Marnie, speak! Good girl.

Know what I've been doing? Weaving! This isn't my first time weaving. I attended a Waldorf school for my freshman year of high school. That was around 20 years ago, which makes me feel a little bit old. I absolutely loved weaving but we had a limit to how many projects we could do so as not to exhaust the supply of yarn.

To be honest, we don't really have the space for it, but I decided to add the stand to my wish list and if I got it, I'd treat myself to the loom. Thanks to my dad I'm now officially a weaver again.

What you see there is a 32" Ashford Rigid Heddle Loom and stand.

It comes unfinished, so Friday and Saturday, I oiled all the parts and assembled them. After that, I grabbed some lightweight cotton yarn I had on cones. It is really a bit too thin for the reed that came with the loom, but I wanted some relatively inexpensive fiber to work with to get my feet wet.

I didn't do a terribly good job warping this so my warp tension was all crazy. It makes it a little bit harder to get the shuttle through but I managed.

My selvage wasn't much better than my warp, but I was able to get a somewhat even tension in the middle.

The final product is an over-sized washcloth or a very small table cloth, or...something. Who cares, I wove it and that's good enough for me.

It's my birthday and I decided, at the last moment, to take the day off and be, you know, crafty and such. Try to contain your shock.

The first thing I did, after kissing Leo goodbye, was to warp my heddle loom with two shades of Kauni. I think the gradual color shifts will make for an interesting final piece. Both shades are monochromatic so it'll be subtle.

I managed to warp the loom in less than an hour, which isn't bad, considering how fast it goes after that. I've spent longer working a tubular cast on for a sweater.

I've also been spinning some more of the Cormo I picked up a little while ago.

I love this stuff. I used a long draw method to spin the singles and then plied the singles into a 3-ply. The final yarn is about a worsted weight and very sproingy and soft. I have just under 300 yards and quite a bit more roving to spin. It's going to have to be something with cables, I think.

I hope my birthday is as fun for all of you as it's already been for me.

Weaving this scarf was addicting. I literally dreamed about finishing it for the 4 days it was on the loom.

1. Blue and brown scarf , 2. Blue and brown scarf , 3. Close up of blue and brown scarf, 4. Blue and brown scarf
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

I'm still getting a hang of the selvages which are really all over the place in this piece, but I think that will improve with more practice, which I'm happy to do.

I'm not sure that Kauni is a great warp yarn. There were a couple of times when the warp seemed near breaking and one time when a part of the warp was actually drifting apart where the manufacturer had made a join, but it's such grabby wool that I was able to loosen the tension and just felt it back together. Honestly, even if I knew then that this wasn't a great warp yarn, I'd still use it because I love the way the colors work up.

Project Specs

• Yarn: Kauni, two separate colorways; one blue, the other brown
• Length: about 72" (not counting fringe)
• Width: 11.5"
• Loom: Rigid Heddle (Ashford)
• Dents Per Inch: 7.5
• Weight: 114 grams

I'm looking forward to my next project, whatever that may be.

1. Purple and Gray Plaid Scarf, 2. Purple and Gray Plaid Scarf, 3. Purple and Gray Plaid Scarf, 4. Purple and Gray Plaid Scarf
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

I couldn't go to bed, last night, until I finished this scarf and I'm glad I did. These photos are pre-washed. It's now drying so I can use it tomorrow for school, if it's cold enough.

One of the nicest thing about the loom is that I can stash bust. This yarn has been languishing for years, waiting for a good project, but I didn't really have enough yardage to do anything interesting with it. Go loom!

Project Specs

• Loom: Ashford Rigid Heddle
• Yarn: Classic Elite Yarns Inca Alpaca in colors 1182 and 1103
• Width: 8.5"
• Length: 87" plus 6" of fringe on each end.
• Weight: 166 grams / 5.9 ounces

I definitely haven't mastered getting an even selvage, and my warp tension is still a little uneven, but the yarn is very forgiving, so it's not too obvious. Next project will be a scarf for Leo.

And for my less crafty friends out there, here are some silly videos of my girls being awesome, inspired by videos that Mary-Heather and Mai have posted in their respective flickr accounts.

Do try to ignore the trunk junk and wrinkly jammies.

WEBS is evil. You think you'll buy yourself a little bit of inexpensive warp and then you realize that if you just buy a wee bit more of this and a little of that, and heck, you could use another shuttle, you'll get that discount, and well, then, you are cleaning out the ol' paypal account. Curses!

So I have a a few projects in mind. First up, a burgundy scarf worked in a strand of cotton warp and a strand of shimmery tencel. The colors are just different enough to give a lovely depth to the fabric.

