a few finished projects

at the moment I have to try and cram as much gardening time into each day as possible - lots to do and the weather often doesn't want to play:( it's not great to stand outside in rain or even just drizzle and pot and prick out etc... of course that means that time for textiles is cut short accordingly! I did finish a few things though.

this is the finished "Kringel" scarf. in real life the purple is darker, and right now the scarf is being blocked - but I think it should be finished by tomorrow. couldn't resist the see-through effect though:) this is the one I tried in silk yarn first, which was too slippery and didn't result in a nice "round" kringel. I love the colour way and would like to try to do something similar on fibres for spinning. it's purple, but with a bit of madder red and some green here and there. I did change the fringe of the pattern very slightly - more about that, when I'll show the finished scarf! 

I also received a nice surprise in the mail from a "fibre friend" in wales. a long piece of a handspun "coil" yarn, doubled up like a cord. the idea was to use it as a necklace (very long) or belt (don't wear any). but when I dug through my bead box I stumbled across the base for a bracelet. it's made from metal and somehow I couldn't get the idea of a "woven" piece out of my head. eventually I used fine cotton crochet yarn in green to crochet around the edges and the small middle bars. but I couldn't just weave the yarn through or the bracelet wouldn't have looked rounded, because the yarn would have drawn in between the two short bars. eventually I used two more yarns in pink and yellow plus the green and crocheted chain stitches as "short rows" between the outer bars. could have saved on the effort of using three colours, because the coils are so soft and chunky that the "warp" is nearly invisible:) I do like the result though, it's soft but strong enough to be worn a lot - actually I think this could be the base for another adapted wrist watch!  the bracelet base is open and bendable, so one size fits all.... I hope the spinner of the coil yarn likes what happened to her gift:)

this doesn't really belong into the "finished projects" section - it's only halfway done! those are four of the five bases for my fairy-tale yarns. I'd say they are self-explanatory, the green-brown one on the bobbin is meant for the dwarf, the rest are rose red, snow white and the prince. they'll look quite different once I have them all finished, right now they are just colour blotches on balls - not really very enticing:)

I am going off now to spin some grey marled yarn - which will end up as the second ply for the dwarf - to represent his long beard, which gets stuck in a piece of tree trunk in the tale.... decision time: will I trap some bits of silver fox fur in between the plies - or not?

not all my own work

I haven't been on holidays or lazing about! it's just the usual rush before christmas over here - to finish everything in time some things like blogging just have to suffer:((

but it's not only the time of rushing around and hectic jobs - it's also that time of the year, where lovely surprises arrive in the mail! like the years before the OLG has organized another christmas exchange and I was lucky in my draw for a parter for the second time - I was paired with a weaver again, which is great, because weaving is one of the textile crafts I am not really good at. and especially not this good:

aren't those bags gorgeous? they are made in fine silk in a double weave - the outside has this intricate pattern (here's the star theme), on the inside this is invisible, the fabric is smoothly woven! fantastic work, I wish I was this good! they have two small silky drawstrings to close them - or to use them as loops for hanging them up somewhere. to take the photo I hung them up in a golden yew in the garden - but I am thinking of cutting some nice evergreen branches to bring them inside. I'll hang up those pretty baggies as decorations - our tree is always full and features "one dog from each village" - and I fear that the bags will be drowned out by all that stuff!
this is a kumihimo braid, which kept the baggies together - handmade from silk yarn too!

thank you to my exchange partner Rachel - I love my baggies and I'll find a way to display them for the rest of the year too, not only on christmas!

of course not only do I receive presents, I also make some! this looks like a shapeless flop of knitted fabric - but it's not going to stay like this. in fact it's already travellling around in circles in the washing machine. it's going to be a laptop bag - without the knitting needle for closure of course. I handspun a two-ply from wollpoldi's south american top (spins nicely!), made a large sample to count out the gauge - and knitted a huge, floppy, shapeless thingy - which hopefully changes into the expected sturdy felted bag. one thing already didn't quite work out - the dye was labelled green - but I think it should be called turquoise! it doesn't really matter all that much with this project - but DH was rather lucky that it hit the bag - and not his planned cable patterned sweater! he asked for green - and I don't think he'd fancy wearing turquoise instead:))

well, I'll better go down and check - it might need another cycle, which I won't find out by sitting at the computer doing surfing, blogging and emailing!

