Big Box O'Yarn

(Notice that the little man is going directly for the little box of chocolates that they put in with the yarn, lol.)

It's all bamboo. Greens, blues, red, deep redy-orange, browns, some yellow and purple... Add this to what I've got in my current stash, and - wheeee! Can't wait to get designing! I'm thinking of more turned twill with bunches of colors in it (love doing that) and experimenting with making pleated fabric, too. All sorts of neat color effects in that, hopefully.

It's also the time of year to be looking forward to Webs' big year end yarn sale! That will happen right after Christmas. So far, at least, we're being good about not spending too much on Christmas, so hopefully I'll be able to buy some yarn then, too. And maybe Santa will bring me an Inkle loom if I ask really, really nicely...

Color!

So, one of my eternal struggles is trying to push myself on the color front with weaving. Structure is pretty easy for me, but I tend to fall into ruts/easy color combinations when I let myself. For example, I'm working on a dove grey/teal scarf in a Wall of Troy twill pattern on my little loom right now. Very nice (and I like the twill very much), but not particularly adventurous of me! (Weaving it mainly because I feel like I need some more "masculine" type scarves in my shop, and also because this yarn has been sitting around looking forlorn about not being used for quite a while now).

Anyway, we took a family walk over to the local library for storytime this morning, and I sneaked down to the art section while Carlos read to Bella and watched Conall play with toys in the children's room. Love the art section.

And I found a fabulous little book! The Color Scheme Bible by Anna Starmer. It's meant for interior decorating (helping you choose color palettes for your house), but it's great on the inspiration front! I've been sitting in the dining room pouring over it, color cards in hand, figuring out possible new designs and combinations.

I feel a yarn order coming on. Uh-oh. There goes the budget...

Hot and Color Exercises

Not a whole heck of a lot going on over here - Mr. Conall just got his third tooth, so, as any parent knows, it's been a lovely couple of days with him, poor little man. Add to that the heat, and, well... yuck. We did finally break down and put in a couple window air conditioners, though, so we've stopped the melting. So spoiled - we didn't put them in at all last summer, it was so mild.

On the weaving front, I have two new projects going that I'm really enjoying - a turned twill scarf using six colors of Tencel and a turned Ms and Os in some of the new bamboo I bought. I also have a bunch of organic cotton yarn from Silk City waiting to go on my big loom - can't wait to try it out! I love working with eco-friendly yarns, and this cotton is not only organic, but raised under Fair Trade Standards, too, hooray. Expensive, of course, but worth it, I think. Must get around to taking some pictures...

The six color combination is directly from my teacher at the Worcester Center for Crafts, Rita Steinbach. She's a wonderful weaver with an awesome color sense. At some point in her education, she had a teacher tell her to experiment every day with color - and that one of the easiest ways to do that was to use crayons! Just take six colors and draw elongated squiggles with them across the page - the colors overlap and wind around one another, and it really is quite surprising to see how they work together, even colors you wouldn't necessarily think to combine. So, this scarf has two shades of green, varying shades of red/browns (adobe, sienna, and a chestnut color) and a nice little zing of red-purple.

The warp is really pretty, I think. As usual on a project like this, though, I'm second guessing my weft color (I'm using the sienna right now). Happily, I put on enough warp for two scarves, so I'll try out another weft color for the second one. Or more than one weft color if I'm feeling ambitious.

That's another Rita tip - put on enough warp for three of whatever you're making. I've found that two is about my outside limit, what with my limited attention span, I often have a tough time making it through two, never mind three!