Unfortunately, I didn't plan my project well and used up three quarters of my supply of cotton on the warp.

That wee little bit is all I have left of the cotton, plus some on the shuttle. The white is just there so you can see how much I used. I have oodles of the tencel, so no worries there. It should be an easy enough fix. Just order more, but (*sob*) it's on backorder. I'll just have to nurse what I have, until it arrives.

On an entirely unrelated note, we got hail here, the other day.

The pups think it's fantastic, and I love listening to it ping off the corrugated roof of the overhang outside my office window.

As much as I love wearing scarves I really don't enjoy knitting them, but throw me in front of a loom and I can't stop myself.

My third scarf is a simple pattern: just a strand each of tencel and cotton in similar colors.

1. Simple Purple Scarf, 2. Simple Purple Scarf detail, 3. Simple Purple Scarf, 4. Simple Purple Scarf
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

The colors both catch the light slightly differently giving it just a little bit of depth and texture. And since there's no wool, it's a great all seasons wrap or scarf. I can see keeping this in my beach bag and throwing it over my shoulders once the sun sets.

Project Specs

• Width: 13"
• Length: 72" not counting fringe
• Yarns: 1 spool of Maysville 8/4 Cotton Carpet Warp in Velvet (84) and less than half a cone of Valley Yarns 8/2 Tencel in Eggplant
• Reed dpi: 10
• Weight: 216 grams

As always, my quality control inspector was never far.

I got Leo's scarf all warped up. I haven't spent as much time weaving as I'd like to, but when I do, it's completely entrancing.

So far, I've been kinda winging it with my weaving projects, but since this is for someone else, I wanted to carefully plan what I did. I had two possible accent colors; red and blue. The blue was fine but both Leo and I liked the red better. So I went through three stages of plotting the pattern, shown below. I did this all in Illustrator. The first shows a very small scale plaid, which would be fine but I have found that stripes that are less than 4 rows long don't look as nice because you have to weave in the ends and they take up as much extra space as the rows themselves. So the second version shows the same plaid but with all the rows doubled. The last version has the plaid slightly modified and offset so the center stripe is the accent color. You can click each of the swatches to embiggen.

As much as I like the plaid, I might make a version for me that's thinner and has just the vertical stripes. I think that'd look pretty nifty, and I'll have plenty of the yarn left over.

The dynamics of working a weaving project is pretty different than knitting. With knitting, if I get a little bored with a project, it can go into a black hole of solitude, never to be seen again (or at least until the yarn or needles are required for something else.) But with weaving, I can't start my next project until I finish the one on the loom, which means that my constant startitis is handily defeated. It's not that weaving isn't fun it's that I have a dozen different ideas I want to execute and I can't do them all at once so I have to do crazy things like prioritize and time manage. Whoda thunkit?

I'm awaiting yarn for a publication piece so in the interim, my knitting time has been spent on some brown lace

I don't yet know if this will be submitted somewhere or self published so I'm just showing this little teaser for now. Notice the lifeline running through. Lifelines are like car insurance, damn inconvenient when everything is going fine and totally worth it when you actually need it. Ask me how I know.

Also, I think this blog needs some dog

For some reason, they'd much much rather lie on our bed than on their own.

The Leo scarf is done. I cut it off the loom yesterday after work, and sneaked in all the finishing when Leo wasn't looking. A quick wash and cycle through the drier and it went from firm and crisp to soft and light.

1. Folded, 2. Around the neck, 3. Extra warm like this, 4. Rippled
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

I am really happy with the results though the selvages are still a little rough in places. It's getting easier and easier to keep them even which makes the process more fun.

I love this yarn, by the way. It's very easy to weave, comes in oodles of colors and is clearly very colorfast. The red didn't smudge at all even though I soaked it in the hottest water my tap could produce, before I sent it through the dryer. It's quite firm off the spool but it really softens up after washing. Leo's pretty picky about softness and it completely passed inspection.

I lost some size in the drying process (which I expected, it's cotton, after all) but it also made the fabric much more cohesive looking, filling in all the gaps between threads and evening out a lot of little inconsistencies. All in all, I think this is a very practical piece and since it requires less than one spool of each color, it's also a very affordable piece.

