The Painted Skein Becomes Warp - Part II

From this...






To this. (Just the beginning, but I'm liking it so far!)

Busy Week - And a Return to the Dark Side?

Phew, crazy week, or so it feels, though I'm not quite sure why. I had a birthday (we won't talk about how old I am), managed to take some pictures of some scarves this morning (and have several more waiting to be photographed):


(Mixed twill scarf, using Dragon Tales scrumptious variegated yarn, sett at 24 epi, IIRC). I just got it listed in my Etsy shop.

And I delivered two custom scarves, including this one:


for my friend Bob, a fellow artist on the fourth floor at WAS. It's 50% cashmere, 50% bamboo with a hem-stitched fringe and it's a scarflette, not full size. I loved weaving this piece! (Still loving working with that cashmere!) More to come from this warp...

Bob is a silver smith - and his jewelry is *gorgeous* - and he repairs handmade flutes, too! A weird little bit of coincidence, there, because I was a very serious flutist when I was younger, and my teacher repaired flutes, too. I even got to play one of James Galway's flutes when my teacher was repairing it. Amazing instrument. I won't comment on Galway's tonal quality. (It sucks.) (Apparently, I couldn't help myself, lol.)

And I also spent Saturday and Sunday in Boston! On the 33rd floor at One Beacon Street, right next to the Common and State House. The views are *amazing* I cannot believe I forgot my camera both days, oy. I love the city, and it was really fun to be in there again. To work.

Uh-oh. That's the Return to the Dark Side part. A former colleague of mine (yes, lawyer) is working on a case involving a *huge* amount of document production - which means the documents need to be reviewed (for relevancy and privilege), which means he needed lots of help... I actually never mind this kind of work - document review, drafting motions, etc. - it was the arguing with opposing council that I loathed (and which you do a lot more of as you get more senior). So, I'm hoping to get in 30 -40 hours on this case, we'll see how it goes, discovery can be a bit of a moving target as the parties involved negotiate what to produce. But, if I do get in about that much - hey, that's studio rent for the rest of the year + some yarn, too! (Or a ski trip!) I'm heading in again this evening for four hours or so...

Blues

I'm finally getting around to taking some picture of what I've woven lately, so I can get things posted in my Etsy shop... Lots of blues lately, and purples, too. And, if you peek, you can tell that I'm working on some teals on my big loom at my studio. Goodness, I'm going to need to work with some different colors after my custom orders are all done!!

Mr. Skiingweaver, wearing the scarf he got for Christmas (he's going to *hate* that picture, poor guy, lol). And, yes, our Christmas lights are still up. Finally took the tree down over the weekend - though I think I'll be sweeping up needles for weeks!

And a custom cashmere and bamboo scarflette that is on it's way to Los Angeles as we speak!

The whole scarflette idea has been kind of interesting. When I brought some to the Weavers' Guild of Boston sale this fall, the person who juried my work jokingly told me I should plan my warps better (i.e. she thought I was making a mistake by making them short).

And yet, they sell really well (including at the WGB sale)! I think it's because not everyone is tall, not everyone wants a huge amount of scarf, and, of course, I price them at about half of what I price my full-size scarves. I have found it difficult to find a balance between higher and lower price points (mostly because I absolutely hate to sew, so I have no patience for making little zipper bags/checkbook covers, that sort of thing), so the scarflettes seem to be a nice compromise.

This and That, Marketing and Lots of Little Flowers

Happy New Year to everybody!

Hope things are going well for everyone. That huge pile of snow we got before Christmas? It melted. It was 60 degrees out if you can believe it! Crazy! It's snowing again today, though - Bella is outside building a little snowman.

And we've gone skiing twice! Bella is tearing up the bunny slope at Pat's Peak, I'm so proud, it won't be long before she's back on the chair lifts again. And Conall is so much easier this year! He spent half the afternoon walking up the far side of bunny slope to watch Bella ski down (Bella was earning her turns, too - walking up, I mean - faster than taking the magic carpet lift) and had a great time. No photos, I keep meaning to bring the little camcorder up to videotape her.

I've been slacking a little bit in terms of keeping up with my Etsy shop and my blog... I have a bunch of finished scarves I just haven't gotten around to photographing them or listing them. (I'm liking the cashmere/bambu7 sett at 20epi, by the way, in case anyone is curious.)

I have been trying to figure out what to do with these, though...

I started making some to attach to Christmas presents for the various women/girls in my family, and I can't seem to stop making them! (They're little crocheted flowers made of cashmere and bamboo yarn, mostly, I've been sewing pinbacks onto them to make brooches.)

