Footprints

Carlos (Mr. Skiingweaver) just sent me this picture, which I had forgotten about...

Doesn't it make you want to be a little kid again? It does me. Reminds me that the straight-ahead way of moving through life isn't always the most fun... Or most interesting.

Re: Weaving - the purple scarf that had its 15 seconds of fame on the front page of Etsy is on its way to a new home today! Along with another scarf - wonderful customer. My shop is looking kind of bare, yikes.

But I did want to share some new fabric I wove last night:



They're really more like samples - just 8" wide by about 13" long, but I wanted to weave with some fabulous little 1-yard lengths of silk, and decided to give it a whirl. Warping a 1-yard long warp was kind of odd, but I figured it out. The colored bands are pure silk, the black on the outsides is Zephyr (50/50 wool/silk) and I wove it in a loose twill. Not quite sure what I'll do with them yet (little wall hangings? cuffs?), but I really enjoyed how they came out, with a nice random mix of silk fibers.

Purple Scarf Needs Some Love - and Cordoba, Spain, for Something Completely Different

Well, phooey, my blogging roll ended with a resounding thud. So did Cyber Monday thus far. (Though last week went very well for my little Etsy shop!)

But, I did manage to take some better photographs of this poor purple scarf:

The poor thing was posted in my Etsy shop pretty early on - before I sort-of got the knack for taking ok pictures of textiles. So, it wasn't getting many views. Or maybe it's just a really homely scarf, lol! Poor purple scarf needs some love.

Natural daylight really does seem to work the best for me...

I have kind of an old digital camera - an Olympus C-3030. We bought it in September-ish 2000 to take on our honeymoon with us, and digital cameras were still pretty new then - and it was state of the art (and wicked expensive, no way would anyone pay $1000 for 3.3 Megapixels now, lol!!). Amazing how fast technology changes, isn't it?

At any rate, I remember we were in the Mosque in Cordoba (Spain), and this (American) guy walked up to me while I was trying to take pictures of the arches (beautiful) and was amazed at how you could see the photos *on the camera*! LOL And our kids will all grow up saying - you mean you had to wait to get the photos developed?? And what exactly *is* an "album"?



There are those beautiful arches. Also took this photo from the window of our hotel room in Cordoba:


Yup. travel bug is biting. Niece Timothea was in Paris this past week for her 30th birthday (she's living in the UK at the moment, lucky kid), took some *fantastic* pictures and has me all jealous.... Maybe by next fall Mr. Conall will be big enough to travel. Can't wait!

Twisting Madness

Wow, I've actually managed to finish two more scarves in record time. Twisted fringe during Red Sox games, got them washed, and managed to take photos during Conall's 30-second nap this afternoon (sigh) (my kids don't sleep). Nothing like a sale to light a fire under one's rear...

The first is a lime/white twill woven from zephyr (50/50 wool/silk) and 50/50 alpaca wool:

The pattern is called "gothic cross" and is from Marguerite Davison's A Handweaver's Pattern Book. If you're a weaver with a four-shaft (or more) loom and don't already own this book, run, don't walk to Amazon and get yourself one. (It's an old book, out of print, but you can still find it!)

Here's a closer view of the pattern:

I like it. :) The reverse side is predominantly green, but I think of this as the front side.

I looooove how this second scarf turned out, though!



This is a turned Ms and Os pattern - and it's made from three shades of pink bamboo (love that bamboo) - ranging from light shell pink to burgundy to outline the cells. Would make a nice gift for a breast cancer survivor...

Bamboo, it turns out, loves Ms and Os. Who knew?! It shrinks up just enough during finishing, I think, to really take to a structure that requires the yarn to move. Which means the finer version of the yarn would probably make gorgeous lace, too. Hmmm....

I'm thinking I might have to make another one of these, and a little headband/scarflette, too, for myself. Now if I can just get around to choosing the best pictures and getting these two listed in my etsy store...

Argh!

Let's play spot the threading error...


Can you see it? It is about halfway across in the photo. Ugh. See, this is what I get for my hubris/tempting the PTBs by saying that I rarely make threading errors. LOL. Serves me right!

Glad this fabric is just for me and Conall - if it were for a customer I'd have had to fix it. This way I get to be lazy. Now that it's off the loom, though, there's another problem - I think it's too short! Argh! Could I have made any more mistakes with this project? Well, yes, I suppose so.

Maybe I'll think of something else to use the fabric for... Little bags of some sort? Promo samples? I've covered journals with woven fabric before and they came out quite nice...

Oh - Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! And what a gorgeous day for Mother's Day here. Sunny, low 60s, perfect weather, the lilacs are blooming (YUM). Not too hot, not too chilly, warm in the sun, but not too warm - I actually got some gardening in today as well as weaving. And I had the audacity to stop watching the Red Sox game before the 9th inning - oops. Missed the hugely dramatic come from behind win. Rats. A very nice, low-key Sunday!

Hemming and Hawing

Kivy's shawl is off the loom!

I took this photo outside, so the colors are closer to how they look to my eyes, though now, if anything, they look a little over-saturated. Hmph. Who knew photographing textiles could be so difficult??

I remembered which is my "bad" selvedge, by the way (the left). And now I'm hemming the shawl:


Not too shabby! The stitches don't seem to show on the front at all to my eye (I'm proud of myself; a seamstress, I'm not, lol).

Anywho, I was thinking of adding some tassels on the corners of the shawl, but now that I see it, up close and personal, I don't think I will. I like the clean lines of it as is and think that maybe tassels would be a little overly fussy. I'm dithering, though. I should ask Kivy what she thinks, it's for her, after all!

I hem and twist fringe during Red Sox games. The kids are in bed and I can spread out with no fear of curious - and grubby - fingers. I got half of it done last night while the Sox tromped on Toronto - here's hoping for another win tonight!

On other fronts, I went to the final Weavers Guild of Boston meeting today - what a lovely group of women. We had the yearly business meeting, lunch, a little fashion show and then a lecture about collecting coverlets given by a former curator of the American Textile History Museum. It didn't quite get my creative juices flowing as much as last month's meeting, but I did get to meet a lot more people this time, which was very nice - adult conversation! Wow! A novelty for a stay-at-home-mom... I actually missed my munchkins while I was gone. Silly, I was gone for all of 4 1/2 hours or so, that's all. Mommy love is pretty powerful stuff.

I also got some delicious yarn in the mail today from Yarnchef at etsy - check out her shop! Lovely stuff. I got some gorgeous variegated pink merino yarn from her, I'm thinking of combining it with some dark brown bamboo. How Mod. Yum.