Something New! Handbound Journals

Once upon a time, ages ago, I bound/cased-in some journals in some turned twill tencel fabric that I wove. I had a great time, I used the journals (including taking one to France!), and kind of forgot about my small venture into bookbinding.


Obviously, I've decided to do some more (though these aren't in turned twill)... These are the first set of small journals that I bound - I start with a pre-made text block, cut acid-free book board to the right size for the covers and spine, and then glue on the fabric. And hope I don't make a big mess of things in the process!



Kind of a fun, different thing to do with handwoven fabric! I've got more in the works, and paper on order to do a bit more serious book construction - I think I'm going to try my hand at various stitched bindings.

And, even more fun, I'll be leading a hands-on seminar at NEWS in the summer of 2011 on this very topic! I'm experimenting a lot to see where I need to diverge from traditional bookbinding to make things work with handwoven fabric, and I'm also hoping to put together a couple of art books that have been floating around in the back of my brain, to give folks ideas of what you can do with fabric and books.

Spinning again - and a Drumlin

So, I spun a bit again on Sunday, how fun. Here's the results of my second ever attempt:


Ha! How fun! I'm really enjoying it, and it was a nice little reward/break after threading a new warp on my loom at my studio...

Sold yet another piece today:

It's tencel and variegated rayon from Dragon Tale yarns - I used this same colorway for my project that is going to be published in the upcoming January/February issue of Handwoven. (The directions will be for a different colorway, though...)

And, finally, while downloading photos from my camera today, I found this one that I took about ten days ago - we were on a little trip down to Lancaster to buy some apples and stopped by the drumlin there (it's preservation land now, and it's lovely). Aren't drumlins neat? (Click here to read about them on Wiki if you don't know what I'm talking about!) (Yes, I admit it, I'm a bit of a geology nerd.)

Hard to capture the shape of it, this one might do a little better...

Well, rats...

So, a little while ago, I dyed some tencel using a new (to me) two color gradation dying technique described on the Prochemical webpage. I even posted this picture:



Well, I wove what was intended to be another ruffly/differential shrinkage scarf with the warm toned tencel, washed it, and look what happened...


Gah! Yuck! Blech! What happened to all that gorgeous color?? LOL. (Good thing I have a sense of humor about these things...)

I've dyed tencel before and had the colors stay just gorgeously, not all come out in the wash. I think it was probably the process outlined by ProChem... Normally I use urea water instead of tap water with salt in it to form the basis of the dye bath (as they describe in their Low Water Immersion dying process), so perhaps that was the problem. So, I've dyed another batch in the same colorway, using a hybrid technique to do the gradated dying, but with the urea water. Hope that does the trick! I'll keep you posted.

On other fronts, I actually managed to get a wrap listed in my Etsy shop today - my first new listing, apart from commissions, in forever. Truly lame. And this poor wrap has been waiting to be listed for weeks...




I'll be listing more this week, so stay tuned!

Late Night

I was up far too late last night, playing with chemicals...

So now I'm imbibing too many chemicals of a different kind (caffeine, baby, and the possibility of some extreme sugary yumminess from Fat Daddy/Bangerang Bake Shop) to stay awake...

The oranges/peaches/yellows on the left is sure to appeal to my Mum. :)

Isn't dying fun, though? These are just some sample skeins of tencel and bamboo yarn, using MX Dyes from Procion. Easy to use, it's all done a room temperature, and tencel and bamboo both take dye really nicely. The bamboo yarns are a bit lighter, it's interesting, the tencel sucks up the color a bit more intensely. So much fun to get back into this! It's been a while (since before I got pregnant with the Little Man), I had to relearn it a bit, but it's easy and fun, appeals to my nerdly sciencey side to be measuring and mixing in buckets...

Can't wait for it to dry enough to get it on my looms!

Front Page - Thanks to the Storque!

So, for those of you who aren't Etsy-people (Etsiers? Etsians? Etsites? Something like that...), a little explanation is in order. The Storque is Etsy's online Newletter for sellers, buyers, browsers, anyone who just wants to keep up a little bit with the goings-on in the Etsy World.

They have a series of Spotlight articles - including the recent Gift Ideas: Teacher Teacher. And my lemongrass green tencel lace scarf is one of the featured gift ideas! Neato! Always tickled to be noticed by the PTBs (PTBs = Powers That Be for you non-Buffy fans out there).

And to make it even more neato, it made the front page! Let's see if I can manage to get my screencap here for you (saved it in a little different way this time, so we'll see...)


Itty bitty. LOL. But there it is! :) It's this scarf/sash, in case you're interested:


It's the sister to the green lace scarf that sold in about two seconds flat. (It's cousin, a similar one but in solid adobe also set a speed record - for me - for selling!) And it's also part of the series that I developed based on my design that was published in Handwoven.

