Christmas break

The last couple of months have been crazy! With the craft sale and all the prep work, I haven't had a chance to work on anything other than school work. And tomorrow was my last day of class for the semester, so I am officially off for Christmas! 

I'm already busy working away on some tea towels for my sister-in-law's sister. I stayed with her this summer and gave her two as a thank you for feeding up and letting us sleep there. She liked the. So much, she wanted a few more! My first order!!! They're a simple design but I really like them.

Scarves

I'm weaving scarves for the craft sale. I'm using the same fibre as I used for my yardage, (50/50 wool/silk blend), but it's set slightly farther apart, so I don't have quite as many ends per inch. That's great, but is decided to make each scarf 72" long. So it's taken me longer than I anticipated. Dressing the loom was a breeze compared to the yardage, so that's a positive. Plus instead of doing a set of three, I'm doing four. Because why the hell not? After talking with a very interesting and inspiring lady, Christine (who has made a living weaving for 40 years) a few weeks ago, I decided to make my scarves into infinity scarves. Which means no fringe, but I will have to seam the ends together.

I think they will turn out great!

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Coin Purses

From the yardage I wove last week, I am going to be making coin purses. I found some clasps online  and bought 20. I wasn't sure how they were going to turn out, so I didn't want to over buy and end up with a bunch of coin purse clasps I couldn't sell. But now that I've cut up my yardage (surprisingly a lot easier to do than I thought), I have one fully completed coin purse and by the end of today I hope to have 10 made. Production at its finest!

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Stuffed animals

Another product I'm making for the craft sale are some stuffed animals. These are made of boiled wool. This basically means that I take something that is knit with 100% wool, stick it in the washing machine in a super hot cycle and shrink the bejesus out of it. Something probably everyone's mothers told them never to do. I've been shrinking sweaters and cutting them up and making a variety of animals - elephants, alligators, giraffe/llama/brachiosaurus (depending on your own specific wants), whales, lions and rhinos. They're coming together quite nicely.

Yardage

One of my classes is organizing a craft sale. This will help us to learn about the benefits of productions lines and not just making one of a kind items. Originally, I wanted to just do woven items, because that's what I enjoy the most. But we are supposed to focus on different price points, and woven items tend to be on the higher end of the spectrum. 

But I'm still weaving of course! My first production line on the loom in class was to weave yardage, and hopefully make coin purses out of them. I'm using a 50/50 wool/silk blend. It's quite luscious. I might have gone a bit overboard with the type of yarn I used, but they will be wonderful. I also overestimated the size of the pieces I would need, so instead of the 20 coin purses I plan to make, I could actually make closer to 80 if I so choose. But I only have 20 clasps, so at least that will limit me.

Blankets

I started making a warp for blankets this summer. I'm planning to make 3 and have hen approximately 60" x 90". 

This morning, instead of working on school work, I decided that I needed to make some progress on the blankets. So I spent about 6 hours finishing the threading, sleighing the reed and tying on. Then I was able to start weaving!

I probably completely about double this amount. But I need to start thinking about whether I have enough of my weft yarn or if I have to alternate the brown with something else.

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Weaving with tencel

 I'm about one month in to school. Already finished a few weaving projects. The latest one is my first 8 harness weaving ever. I did a gamp (a type of sampler) made with tencel. It's off the loom now, but not quite finished. So here's a picture of it in progress.

This gamp has a variety of twill structures. There are so many more options when you have 8 harnesses. Worst part was having to change the treadle tie up. I don't think the loom had even cleaned in awhile. My dust allergies were out in full force.

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In full swing

School is definitely in full swing now. I'm finally settling in to the routine. I think I am anyway.

I'm really enjoying my weaving class. I feel that from the first moment I sat at a loom, it was like a choir of angels were singing "Ahhhhhh" in four part harmony. It's definitely something my brain understands and is meant to do.

Right now we are still doing 4 harness weaving, which is what we did last year. Really it's so we refresh ourselves after being away all summer and we're learning how to use a CAD program for weaving, so it easier to learn with something we already know.

