Weaverly

Pathways

It was a crazy project, but I absolutely had to empty those bobbins! And use up partial cones of cotton yarns, too. So I made an 8-yard narrow warp on the wee 4-shaft loom and treadled away at odd moments. It's finally finished. Here it is just cut off the loom and piled willy-nilly on the ironing board.

I washed & ironed it, and now it is rolled up, ready for ???

In the way of such things, it is an unspooling ribbon waiting to reveal a secret.

It reminds me of this boardwalk at the Lake Conestee Nature Park, where we got lost last weekend, strolling through the wetlands and listening to frogs.

It was worth it.

Odd Pairings

Grocery shopping as a source of entertainment? Absolutely, especially at the checkout line. All sorts of odd magazines on display. My favorite headline many years ago was "Eighty Year Old Woman Raised By Sheep." I actually bought that one. But I can't find it now. The following pairing will have to do.

Curves Again

More double plain weave projects. This one features yellow & green wefts on the black & white warp.

Taking a break here to bake some whole wheat bread from my new supply of sprouted wheat flour. The slashes are curved, so I guess that qualifies.

I started a test strip this morning, this time with pink & red wefts. An entirely different palette. One of the wefts is a little coarser, so that changes the aspect ratio. I'll have to reformat this file to make the circles come out round.

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Unfair Advantage

Watching too much cable news this week. My brain has turned to mush and the weaving goes with it.

I did see an interesting bumper sign on US29 the other day. This was a quick grab shot while stopped at a traffic light. I enhanced it as best I could for readability. Click to embiggen.

Then I ran it through Repper and got this design:

Maybe next week will be better.

Shades of Gray

Double plain weave. Hemp & cotton. Black & natural warp, black & natural weft.

Click to embiggen.

A Weighty Matter

A few months ago I bought some llama roving & finally got it spun up rather fine—I plan to use it as singles in weft, so wanted to weight it after washing, to eliminate kinks. Here it is drying on the shower rack with cans of tomatoes in baggies as the weights.

And here's all the yarn after drying.

 

Brocade My Way

It's time to finish work on the two-sided hangings with handspun pattern wefts. Here they are hemmed and steam pressed, spread out to dry amidst the normal chaos of my studio.

I've enjoyed working with this structure. It's a single warp, black & white end-&-end. The ground structure is 2/2 twill, and the pattern wefts are tied down with either black warps or white warps in satin order. Where the white warps tie the pattern wefts on the face of the cloth, the black warps tie the second pattern wefts on the reverse. The weft order, bottom to top, is pattern 1, ground, pattern 2, ground. Here are the two presets, if you are one of those who design in Photoshop® or Elements®.

 

Oddments

Some bits and pieces of design inspiration from life around here.

A Napa cabbage sliced in half:

A water-splotched linen dishtowel hanging on the oven to dry:

The hosta in my front yard:

Junk left along the road for trash pickup day:

And the gardenia by my side door:

Wool, Wool, More Wool

It's been way too long since my last visit to Freehaven Farm, but yesterday I spent some time with Caron and her animals.

I bought some of her beautiful roving—a cream color wool/alpaca blend, and a dark brown alpaca. I'll be spinning it up for some more tree hangings. Just finished the third one in the recent series:

Bread and Other Necessities

It's bread festival time again. Yesterday we met friends at the Asheville Bread Festival, not the best place for a person on a low-carb diet, but a treat for the eyes as well as the palate.

After a  picnic lunch overlooking the Blue Ridge mountains, where I feasted on an amazing tart of kale and Asiago cheese (sorry, no picture), we slowly made our way down the mountain just before the rains began.

In the evening, watched two episodes of Doctor Blake Mysteries, our current favorite binge, then retrieved a wonderful link sent to me by my friend Sam, of the Nanjing Silk Museum, including an exceptionally good photo of a Chinese drawloom.