Hmm. Maybe this is the figurative kick in the rear that will get me going/motivated again. It's getting really hard to make myself go in to the studio on weekends, which are usually my productive time! And this is theoretically the time of year when I should be stocking up for fall... Not happening so far, but that's ok, it's nice to be selling still when I thought I'd be well into my summer slowdown by now.

Anybody else have motivation problems when the weather gets nice?

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.

Monks Belt

Hooray for Ginga (my Mum) - she's in the living room playing with the kids, so I'm stealing a minute to post a picture of my current-ish project on the little loom:


Monks' Belt! Haven't messed around with it at all in quite a while, but I always like the idea of overshot-type weaving, just because you really don't find it in commercial fabrics. As the pattern weft in this portion, I used some hand-dyed rayon boucle that I picked up almost two years ago at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival. I've got some more hand-dyed variegated yarns lying around that I'm going to give a whirl as well. The idea is to weave either soft scarflettes (the warp and tabby weft is black 8/2 tencel) or yardage to make little zipper pouches. Though my sewing machine and I area not exactly the best of friends...

The big loom *still* isn't in my studio. But at least now it's disassembled and just waiting to be moved over and re-assembled. Hopefully tonight! Knock on wood!

On a personal front - Carlos finally straightened out the non-compete nonsense with his last company and has officially started at a new start-up, Cambridge Analog Technologies (CAT), whoo-hoo!

Handwoven Magazine

I just got an email from my Etsy friend Shannon of Sunrise Lodge Fiber Studio (click that link to go to her shop for some really fabulous handspun yarn and woven items, too) - she received her March/April Handwoven Magazine today.

I'm hugely tickled pink to have had my huck lace scarves published! And also to have written the Endnotes... It was a whole heck of a lot of fun and a very big honor.

I'd post pictures, but I'm in Vermont for the weekend with the family to ski. Hopefully the magazine will be in my mailbox when we get home on Sunday!

More Ruffles...

I actually managed to hem, photograph and list a scarf today. Wow.


Black merino yarn combined with a hot pink tencel that I dyed myself back before I was pregnant with Conall. It's been lying around, looking at me accusingly, so I decided to finally use it in a brightly colored scarf...

I am really having fun with this differential shrinkage stuff. It's very neat to give up a measure of control - weavers are such control freaks - once you put it in the washing machine, all you can really do is cross your fingers and hope it comes out right...

And, obviously, we're home again! We had a very fun trip to Stowe, lots of good skiing for everyone (even on the day that it rained - it just sprinkled up on the mountain and it turned the snow soft-ish, very much like spring skiing - and the rain scared everyone away, so, no lift lines!).

This is what happens when an almost-four-year-old skis for a couple hours:

She was so crashed, she didn't even realize that Tia Lexi had stopped in for a surprise visit (photo by Lexi). Conall knew though, and flirted appropriately.



Very neat to see Lexi! :) And I can't wait to get back up to Stowe - probably next weekend, the cats would never forgive us if we went up again right away. We were looking at real estate listings up there a little bit... So close to being able to swing a little vacation condo, that would be awesome! Maybe in another year or two...

Ruffles Galore!

So, here's the latest installment in the experimenting with differential shrinkage saga:

Hee! I love it! Not quite a poofy as the last one (which I thought was a bit tooo poofy), but still all ruffly and fun. Here's another pic:



I have listed it in my etsy shop, but this is one of those ones that I kind of want to keep for myself. Ah well, I can always make another, maybe in a different colorway (I'm very partial to purples on myself after all)... Fun - I'm loving this texture!

Handwoven Magazine!

Well, I've been sitting on some very exciting (for me, lol) news, but I think it's probably safe to post about it now...

A couple months ago, I was contacted - out of the blue!! - by Madelyn Van Der Hoogt, the editor of Handwoven Magazine, asking if they could publish one of my scarves that she had seen on Flickr. How cool is that??? It's this one, that I wove a while ago as a custom order for a lovely customer:

It's made from 8/2 amethyst Tencel, and uses a simple five-end huck lace to create panels along the length of the scarf. Since I'd already sold the scarf, I wove up another one to send along - thank goodness I keep detailed project notes so that I could recreate it exactly!! And, since I'm an overachiever, I wove another one, too, in a spring green color (called lemongrass), also in 8/2 Tencel from Webs.

I got the proof of the article yesterday and it looks great! I wish I had the Handwoven photographer around to take pictures of all of my work, wow... It will be in the upcoming March/April issue! I'm so darn excited, how cool! I hope it doesn't get pulled at the last minute, lol! I'll believe it when I have it in my hands, I guess...

