spinning on my Jacob fleece.

Working on a tartan.

This evening I warped my Mirrix tapestry loom for my online class with Rebecca Metzoff.

MDSW-Sheep to Shawl

Two of my guild members participated in the sheep to shawl contest.  Their team, Spin City won last year at Rhinebeck.  The competition involves shearing a sheep, carding and spinning the wool and weaving a shawl in the allotted time.  I was lucky enough to tag along Friday during some of the preparation -choosing the sheep and shearing a sheep for practice.


The Fearless Spin City team.

John and the team examine the two sheep he brought to determine which fleece is best for the competition.  These beautiful sheep are from John and Kate's farm, Reflections at Roclans.

A lot of preparation and practice are involved in this competition, not only for the spinners and weavers but also for the shearers.  Geof of Ruppert's Corriedales and John prepare to shear the practice sheep.  Geof shared that he believes the sheep to shawl competition is the most important part of the festival as it brings all the parts together - the shepherds, the sheep, the spinners, the weavers and the final product.

The sheep was surprisingly docile during the shearing and it was a quick process, just several minutes.  Below the 3.3 lb. fleece is examined by Lynn and John.

 

 

 The Spin City team's theme was The Wizard of Oz.  The costumes were great and the decorations included a yellow brick road, munchkins and the wicked witch's broom and ruby slippers.  The crowd was delighted with this team's theme and creativity.

 

Christina and Dawn holding the completed shawl.  Sadly they did not win the competition but their shawl was the most prized.  The shawls are auctioned off after the competition and the Spin City shawl got the highest price at $1475.00.

 

Gold Rush Scarf

Just finished this scarf.  After the ginormous fail of the dish towels, I warped the loom for a simple scarf based on the draft we did in my weaving class last year.  I used a rayon boucle and one skein of Berroco Captiva for the accent.  I am really pleased with this and have already warped for a second scarf in an eggshell rayon with orange accent.

Misadventures in Weaving

The weaving adventure continues but think of all the wonderful lessons I am learning. I began weaving the Broken Top Twill Towels from Weaver's Craft Issue 22. As shown above after a couple of inches an error became obvious, at least to eagle eyed husband. I was enthralled to see the pattern emerge and missed this irregularity. After some close observation, we determined there was a threading error. See the diagram above in the last picture. I isolated the problem threads with the blue contrasting thread. Tomorrow I will cut off the small amount of weaving done and rethread the last couple of dozen heddles. Persistence is a virtue. I read that somewhere.

Warped Sunday

I started the year with the best of weaving intentions and then promptly encountered the warp from HELL! 280 ends of 8/2 cotton which I wound into a 7 yard warp. I sleyed the reed and heddles were threaded without incident. Then when I tried to wind the warp onto the beam, I heard pop, pop, pop as threads broke. I fixed about ten broken threads and then walked away. Every time I attempted to fix this warp I ended up making it worse. Dear hubbo got sick of hearing me say I needed to straighten this out and helped me do it today. Lessons learned: next time a shorter warp, thicker thread until my warping improves and do not think you can move the tangles to the front of the loom towards the chain. This way leads to madness. So now the Broken Top Twill towels are under way!

Bye Bye 2011

Wow, it has been a long blog silence. 2011 is gone. There were some challenges and difficult choices at work and at home in November and December but we powered through! The holidays were lovely and relaxed. The pics above were taken on the Outer Banks on New Year's Eve. Reed and I decided to end the year in this most beautiful of places! A re-cap of completed projects from 2011, I knit six pairs of socks, three pairs of fingerless mitts, one baby ensemble, one sweater, one tea cozy, five spa cloths,and two hats and I wove six scarves, five tea towels, one table runner and one bag insert.

Smashing Pumpkins

What I am knitting: The sweater is a simple top down raglan. I finally realized that I do not have the bandwidth to knit lace right now and am a little tired of socks. This sweater is definitely mindless. The yarn is Rowan Purelife, an organic naturally dyed wool. This yarn is from stash, from a Ravelry swap. Tried the sweater on the Duchess to check fit. My gauge is 22 stitches instead of the 18 per four inches called for in the pattern. Following directions for the 44 and hoping to get the 42. I am going to use the ribbon for the back of the button band. What I am weaving: Working on tying on a new warp for more tea towels. Only 442 ends to measure, cut and tie on! What I am reading: I love mysteries, especially those written by women. I realized recently that I had never read anything by Agatha Christie. I am about half way through "Murder on the Orient Express".

A long hot summer

There has been knitting and weaving. This summer has seemed interminable, partly becasue of the heat and partly because of a crazy workload! Some finished projects have been the bright spot. I continue to craft for Christmas 2011.

Ahh Spring

There has been knitting, weaving, gardening and fun! We had a great time at Grayson Highlands. Rachel rented a house for Easter weekend for the family as our Christmas present. The house was gorgeous with big porches that overlooked a rushing stream. A little hiking yielded a wonderful encounter with wild ponies (pics next post)and of course we were spoiled by the awesome food prepared by the "chillins'. I am so enjoying weaving. As a matter of fact I am going to go weave right now!

Getting warped

I purchased a Kromski Harp 16 inch rigid heddle loom and immediately warped it up and got started. What a great little loom, easy to put together and use! My first wovwn object was anything other than stellar - wonky selvedges on both sides. I refused to toss it though as it was my first. Note the beach bag with a thin woven strip. I used Malabrigo Silky merino from deep stash as warp and weft.