Today I started planning for my first big production project. We are having a Christmas Craft Sale the last week of November and have to produce things for it. So I was trying to plan what my colours would be and if I could get more than one thing in one warp. I think it's going to work, but I need to do some mock ups first. We shall see.

I will try to take some pictures of my work to date and post them here soon.

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School's in!

School started yesterday, which also means back to more frequent blogging! (Hopefully anyway).

I have a decent schedule this semester. Sewing/Pattern Drafting, CAD for Weaving, Preparing for the Retail market, Weaving on more than four harnesses, 3D construction as well as a history about myths and magic. I haven't actually had all of my classes yet, so I don't know if I like all of them or not :)

In weaving today, we warped and started dressing the loom. I'm using a Louet David loom, which is new. It's a much smaller and lighter loom than I'm used to. I felt like I was manhandling it all afternoon. But I got all of my homework done in class, so cheers to that!

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Alberta

I'm still in Alberta. We has a wonderful time hiking through the Rockies and made it 2,300m above see level. 

We then went to Calgary and I was able to make it to two places I wanted to go. I weaving/spinning/yarn store and a woollen mill!

Shuttleworks - here, I bought two louet spinning bobbins and a longer weaving shuttle. 

Custom Woolen Mills - on the way to Edmonton, you can take a tour around their industrial revolution era mill. They had some reallyneatprocessing equipment! I did end up buying one pound of raw Cotswold fleece too!

Now that we are in Edmonton, I wonder where else fibrey we can visit??

http://www.shuttleworks.com/ 

http://www.customwoolenmills.com/index.htm

End of summer

I finished work yesterday, which means that another school year is nearing. But first I am going to my brother's wedding in Alberta. A long day of traveling and I am sitting in a cabin at a hostel while the rest of my family sleeps. How kind of them to leave me with piece and quiet for a bit!

What is on my loom now? Well, I decided to make 3 LARGE blankets on the 60" loom.

This was taken before much was wound on. I left it in a ready-to-thread state so when I get back from my travels, I hope to be able to work on that. Fingers crossed.

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New machine!

Summer is quickly coming to an end. How depressing. I feel like I barely had a summer at all.

But on the plus side, I have acquired a new piece of machinery - not another loom though (3 is probably enough for now).

One of the volunteers who helps a lot at work and who I've spend a decent amount of time with got a new sewing machine. I guess when her husband agreed to the purchase of the sewing machine, he told her that she needed to get rid of one of the five sewing machines she already had. Guess who was in the right place at the right time?! Me!

It has a beautiful cabinet with large fold out extensions, so there will be a lot of space for the fabric to sit and not weigh down. It needs a bit of a tune up since it hadn't been used regularly in awhile, but it's very exciting! It's a Singer Model 774.

Model 774

Lots of table space!

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More tea towels

Now I'm making a blue tea towel!

Tea towels and silk scarves

Another tea towel nearly done. Only 10 left! I don't have a lot of time to weave at work, so I'm going to start going in a bit early if I can to get it done. And I've given up for a bit on the overshot. Maybe once I'm closer to the end of the warp, I'll try to fix it.

Blue stripes

In other (great) news... I sold two hand dyed silk scarves today! That's four total over the summer. Fingers crossed that a few more sell!

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More tea towels

The loom I brought to work hasn't been seeing as much action as I would like. First it was too hot to be in the upstairs in that building, or I forgot to bring more cotton, or we were busy, or I needed a break from working and needed more than anything just to sit and do nothing.

But I finally got one towel off. These are the set of towels that I decided to try overshot with. Of course since I've never tried overshot before (and will be learning it next year in school), I was bound to make a mistake or two. My main mistake was that I didn't research what the sett should be - in other words, I didn't really do my homework. I am using 4/8 cotton and chose 12EPI as my sett. Previously, I'd used  14EPI, but I knew it needed to be a bit more spread out because I was planning on doing mostly plain weave. Little did I know, the sett for overshot needs to be even farther apart. So I did my first towel and it didn't look the greatest. It definitely looks better in the picture than in real life.

