Bad Habits Learned from the Cousins

Bailey started to hang out on my bed.  He is 11 years old and had never gotten up on the bed before.

I think when his cousins were visiting, he saw that they got up on the bed.

So when I walked into the bedroom and didn't see him in his usual places, I looked up and there he was.

It has been super hot and the AC has been on but above my bed is a ceiling fan so he might be hanging there since it is cool.

First Project Off the Loom

The first project is off the loom.

You can see the design element near the bottom of the photo.

The left is the green silk and the right is the orange silk.

I also had very little loom waste.

Adjustments to Weaving

So I was not happy with what I was getting and my plain weave wasn't.  I joined a couple of Facebook weaving groups and got some advice.  So I did some un-weaving and then cut off all the knots.

I then switched the reed to an 10 dpi one and decided to do 2 epi per slot and make it a bit narrower since I wound on way too wide.

2 epi per slot which makes it 20" wide instead of 18".  I centered the reed a bit as well to try to fix the left side of the piece.

Here we go again.

Close up of the hemstitch.

Ugh, it looks like I still have an error in the heddles.  After ripping back and retying, I leaving it as a design element.

I also pulled out the other silk skein and will try to weave some of this on the rust warp.  The autumn colors are kind of one note so maybe adding the contrasting color will pop it some.  I'm planning the opposite as well as I got some green cotton for another warp.

Loom is Dressed

After all my company left, I spent the day doing laundry and dressing the loom.  It was easier on the body, but still took some time as it is new.

First was the raddle and winding the warp on the beam.

I think I didn't take into account the real width by using 2 strands in the raddle.  The width of the scarf is really too wide.

Dressing by myself was super easy and I didn't think I had any issues until I got to the end.

I had this one super long strand that is too short for the entire length.  I crossed my fingers and cut the ends and had very little waste.

Threading the heddles was pretty easy except for the stickiness of the heddles themselves as they are new and wanted to clump.

Tying on the cloth beam was pretty good as well.

I picked up some tips from Laura Fry and used knots.

Weaving commenced with one skein of the silk taking up 8 bobbins.

6" of fringe and a length of 2 yards.  I used a 6 dent reed with 3 ends per dent.  Not quite a plain weave.

July Spin Group

It has been a while since I attended spin group and I hadn't seem some of the peeps for over a year.

We had lots of show and tell.  The first was Margie's natural dyed hand spun woven blanket.

Lori had a lot to show with items for her show.

Felted hats, felted scarves, hand spun yarn, and cool felted fingerless mitts.

Suzanne showed off her 3D printed yarn bowl from her son.

Karen brought some of Mr. Cool's first fleece processed and some spun yarn.

Miryha brought some bunny which she bought last year.

I worked on my quilt and did some drop spindling.

We had a mexican fiesta.

Great to see everyone and to see inspirational items.

Loom has Landed

The Spring loom has landed.  There was a bit of confusion as I expected it mid-week but FedEx had to make an appointment so it showed up at the end of the week.

They can't deliver into the house so he just dropped it off on the driveway.

Two boxes and nicely packed.  Good thing I had some muscle visiting who helped drag it into the house and also helped me assemble it where it needed two people.

Some Knitting

I pulled out the Bifrost scarf and made enough progress that I'm on the last ball of yarn.  The colors are really nice.

Hot, Hot, Hot

I lasted until almost the end of July this year before having to turn on the AC.  I had to replace the compressor earlier this year as the old unit was over 10 years old and rusting.

This morning I awoke to bright sunshine so no marine layer today.  There is a very light wind which is blowing hot air.

Windows are all closed and drapes all drawn.  Waiting to hear when that compressor kicks on today.  The thermostat is set at 78 degrees and it is already 76 degrees at 7:00 am.

New Striping Socks

After the snafu, I pulled out some socks that I had on the needles.  I knitted them up watching the wackiness that is the RNC.

Was able to finish them off.  Another pair of socks!

Another 259 meters for stash dash.

Santa Rose Snafu

I have been knitting along on the Santa Rosa sweater and am behind in the clues.  Clue 2 came out when I was visiting Val in Colorado so I got a late start.

I was knitting along happily and changed from color 2 to 3 and got to near the end of the sweater body and realized that I had yet to change to color 4.  I went back to look at the instructions as clue 3 has been released to discuss the sleeves.

What I discovered is that I did not read the requirements for the sleeves correctly and instead of saving 1/3 of the skein for the 2 sleeves, I only saved enough for the striping sequence in the sleeves.  Needless to say, I now have a dilemma as to whether to go on and have weird colors for the sleeves or to frog back to color 2 and unknit until I have at least 32 grams of the color and then changing to color 3.

Ugh!

Color 2 will have to be smaller as will color 3 to allow me to add color 4.

I only saved 15 grams of color 2 and color 3 currently has 40 grams and color 4 hasn't even been started.

This project will be in time out for a bit so I can build my confidence with other projects so I won't feel terrible in ripping out all that knitting to start again.

Ready Warps

I was able to wind up some warps to prepare to hit the ground when the loom is ready to go.

I got this great silk from the Black Sheep moving sale in two colors and after consulting with my weaving guru, I bought some cotton for the warp.

I'm planning on two 2 yard scarves in each color.

I also have some more of the alpaca in red for the warp and mushroom wool/silk for the weft for another snowflake scarf.

I plan to make one more of these with black wool/silk and the mushroom as weft.