I was thinking of a couple of different weaving projects that could incorporate them, but I'm kind of in production mode right now (which I try to take advantage of whenever it happens!).

So, I'm thinking I'm going to contribute them to The Sampler. The way it works is - you contribute 25 or more (up to 100s, if you want to!) of little samples of your work, the Sampler people organize it all, and then subscribers pay a small amount (not sure how much) to purchase sampler packs and get all these little samples and coupons/marketing materials from the crafters/artists that contribute.

I've done it once before and got a sale from it, and since I've already got all these little flowers lying around gathering dust, I figured, well, heck, why not, I'll contribute to the February Sampler. Wish me luck!

A New Twist on an Old Design

So, I've fallen in love with this fantastic Mongolian cashmere that I found, as you may have noticed... And I'm also still really intrigued with shadow-weave (most of my bamboo scarves that I made over the past year have been in various shadow-weave structures). I did play around with using the cashmere as the weft in some mixed-twill scarves, and liked that, but I really do enjoy designing/weaving shadow-weave a lot more than just twill. (Who knew I'd ever find a structure that would keep me this occupied!)

So, I decided to give a mixed warp of Bambu7 and the 2-ply cashmere a whirl... I normally sett my Bambu7 at 16 epi (a little loose, perhaps, but I like to give the yarn room to move when I wash it), so that's where I started.

There it is, going into the sink to soak! The black yarn is the cashmere, and I used a couple shades of Bambu as the lighter blues and greys (hard to tell in this photo). It came out nicely after the wash (it's air drying at the moment) and now I'm warping another one to sett at 20 epi instead of 16, just to see how it turns out. I'll keep you posted!

It's fun to be back to weaving a little bit after the busyness of last week... we have Open Studios at WAS this Saturday, but I have nothing, basically, to sell! Eeks! Ah well, it's always nice just to chat with the people that come through, and get some work done, too.

Open Studios Coming Up!

So, did everyone go shopping on Friday? I'm actually pretty proud of us for *not* going out shopping, lol... We did buy some outdoor Christmas lights and put them up, though, so that was fun. It even flurried here a little bit on Sunday (didn't stick though, rats).

And I sold the sister to my cashmere scarf that I posted about earlier. Barely got it listed on Etsy, and now it's off to Chicago...

Love that cashmere... I've got two with navy stripes in the works (too dreary to take good photos, waiting for some sun), and have some on my loom with yellow in the stripe that are looking pretty cool, too. I'm pleased - and they're fast to weave, since they're twill (my shadow-weave bamboo scarves take two shuttles, so they're a little slower). I'm hoping to warp and weave a couple more sets of the variegated rayon scarves as well. All this because we've got the Holiday Open Studios coming up at Western Avenue over the next two weekends - Saturday and Sunday both weekends, from noon - 5pm.

And, finally, I'll be delivering five pieces to a new shop in Chelmsford, hopefully today - one of the WAS artists is opening a shop about five minutes away from our house! How fun! (We live near the center of our town, it's nice to be able to walk to the library, the grocery store, etc.) Even better, her shop is *right* along the new bike path that is being built through Chelmsford (as part of the Rails to Trails network, very excited to have it here). So, while I wouldn't exactly recommend biking while wearing a scarf, it will be great exposure for her shop...

(Oh - and I'm about halfway through New Moon, the second book in the Twilight series... Jacob has definitely taken a turn for the grumpier, but I still like him better than Edward, lol! I thought I was going to finish the book yesterday, but I was good and went to the studio to weave, instead...)

Cashmere....

Oh my. I splurged and got a bunch of skeins of cashmere yarn...

I used it as the weft in a couple of twill scarves - that's bamboo in the warp - and, oh my, they turned out so soft and snuggly, I love them! I actually wound all of my bobbins by hand as I was weaving, if you can believe it, lol, just because the cashmere yarn feels soooooo good. I could spend the day petting the stuff!

Not much else going on. My berry pie scarf is in a very nice berry-themed treasury on Etsy, that's always nice! (Click on that link to see it.) Thanks to Karen Garner (the curator) for including me in it!

It's raining cats and dogs here today, but Stowe (Vermont), at least, seems to be getting snow, hooray! Can't wait to hit the slopes! Soon. Still have to get Bella fitted for seasonal rental equipment, but I'm looking forward to it - it will be so much easier this year now that Conall is walking! (Kept worrying about him wanting to crawl around the ski lodges last year, not a good place for a little guy, but he'll be fine this year.)

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!