Project Specs

• Yarn: Maysville 8/4 Cotton Warp in (percentage of total scarf in each color listed):
  • Linen: 44%
  • 8dk Brown: 32%
  • Ecru: 15%
  • Cardinal: 11%
• Weight: 6.5 oz / 184 g
• Design: My own
• Width: 13" / 33 cm (after washing)
• Fringe: 7.5" / 19 cm (after washing)
• Length: 65" / 165 cm (after fringe)
• Loom: Ashford 32" rigid heddle loom
• DPI: 10

I want to use some black white and either pink or orange linen yarn that I have and weave up a bit of lovely plaid, but I can't decide what permutation I like.

I asked around on twitter/facebook and got a different answer from everyone who replied. Ha! The only thing left to try is a poll. Help me be decisive, my loom is calling to me.

Thanks to all of you who voted on my plaids. The winner was B by a small margin, but I wanted just a wee bit more pink so I went with C.

See?

I plan on combining this with some knitting and I hope it ends up working out. I'm used to combining knit and crochet gauges or different knit stitches together, but weaving and knitting is a whole nother ball of wax.

I'm also working on a possible self publish knitting project. I frogged Freudian stitch. I couldn't get past it's crotchiness. I went with something a little less reproductive. It's now something that doesn't make me laugh like a 6 year old telling potty jokes, every time I see it. Always a plus.

The weaving/knitting combo is coming together and I like it. The woven part has been washed and dried and I washed and dried a knitting swatch to determine my final gauge, so don't be alarmed by how open and baggy the knitted portion looks right now. That should firm up and better match the woven portion.

Also, the plaid needs a good pressing.

Tomorrow, I head off to Maine for the Fiber Frolic where I plan to treat myself to a bit of gorgeous fiber and maybe even another spindle. Oh and, of course, I'll get to see my parents too, which is always a treat.

I won't be taking my laptop along, which is a first for me. It seems like it'll increase my chances of relaxation. Hopefully, I'll come back with a bunch of pretty pictures to share.

A crisp cool linen skirt. What could be nicer on a hot day?

This will definitely need a slip or underskirt, since it's a bit sheer, but that seems fine to me. I think I'll pair them with my black Doc Martin mary janes.

All in all, a fun little project that was a good mindless knit. I love how the linen softens and tightens up when washed and dried. Except for the bit of ironing it will require, it should be a sturdy and low maintenance piece. On that note, does anyone have a visceral response to putting their knits in the dryer? I'm so used to hand washing and drying. Even knowing that linen loves to be washed and dried, didn't keep me from feeling a little dread when I put her in the dragon's maw.

Weaving this scarf was addicting. I literally dreamed about finishing it for the 4 days it was on the loom.

1. Blue and brown scarf , 2. Blue and brown scarf , 3. Close up of blue and brown scarf, 4. Blue and brown scarf
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

I'm still getting a hang of the selvages which are really all over the place in this piece, but I think that will improve with more practice, which I'm happy to do.

I'm not sure that Kauni is a great warp yarn. There were a couple of times when the warp seemed near breaking and one time when a part of the warp was actually drifting apart where the manufacturer had made a join, but it's such grabby wool that I was able to loosen the tension and just felt it back together. Honestly, even if I knew then that this wasn't a great warp yarn, I'd still use it because I love the way the colors work up.

Project Specs

• Yarn: Kauni, two separate colorways; one blue, the other brown
• Length: about 72" (not counting fringe)
• Width: 11.5"
• Loom: Rigid Heddle (Ashford)
• Dents Per Inch: 7.5
• Weight: 114 grams

I'm looking forward to my next project, whatever that may be.

It's my birthday and I decided, at the last moment, to take the day off and be, you know, crafty and such. Try to contain your shock.

The first thing I did, after kissing Leo goodbye, was to warp my heddle loom with two shades of Kauni. I think the gradual color shifts will make for an interesting final piece. Both shades are monochromatic so it'll be subtle.

I managed to warp the loom in less than an hour, which isn't bad, considering how fast it goes after that. I've spent longer working a tubular cast on for a sweater.

I've also been spinning some more of the Cormo I picked up a little while ago.

I love this stuff. I used a long draw method to spin the singles and then plied the singles into a 3-ply. The final yarn is about a worsted weight and very sproingy and soft. I have just under 300 yards and quite a bit more roving to spin. It's going to have to be something with cables, I think.

I hope my birthday is as fun for all of you as it's already been for me.

1. Purple and Gray Plaid Scarf, 2. Purple and Gray Plaid Scarf, 3. Purple and Gray Plaid Scarf, 4. Purple and Gray Plaid Scarf
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

I couldn't go to bed, last night, until I finished this scarf and I'm glad I did. These photos are pre-washed. It's now drying so I can use it tomorrow for school, if it's cold enough.