my new hobby

this is my 2nd weaving project on the rigid heddle... much better than the first one - but still far from perfect. I had chosen handspun tussah silk, dyed blue, for both warp and weft. originally I had planned the warp wider, but of course I did no calculation for the yarn beforehand (nothing like on the spot weaving, eh?:)) and became slightly worried when the first ball of yarn diminished rather faster than expected when I started the warping! given that I had only two balls, I decided to change the warp width in the middle of warping. in hindsight - that wasn't the best idea. first of all it took me quite a long time and a lot of fiddling to move the whole warp into the right spot on the heddle. and then - it turned out that I needed far less yarn for the weft - so that I still have 3/4 of a ball leftover now:) well, I finished a rather narrow scarf, but that wasn't the only problem.
I should also have tied the warp differently to the teeth on cloth and warp beam. I tied each pair to one tooth, which spread out the warp wider on both beams than it did on the heddle! stupid, I know (now!)... well, anyway, I rolled up some of the warp close to the cloth beam without weaving and only started weaving when it looked nearly like the rest - which ended up giving me a slightly wider start to the scarf - the other end wasn't that much of a problem, because I couldn't weave down to the warp beam anyway! the photo shows most of the scarf finished and rolled onto the cloth beam.

this is the start of the scarf - where I put in some stripes of handspun silk noil. the same pattern follows close to the end of the scarf of course.

this photo shows both ends - I knotted the warp threads for finishing. it's obvious that the start is wider than the end, but other than that - it's wearable:)

this shows the main part of the scarf and also another mistake with the warp - the tension on both selvedges is too loose in comparison to the rest of it! (at least that's what I think the reason is for the "wobbly bits"!) which led to a loose weave on the loom - and slightly wavy, loose edges when I took it off. not ideal, because the weft yarn slides a bit on the warp if handled, but there you go - I hope to learn from my beginner mistakes!

I should also admit that it would be a good idea to follow advice like this: do take notes during weaving, when you add patterns - or count rows etc.! it's not easy to find out again how many stripes you wove at the beginning - when you roll up the rest of the project on top of it:) I assume anyone with more weaving experience is "lolling" about now:) but at least I admit that I made mistakes... I don't think anyone would believe me, if I said that the design was planned that way - and the loose selvedges are special lace?

I have to take a break from weaving for the moment. there is just too much to do in the garden - and the weather is good! of course I still keep knitting and spinning, where I can, but I need at least a few longer nights, where no loom waits on the table and lures me into late-night stands when passing by:)

beginner weaver....

when I learned how to spin a few years back, I became very enthusiastic and wanted to learn how to weave as well... actually - I always wanted to learn both! as a teenager I was keen to browse through craft books and magazines - but even though I was always busy knitting (or doing crochet) we didn't have enough money or room to buy a spinning wheel, never mind a weaving loom (and no, at the time somehow spindles didn't come up). my mother did own a small rigid heddle loom though - and eventually I asked for a small school loom, but not much came of it. in contrast to knitting weaving isn't something you pick up in passing, I guess! after fiddling about with our first warp and making small mats or runners, the looms went back into storage. I don't know what happened to my very small kid's loom, but we did save the larger RH and I took it with me when I moved to Ireland.

when I saw on the german mailing list for handspinners, that the wheel producer Kromski builds the "Harp", a rigid heddle loom, I eventually bought the widest model. I put it all together - just to hide it under the table in my wool room - with good intentions of course to use it very soon. but nothing came of it - until the RH and backstrap loom workshop with the OLG started at the beginning of march! this finally was the incentive I needed to get started! ok, the harp is still where it was before, but I managed to warp a smaller loom and wove a small table runner on it.

this is it:

the picture isn't great, but it shows the stripes I wove into the white linen and if you look very closely, you can see three blue stripes in the warp as well.

this is the weaving still on the loom, but it shows the warp stripes better. I had planned it quite differently though. being pigheaded I didn't listen - and used fine linen thread instead of thicker wool yarn. that was fine when I measured the warp, but when I finished warping the loom and started to weave, I realised that with a widely spaced fine warp like that I'd end up with onion netting, if I tried to do a balanced weave. instead I beat harder and ended up weaving a weft-faced piece. well, the warp was long enough for a scarf, but feeling the fabric I decided to switch plans to make a table runner. the linen yarn is too hard to wear close to the skin and with the fine yarn I'd probably sit and weave a scarf in 2012!

at first I also had problems with abrasion on the warp threads. I thought the linen would be tough enough, but moving the heddle up and down meant that eventually my first warp thread broke. I managed to fix it, but I became very careful afterwards not to move the heddle too hard! I didn't knot the warp threads or work a fringe, because the plan is to add some bobbin lace on both ends, done with the warp threads, which I left hanging quite long for this purpose.

so - the next project will be done with wool yarn - and I also try out another way of warping to see which one I prefer. I did find however, that weaving is probably nearly as addictive as knitting and spinning. I had problems going to bed at night - because I "just wanted to weave a few more rows" for the last few evenings:)) another bad habit in the making....