So, that was enough to have me bouncing around the kitchen, all happy. But then she asked me to write the Endnotes for the issue as well! Wahooo!! The Endnotes are a one-page column at the end of the magazine, written by various weavers - usually very prominent weavers, I'm incredibly flattered to have been asked, even if just to provide a more beginning weaver's perspective... I talk a bit about becoming a weaver, being a stay-at-home-mom and selling on Etsy; I'm not sure what will remain in the final version, she's going to edit it this weekend.

I had a wonderful time writing both the article and the Endnotes (love writing, but it can be very hard work) and just can't wait to see them in actual print.

Noodling Along

Ever have one of those days/weeks? I feel like I've sort of been treading water so far this week.

I'm working on two projects - an 8-shaft plaited twill scarf on my big loom, and another shrinkage experiment on my little loom. They're both very nice projects, but they're also slow to weave, or so it feels... I like the shrinkage experiments, but, MAN, are they boring to weave. I've gotten so used to weaving with two shuttles/multiple colors, that weaving with just one weft is kind of dull.

But I think it will be pretty in the end - here it is on the loom:

Photos of projects on the loom always end up looking washed out. Hmph. It's black merino, with blue and teal tencel stripes - the merino will shrink and the tencel will poof, as before. I've made it narrower and I'm making it longer (yawwwwwn, lol). I think I'm going to have to start dying some yarn to make these projects more interesting, because I am *really* liking the poof effect. Was also thinking of making some chokers/neckwarmers out of some of this fabric eventually...

Happy Birthday to Me

Hey, it's my birthday! We won't talk about how old I am. :)

I got a nice early birthday present last night - a lovely customer bought two of my scarves! The Un Poco Caliente full-size scarf, and the spring green and yellow scarflette (sorry, Mum, I know you loved that one).

I'm also in the midst of experimenting with differential shrinkage. First, I tried a doubleweave scarf (two layers of cloth, basically) woven with 18/2 merino wool and Bambu 7 (inspired by the similar double-weave scarf in The Best of Weavers: Fabrics That Go Bump), just as a starting point. I fulled it - the idea being that the wool yarn shrinks, the bamboo yarn doesn't, and you end up with ruffles - and it came out pretty good! A bit too heavy, in the end, for my taste.

So, then I tried just a normal plain weave scarf, instead of doubleweave, still using the 18/2 merino wool (sett very loosely) and Tencel as the non-shrinking fiber. This came out much better!

Here is is before wet finishing:



And, here it is after wet finishing (sent it through the wash twice, actually):



It's kind of hard to see, but not only did the Tencel get all nice and pucker-y, but the white merino at the edges have a nice little scallop to them as well. Neato!

It's too short (it shrank by about 50% in length) and too fat (didn't shrink as much width-wise, which makes sense, I used white Tencel as the weft), so I'm trying again with different colors, but I'm completely tickled! How fun!

12 Days of Weaving

Oh my gosh, if you weave (or live with a weaver), check out this YouTube video from Bonnie Tarsis, it's hilarious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyaE_3k8fN8

(Let's see if that link worked...)

Lots of packages going out today! The purple scarf is done and being shipped:

As well as the black/white/fuchsia bamboo scarf along the same lines (also sold yesterday - yippee!), and the tencel lace scarf is on its way to Handwoven Magazine (gulp) (wish it luck!).

I must say, it has been a fabulous first year of selling my work... I've done far better than i ever thought I would (the validation, lol!), and it has given me the confidence to move ahead, and not worry so much about whether things will sell or not. What I've discovered is that when I really love a piece, it sells. When I'm not so sure about it, it doesn't.

All except for this scarf, that is:


I love this scarf, and, for some reason, it just hasn't sold. Maybe it's a bit too pink? Not sure, but it's lovely in person (maybe I'll just keep it for myself!).

At any rate, it's been a great year - and if any of my wonderful customers happen to read this - thank you so much!!

Crazy Weaving Weekend

I think I bit off a little more than I could chew this weekend... I finished up the shawl/yardage that was on my big loom, warped/threaded/beamed and wove a second copy of this lace scarf:

(It's a five-end huck lace and it might be published in Handwoven Magazine!! Stay tuned for details...)

And now I'm in the midst of making this scarf as a custom piece for a lovely customer who lives on Nantucket:



I also managed to give Ms. B a haircut:



Phew. This kind of crazy intense weekend calls for comfort food:


That is a picture of most of the ingredients for Dublin Coddle. Hmm, tastes better than it looks. Comfort food, Irish style. It's from The Gourmet Slow Cooker by Lynn Alley. I'm not normally much of a slow-cooker person (we're frustrated foodies - frustrated because we have no time to go out to eat or to cook how we really like to at the moment), but having two kids under four and a workaholic husband can certainly turn you into one... And this book has yet to let me down - every recipe I've tried has been fantastic.