One of the nicest thing about the loom is that I can stash bust. This yarn has been languishing for years, waiting for a good project, but I didn't really have enough yardage to do anything interesting with it. Go loom!

Project Specs

• Loom: Ashford Rigid Heddle
• Yarn: Classic Elite Yarns Inca Alpaca in colors 1182 and 1103
• Width: 8.5"
• Length: 87" plus 6" of fringe on each end.
• Weight: 166 grams / 5.9 ounces

I definitely haven't mastered getting an even selvage, and my warp tension is still a little uneven, but the yarn is very forgiving, so it's not too obvious. Next project will be a scarf for Leo.

And for my less crafty friends out there, here are some silly videos of my girls being awesome, inspired by videos that Mary-Heather and Mai have posted in their respective flickr accounts.

Do try to ignore the trunk junk and wrinkly jammies.

Know what I've been doing? Weaving! This isn't my first time weaving. I attended a Waldorf school for my freshman year of high school. That was around 20 years ago, which makes me feel a little bit old. I absolutely loved weaving but we had a limit to how many projects we could do so as not to exhaust the supply of yarn.

To be honest, we don't really have the space for it, but I decided to add the stand to my wish list and if I got it, I'd treat myself to the loom. Thanks to my dad I'm now officially a weaver again.

What you see there is a 32" Ashford Rigid Heddle Loom and stand.

It comes unfinished, so Friday and Saturday, I oiled all the parts and assembled them. After that, I grabbed some lightweight cotton yarn I had on cones. It is really a bit too thin for the reed that came with the loom, but I wanted some relatively inexpensive fiber to work with to get my feet wet.

I didn't do a terribly good job warping this so my warp tension was all crazy. It makes it a little bit harder to get the shuttle through but I managed.

My selvage wasn't much better than my warp, but I was able to get a somewhat even tension in the middle.

The final product is an over-sized washcloth or a very small table cloth, or...something. Who cares, I wove it and that's good enough for me.

I got Leo's scarf all warped up. I haven't spent as much time weaving as I'd like to, but when I do, it's completely entrancing.

So far, I've been kinda winging it with my weaving projects, but since this is for someone else, I wanted to carefully plan what I did. I had two possible accent colors; red and blue. The blue was fine but both Leo and I liked the red better. So I went through three stages of plotting the pattern, shown below. I did this all in Illustrator. The first shows a very small scale plaid, which would be fine but I have found that stripes that are less than 4 rows long don't look as nice because you have to weave in the ends and they take up as much extra space as the rows themselves. So the second version shows the same plaid but with all the rows doubled. The last version has the plaid slightly modified and offset so the center stripe is the accent color. You can click each of the swatches to embiggen.

As much as I like the plaid, I might make a version for me that's thinner and has just the vertical stripes. I think that'd look pretty nifty, and I'll have plenty of the yarn left over.

The dynamics of working a weaving project is pretty different than knitting. With knitting, if I get a little bored with a project, it can go into a black hole of solitude, never to be seen again (or at least until the yarn or needles are required for something else.) But with weaving, I can't start my next project until I finish the one on the loom, which means that my constant startitis is handily defeated. It's not that weaving isn't fun it's that I have a dozen different ideas I want to execute and I can't do them all at once so I have to do crazy things like prioritize and time manage. Whoda thunkit?

I'm awaiting yarn for a publication piece so in the interim, my knitting time has been spent on some brown lace

I don't yet know if this will be submitted somewhere or self published so I'm just showing this little teaser for now. Notice the lifeline running through. Lifelines are like car insurance, damn inconvenient when everything is going fine and totally worth it when you actually need it. Ask me how I know.

Also, I think this blog needs some dog

For some reason, they'd much much rather lie on our bed than on their own.

WEBS is evil. You think you'll buy yourself a little bit of inexpensive warp and then you realize that if you just buy a wee bit more of this and a little of that, and heck, you could use another shuttle, you'll get that discount, and well, then, you are cleaning out the ol' paypal account. Curses!

So I have a a few projects in mind. First up, a burgundy scarf worked in a strand of cotton warp and a strand of shimmery tencel. The colors are just different enough to give a lovely depth to the fabric.

Unfortunately, I didn't plan my project well and used up three quarters of my supply of cotton on the warp.

That wee little bit is all I have left of the cotton, plus some on the shuttle. The white is just there so you can see how much I used. I have oodles of the tencel, so no worries there. It should be an easy enough fix. Just order more, but (*sob*) it's on backorder. I'll just have to nurse what I have, until it arrives.

On an entirely unrelated note, we got hail here, the other day.