Overshot attempt #1

Believe me, it doesn't look like this in person. You can see the pattern starting to show, but with the tabby shots, it just looks too spread out in person. So I understand why the sett needs to be farther apart. 

I cut this towel off last week and might try changing reed sizes. I have a 10 reed I'm not currently using, so I feel like it would be worth it - otherwise, all 11 remaining will be completely plain weave within occasionally shot of blue thrown in there.

Oh well. I'm learning. :)

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Another Fibre weekend

I was in Fredericton this past weekend to have another spinning weekend with some girls from school.  But it was so unbelievably hot that I didn't end up actually doing much spinning. The feel of my touching the unspun fibre reminded me of going out in hot sweaty bars and women flipping their hair around and smacking you in the sweaty arm and the hair would stick there for a couple of seconds. Gross.

Photo borrowed from Jasmine

One of our (favourite) teachers, Rachel, was getting married on Saturday night, and her reception was open to the public, so we went. It was a lot of fun and the warm welcome and amount of love showed to us by the couple of teachers there was great. I'm glad we went.

The girls!

And of course hanging out with those fibre girls is always fun. And we ate well too.

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Knitting

I've been slacking on my posting now that I've started back to work. It's hard to get back in to the swing of things, especially being on your feet most of the day. But it's been going good thus far. And yesterday I decided to knit (by hand).

Hooded baby sweater

It's the beginnings of a baby sweater for a friend of mine. Hopefully she doesn't read this blog :) I don't really have any concept of what size it's going to be. I'm following a pattern, but it definitely (to me) looks bigger than a new born size. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to hope for the best! I think she's not due til the fall anyway, so the sweater should be ok. Fingers crossed!

It's so satisfying doing this sweater because its coming together quite fast. I've never done baby clothes, but I think I like it! Plus, isn't the yoke adorable?

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Earrings

My sister and I spent a few hours on Sunday felting. It was a super hot day and we were able to sit outside on the deck and make some small felted items to make in to earrings.

I will be selling these at Carter House this summer. I will try to remember to take a picture of the finished earrings tomorrow.

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First sale

So today is a monumental day for me... I had my first sale! The first thing that anyone has ever paid money for (in terms of fibre art things) sold today. It was a hand dyed silk scarf. Not my most expensive item, but it's something! I feel like I've crossed an invisible threshold and can now claim to me a real fibre artist. That sounds lame. But I feel like its just the beginning!

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Starting work

I start work on Friday. Well, I've started working with the volunte board a while ago, but the tea room officially opens on Friday. Since I'm the manager, I've been given a lot of things to do and make decisions on.

One of them is whether we should wear uniforms. At first I was against it because some people alluded to requiring us to wear white shirts and black pants. I HATE that combination. I think I was required to wear that uniform too much as a kid in choir concerts and such. Now we're looking at requiring everyone to wear white shirts. Which isn't ideal in my mind, but they've told me the organization will provide two shirts to each of us.

So today I went shopping for white shirts to see what our options are. One woman had bought a few too but I didn't like them. Which comes to my rant. Almost all of the white shirts for sale right now are see through. They're knits but it's a slubby yarn that is knit... Therefore some parts are thick and others are thin, resulting in a see through type shirt. What's the point in that? You'd just have to wear another shirt underneath anyway. Unless you're an exhibitionist, which I am not.

I found a few good options. Hopefully the students agree with me. But really - who cars if they agree. They have to do what I say!

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Spinning weekend

A couple girls from school (Jasmine and Anna) and I got together this weekend to spin and help warp a loom.

The Artsy Girls

We decided before school ended that we should visit each other this summer since we each live in a different city. And since Jasmine just got a new loom and was a bit nervous about setting it up all on her own (she's dressed a loom a few times, but never without other people around to ask questions to), so we went to Shediac first.