The Christmas tree is going to have to wait until next Sunday!

Apple Cider Tendel

Another productive morning! Ms. B was at preschool again (for two hours this time, wowzers), and I managed to photograph and post another scarf in my etsy shop:

And here's a close up of the structure (it's a turned twill, I used six colors of Tencel, ranging from deep brown to lemongrass green, olive and purple - a lot of fun to weave!):


(And, no, my selvedges aren't uneven - that's just a fold in the scarf near the bottom.)

I listed this one as part of the EtsyFAST September challenge - looks like apple cider to me!

Warped

30 ends per inch. I'm in warping hell...

Actually, it's not so bad. I'm setting up some organic cotton warp - this yarn has 7000 yards per pound, so it's really fine. I'm going to weave some dishtowels in Ms and Os. Huh. Haven't done many dishtowels - my first absolutely disastrous attempt at weaving involved dishtowels and yarn from a knitting store (what was I thinking?? LOL I had no idea at that point where to find yarn suitable for weaving). I made some a couple years ago for Christmas presents (along with soap that I made, too) that turned out significantly better. Here's hoping these are even better!

If these turn out well, I'm thinking of trying another set with overshot borders, using some 10/2 Tencel as the pattern weft. Supposedly, Tencel is very absorbent, and the colors are so darn striking, I thought that might be fun to try.

Not much else going on - I've started working out again. My cardiovascular system is in shock. ("You want me to do *what*??") I figured that since Conall is just about seven months old, it was time to get my rear in gear. Especially if I want to ski this winter!! I missed it so much last year! But at this point, my thighs are *not* going to be letting me telemark any time soon... Oh well, there's always snowboarding, the laziest way down the mountain if I'm still a blob by the time November/December roll around.

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!

Tencel!

So, I just finished a lace (huck) scarf for a customer, using Tencel:

It has three huck lace stripes that run the length of the scarf, with plain weave between and along the borders, to stabilize the fabric. So much fun to weave! It's sett at 20 epi, so you wouldn't think it would be a particularly quick project to weave, but it didn't feel slow, somehow. Maybe because it's fun to watch the little lace windows appearing as you go.

And Tencel is another one of the man-made fibers that I love! Like bamboo, it is an all-natural fiber (not synthetic) and made from wood cellulose in an environmentally-friendly process. It takes dye gorgeously so the colors really sing, and it has lovely drape when it's finished.

I'd been meaning to get around to weaving some lighter-weight scarves that are good year-round so it was nice to have a customer request one and light a fire under me, so to speak... I have a draft of a turned twill scarf in my notebook that I need to get back to - it's going to use six colors of tencel, that will be fun! I also put on extra warp for this project and am in the midst of making another scarf using a slightly different purple tencel for the weft this time, and weaving different size windows of lace instead of a solid lace panels the length of the scarf.

On other fronts, we visited the local ASPCA shelter (Nevins Farm) to meet some kitty cats today (poor boy cat Iko is looking very forlorn with Little Girl gone for the past week or so). Looks like we might actually wind up adopting TWO. Good grief. A lovely tortoise shell girl cat and a black and white boy cat, named Madeline and Lucky. They're both older (8 y/o) and very mellow and sweet - they both reacted really nicely to Ms. Bella and were very lovey to us. And they're both living in one of the shelter's communal cat rooms so they get along fine with each other and with other kitties. So, we'll go back tomorrow and who knows, maybe we'll come home with three. (Just kidding. Yikes!)

Productive Day

Does anyone else have just crazily productive days? I feel like I've been doing six things simultaneously all day today. Probably because it's a weekend day, Carlos is watching the kiddos, and I'm dizzy with the possibilities.

I worked on promos this morning (more of those buttons), made a trip to Michael's for fabric paint to have some fun with some boring plain t-shirts for the kids that are lying around, and have been managing to get quite a bit of weaving done, too. This may not sound like a lot to some folks, but for me, it's an amazingly productive day!

Check out a few of the t-shirts:


Two shirts for Ms. Bella (the poodle and the Eiffel Tower - she loves the Eiffel Tower since our trip to France last fall) and a cute Scottie Dog for Mr. Conall. I had way too much fun doing these.

I also have lots of yummy new tencel yarn waiting for me!



The front two purpley colors are going to be a custom huck lace scarf for a customer, and, as usual, I ordered a bunch of other colors while I was ordering those.... Baby toys and the latest Halcyon Yarn catalog as well and that pretty much sum up my day.