The pups think it's fantastic, and I love listening to it ping off the corrugated roof of the overhang outside my office window.

The Leo scarf is done. I cut it off the loom yesterday after work, and sneaked in all the finishing when Leo wasn't looking. A quick wash and cycle through the drier and it went from firm and crisp to soft and light.

1. Folded, 2. Around the neck, 3. Extra warm like this, 4. Rippled
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

I am really happy with the results though the selvages are still a little rough in places. It's getting easier and easier to keep them even which makes the process more fun.

I love this yarn, by the way. It's very easy to weave, comes in oodles of colors and is clearly very colorfast. The red didn't smudge at all even though I soaked it in the hottest water my tap could produce, before I sent it through the dryer. It's quite firm off the spool but it really softens up after washing. Leo's pretty picky about softness and it completely passed inspection.

I lost some size in the drying process (which I expected, it's cotton, after all) but it also made the fabric much more cohesive looking, filling in all the gaps between threads and evening out a lot of little inconsistencies. All in all, I think this is a very practical piece and since it requires less than one spool of each color, it's also a very affordable piece.

Project Specs

• Yarn: Maysville 8/4 Cotton Warp in (percentage of total scarf in each color listed):
  • Linen: 44%
  • 8dk Brown: 32%
  • Ecru: 15%
  • Cardinal: 11%
• Weight: 6.5 oz / 184 g
• Design: My own
• Width: 13" / 33 cm (after washing)
• Fringe: 7.5" / 19 cm (after washing)
• Length: 65" / 165 cm (after fringe)
• Loom: Ashford 32" rigid heddle loom
• DPI: 10

As much as I love wearing scarves I really don't enjoy knitting them, but throw me in front of a loom and I can't stop myself.

My third scarf is a simple pattern: just a strand each of tencel and cotton in similar colors.

1. Simple Purple Scarf, 2. Simple Purple Scarf detail, 3. Simple Purple Scarf, 4. Simple Purple Scarf
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

The colors both catch the light slightly differently giving it just a little bit of depth and texture. And since there's no wool, it's a great all seasons wrap or scarf. I can see keeping this in my beach bag and throwing it over my shoulders once the sun sets.

Project Specs

• Width: 13"
• Length: 72" not counting fringe
• Yarns: 1 spool of Maysville 8/4 Cotton Carpet Warp in Velvet (84) and less than half a cone of Valley Yarns 8/2 Tencel in Eggplant
• Reed dpi: 10
• Weight: 216 grams

As always, my quality control inspector was never far.

A crisp cool linen skirt. What could be nicer on a hot day?

This will definitely need a slip or underskirt, since it's a bit sheer, but that seems fine to me. I think I'll pair them with my black Doc Martin mary janes.

All in all, a fun little project that was a good mindless knit. I love how the linen softens and tightens up when washed and dried. Except for the bit of ironing it will require, it should be a sturdy and low maintenance piece. On that note, does anyone have a visceral response to putting their knits in the dryer? I'm so used to hand washing and drying. Even knowing that linen loves to be washed and dried, didn't keep me from feeling a little dread when I put her in the dragon's maw.

The weaving/knitting combo is coming together and I like it. The woven part has been washed and dried and I washed and dried a knitting swatch to determine my final gauge, so don't be alarmed by how open and baggy the knitted portion looks right now. That should firm up and better match the woven portion.

Also, the plaid needs a good pressing.

Tomorrow, I head off to Maine for the Fiber Frolic where I plan to treat myself to a bit of gorgeous fiber and maybe even another spindle. Oh and, of course, I'll get to see my parents too, which is always a treat.

I won't be taking my laptop along, which is a first for me. It seems like it'll increase my chances of relaxation. Hopefully, I'll come back with a bunch of pretty pictures to share.

Thanks to all of you who voted on my plaids. The winner was B by a small margin, but I wanted just a wee bit more pink so I went with C.

See?

I plan on combining this with some knitting and I hope it ends up working out. I'm used to combining knit and crochet gauges or different knit stitches together, but weaving and knitting is a whole nother ball of wax.

I'm also working on a possible self publish knitting project. I frogged Freudian stitch. I couldn't get past it's crotchiness. I went with something a little less reproductive. It's now something that doesn't make me laugh like a 6 year old telling potty jokes, every time I see it. Always a plus.

I want to use some black white and either pink or orange linen yarn that I have and weave up a bit of lovely plaid, but I can't decide what permutation I like.

I asked around on twitter/facebook and got a different answer from everyone who replied. Ha! The only thing left to try is a poll. Help me be decisive, my loom is calling to me.