We caught up on each other's goings on. We had some wine and spun some yarn, while Jas made up her warp.  Today we went to the Shediac market and did some yard sale shopping and finished dressing the loom. 

Beautiful studio set up in the garage

Overall, a very successful fibre-filled weekend!

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The loom is on the move

So I am taking a leap and moving my smallest loom (36" wide) to my summer workplace. Since I'm managing it, and have known most of the volunteer board of directors the majority of my life, I decided to bring my loom at set it up in the tea room. Some of the people I talked to were all for it, others not as sold on the idea.  That's why it's a leap. Better to ask forgiveness than permission? Maybe?

I realize that I'm not putting it there so I can weave on all of my spare time, because likely I won't have a ton. It's more as an educational thing for people who come in and are genuinely interested. It's in the upstairs if the tea room which is set up as a museum of sorts, so not everyone goes up there. But hopefully the word will spread that someone is weaving there and we will get a few more customers that way.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am making tea towels - all white plain weave except for a band of colour on one end. This way, if anyone wants to try weaving, I can say of course and tell them the two treadles to push.  Obviously the coloured band is going to be a bit more involved, so the white will be the only time I'd let anyone try. And if they royally mess up, we'll, I can always undo the weaving - although I HATE that.

Taking it apart

Putting it all back together again!

I'm heading to Moncton area this weekend to hang out (and spin!) with a couple of girls from school. I'm really looking forward to it :)

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Next set of tea towels.

So I'm making another tea towel warp. This time I'm going to do it all white and in plain weave, with a small section of coloured pattern near one end. This way, I can change up the colour if I want (where with my first set of towels, I could really only use blue).

I am being inspired by this tea towel I found on etsy. I think it's simple but beautiful and classy.

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Scarf two is done!

My silk hiro scarves are both done... Just a bit of fringing left and I will be able to add them to my pile of "for sale at Carter House" items. I will start work next week, and there are a few more things I have left to do, but I have a few good things to add to the gift shop.

I'm planning to take my smallest loom to Carter House too. And I will set it up with tea towels probably. I likely won't have a lot of time to actually weave, but I hope some people will see it and ask questions and go away with a better understanding of what weaving is and how it's done. I will probably bring my spinning wheel too. 

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Scarf two

I've started the second silk hiro scarf. It's quite different colour wise, but I'm using the same threading and treadling. So same pattern.  And I'm going to try to make them the same length - even though it's super long.

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Scarf number one is done!

So my first silk hiro scarf is complete. It was a nice feeling pulling it off the loom last night. I finished the fringe up today and sewed in all the ends and it turned out really nice... Except I over compensated for the shrinkage part and ended up with a 98" long scarf (before the 6" fringe is added on each end). It's SOOOOO long. But it actually wraps around my neck twice and then it seems to be a wonderful length. So it will definitely keep your neck warm.

I am planning on selling it at 1810 Carter House this summer where I will be working. The price tag will be more than people will likely expect to pay, but that's ok. If it doesn't sell this summer, I'm sure it will eventually.

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Finally weaving the silk hiro scarves!

So I've finally dyed the weft for the silk hiro.

Hanging the weft to dry on the line

And now I've also started weaving the first scarf! FINALLY! I can say that I probably wasn't as proactive with this as I should have been. It should have been done ages ago. But I should get it finished in the next day.

It's looking pretty good, if I do say so myself.

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Silk Hiro Weft dyeing

Well, I've dyed the weft for the first silk hiro scarf. Yesterday I was going to, but I decided I needed to get a bit more yarn out of my massacred skein before I dyed it.

It's a subtle colour. About 1/3 of the weight of the skein. I think it'll look nice. Hopefully I don't have to dye more. But if I do, fingers crossed it will work out ok. Otherwise it might end up being a shorter scarf than I first envisioned.

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Silk hiro scarf weft

Well, I have what I hope is enough silk hiro untangled from the skein. I've weighed it, so if I need to dye more, I can. I hope it doesn't come down to that though. Now as I'm writing this, I wonder if I should be a bit more patient and untangle some more.

