Ahts and Merino/Tencel

Yay! I just received word today that I was accepted into the Boston Ahts Festival again this year! It's held September 10 -12, in Christopher Columbus Park on the waterfront in Boston. Even with terrible weather last year (Saturday was completely rained out) it was by far the most successful show I did. I was *really* hoping I'd get in again this year - but with completely different jurors and stiff competition for just 60-ish coveted spots, I wasn't sure.

(My booth, last year, nice corner location, I lucked out - though I was behind a pillar! LOL!)

It's a great time, with music and dance and demonstrations as well. Literally thousands upon thousands of people showed up last year (the free music is a huge draw! Local/emerging musicians from Berklee, the Boston Ballet, the Boston Gay Men's Choir, the list goes on and on).

Packed!!

A bit of Boston's waterfront, the evening of the last day of the show last year. I'm so excited to do this show again this year!

Maybe this will light a fire under my weaving rear-end. :) Speaking of weaving, how about a project round-up? I'm about to put a custom shawl on my 4-shaft loom, I've got Bonnie-Inouye-inspired echo weave going on the Weavebird, am about to warp up the Colonial with something or other (haven't decided yet), and I'm trying out a new-to-me yarn on my 8-shaft table loom.



Nothing too crazy - it's a 5-shaft waffle weave using three colors - I'm a sucker for texture and haven't tried waffle-weave with wool before (I did, of course, weave the obligatory cotton waffle-weave dishtowels years ago). The yarn is 10/2 Merino/Tencel from Webs and it's lusciously soft! If it comes out nicely, I'll be doing more - but with a floating selvedge and a couple shots of plain weave to begin next time. This one may be a little wonky in the end, but it's just for me, so that's ok. Love this yarn so far! (Yes, that's kid artwork on the table there...)

This and That

Had a nice day in the studio on Saturday... The light was lovely!


I also set a new speed record (for me) for a sale. Listed this guy in my Etsy shop on Saturday:



And when I woke up Sunday morning, it was sold! It's off to Australia to live with a lovely repeat customer. I'm tickled. So, I wove it's sibling, and just posted it today:



They're both based on my scarf that is in the March/April issue of Handwoven Magazine. Huck lace panels run the length of them, with a little plain weave at each end, along the middle and along the borders. I used 8/2 tencel from Webs in lots of colors and sett these two at 24 epi (120 ends total, they wound up 4" wide once they were off the loom and washed).

I'm hoping to weave a little series of these, we'll see how it goes... I have some 8/2 Bamboo from Webs, too, that I'm going to try out, just to see if it behaves differently from the Tencel.

An Inkling of an Idea...

Look what Santa brought me!

It's a Schacht Inkle loom! It's a lovely little loom, very sturdy, and very easy to use so far. It seems like it would be a really nice way for somebody to figure out whether they like to weave without spending $1000+ on a floor loom...

I trekked out to Webs on Thursday to buy it, actually. (Along with more yarn, of course, good grief, my name is Kristin and I'm a fiber addict...) Webs is having its year-end sale, and they put their Tencel (which I use) on sale - hooray! I bought some knitting yarn, too, that was marked waaaaay down.

But my main reason for going out there was to buy this little inkle loom. How fun! Pretty easy to use, too, the most time-consuming part is making the string heddles (those bright blue strings you can see in the picture) and warping it. The weaving goes very quickly; since inkle looms make warp-faced fabric, that makes sense.

I'm using my Bambu 7 yarn so far and it is working very nicely. Strong, relatively inelastic, and non-sticky (good for warp faced fabrics).

My Mum took one looks at another of the ribbons I had made and said - "this would make great trim on clothes!" Which got me thinking.... Maybe some handwoven clothing is in my future!