I've talked myself into it. Back to untangling!

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Blanket

I've starting making the warp for my first set of blankets on the 60" loom. I haven't finished yet because I ran out of one colour, so I'm going to have to improvise. There's very little possibility I will find that colour in the same die lot. That's ok though. I'm sure the blankets will be nice regardless!

Warp chain

Once I get the warp on the loom, you'll be able to see the pattern a bit better. Until then, it's a surprise!

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Ball winder and umbrella swift!

They came in the mail today. I've been religiously checking online to see where they were, without much change in the past couple of days. And low and behold, when I open the mailbox today, there they were!

I spent the next two hours trying to unravel the mess I made of my skein of silk hiro. Not much success there.

But I do have some blankets off the 60" loom!

Dark Pink and Dark Purple weft in uneven stripes

Solid grey weft which highlights the colours of the warp

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New heddles!

I just received my new (to me) heddles in the mail!

                                

They will go on my 60" loom. I was going to buy extras for the other two looms while I was at it, but realized they have the same size heddles, so I should be fine. But the big loom has 12.5" heddles and as I mentioned in a previous post, for the current blankets I'm making, I had to construct makeshift heddles and it took FOREVER. So I say this was a good investment!

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New purchases

So I decided the other day that it was time to invest in a ball winder and umbrella swift.

This is going to make my life easier this summer for sure (and in the future). I did a bunch of research and found what I think are good products and at decent prices. I hope they come soon though, because I tried to split the skein of silk hiro so I could dye it for the weft of my painted warp scarves, and the splitting didn't go so well. It's going to be a backward process, but I will have to wind it in to a ball, and try to get about half in the first ball - the skein is way too big for just one ball anyway. But once I ball it, I'll have to re-skein it so I can dye it. So the ball winder will definitely come in handy.

I also bought a bunch of heddles for my 60" loom. When I threaded the last project I did on that loom, I didn't have enough heddles and had to make some out of cotton. And it took FOREVER. There was probably 80ish heddles less than what I needed, so I decided buying more would be a wise move.

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Warping

So I've almost finished warping the silk hiro scarves. They are all dyed, which turned out better than I had anticipated. I still have some weft to dye, but it's on its way!

I ended up using Navy, Violet and Island blue for one section. It is definitely more subtle than the other side. I used Saffron and Raspberry on the other side, but made sure they blended together. 

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Silk hiro - dyeing the second scarf

Well, I'm happy to report that dyeing the second scarf went much better than the first. As I was doing the first, I realized I should have soaked out the silk. But since I'd already started, I didn't want to change half way through. So it took forever. I soaked out the second scarf and it took far less time to dye. Lesson learned. Now it's steaming. After that's done, I'll let it sit for awhile, rinse it out, let it dry and should be able to warp in a couple days!

Silk Hiro scarves part two

I've started working on the silk hiro scarves. I'm doing a hand dyed painted warp - two different colour ways.  I laid out the first scarve very nicely. That was all the space I had, so I'm doing them one at a time. 

I think I've taken on too much with this one. 

And I took my gloves off thinking everything was ok, but I was wrong. Blue hands for days. 

I Decided to steam one before attempting the other end of it. Probably not a good idea, but it is what is happening at this point.

What an eventful Saturday night.

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Sample Silk Hiro

My sample is complete (from this post).

The colour of the warp is something I would definitely do again - but I should have dyed some weft before I started weaving. I ended up using undyed silk hiro. It's an ok look, but not what I wanted.

I used a threading called Gothic Cross. I started out doing the suggested treadling, but then I started to do some variations. I think it looks pretty neat and am going to definitely use it on the actual scarves.

It shrunk about 30%, so I've redone my warp calculation and should be fine. Fingers crossed!

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Silk Hiro

I've gotten all my cotton tea towels off my loom and my next project is going to be a couple scarves made out of silk hiro. It's a beautiful braided fibre with a lot of elasticity. I'm not sure if that's the actual name, or if it's just a new yarn type, because I can't find it anywhere online. But I have 2 skeins of it left over from a sweater that I knit in class last semester, so I figure I should use it.

I've never woven with it before, and I'm worried that the scarves might not end up the actual length I want it to due to the elasticity. So... drum roll please, I'm doing a SAMPLE. My teachers would be so proud.

I'm doing a painted scarf, so I'm going to pretty much do the exact same steps for the sample as I would do for the real thing. The picture doesn't do it justice at all (I really need to work on my photography skills), but I dyed it with acid dyes in Raspberry and Saffron, in a striped pattern, but having the colours slightly overlap. I'm not sure if I'll actually use these colours in the scarves I plan to make.

Anyway, it started out at 50" and after I'd dyed it was 36"! That's a crazy shrink rate! It was definitely dried with a weight on it before it was sold. I'm super happy that I did a sample now because I would have probably only ended up with one full size scarf and a tiny little extra bit.

Once the sample warp is dry, I'm going to put it on the loop and see how it looks. First step is to determine what threading I will use. Any suggestions?

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Knitting machine

I finally got a knitting machine! It was a bargain and although its not the prettiest machine (in that it is old and yellowing), it works!! Well, in truth, I had to take it a part a bit to clean it out and oil it because I thought I broke it when I moved one of the levers, but I didn't! It just needed some TLC.

So now this will expand my crafting abilities. Although I do knit by hand, I'm looking forward to being able to whip something up quickly if the need arises. For example, yesterday Kristian asked me if I had anything for a baby shower. Which I didn't, so I spent a good part of the day making a cute gender neutral baby hat (doing up tension swatches and such) and although its done, it would have been a BREEZE doing it on this machine.  

                                 

For those who know a bit about knitting machines: it is a Brother KH-260 which is a bulky machine and only has about 100 needles on the bed, but I couldn't pass up this machine. Definitely a good one to start out with!

                                 

Taking it apart to clean it. God I'm good! (Sorry about the picture quality)

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Happy Mothers Day

I decided awhile ago what I would give my mom for Mother's Day - a beautiful screen printed silk scarf - because I made a few in class and they are definitely in my mom's wardrobe's colour spectrum. I hope she likes it!

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Silk scarves

I'm making things in the next month or so to sell at Carter House this summer. I am going to be the manager there and there is a gift shop. The people who run it have been kind enough to say I can sell things there. So I decided that silk scarves would be a good idea.

I started by dyeing the scarves a base colour because they started out white and I didn't really want any white on them.

Base colours

Then I shiboried them. That basically means I tied them, folded them, creating resists that the dye could not penetrate. I did a few testers to see which method looked the best and some were really nice - others will likely be over dyed. Below are two scarves, one started out blue and the other yellow.

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Examples

                                             

Blankets!

I was able to use my new loom bench with my new loom to make a blanket already! I'm working on finishing it right now (sewing in ends and such) and then I will post a full picture.

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Loom bench

I'm in PEI this weekend visiting my friend Sarah for her birthday. Leading up to the weekend, I was on kijiji and figured I would check to see if there was anything on the island that I would like to buy... And there was a loom bench! Since I now have 3 looms and only 1 bench, this was something worth considering. And since a new loom bench is $450+,  I couldn't pass up this bench for $125!! So I got it. Apparently the owners had inherited it and had no idea what it was until they googled the name Leclerc. So now I have a really nice new-to-me bench!

New loom!

I was very fortunate recently to receive a 60" loom. Yes, I already have two, but this opportunity was too good to pass up. So I wrangled by dad in to helping me pick it up on Tuesday. It's wonderful. It was originally intended to be a rug loom, so its really well constructed (large pieces of wood) and has a significant beater on it. And the best part it, I was planning to make a number of trips up to Fredericton this summer in order to make a few large 60" blankets, but now I don't have to! It's wonderful!

But first I decided to do something crazy. I have a 45" loom that I have yet to weave anything on because it needs to be rebalanced. And I don't know how to do that. The unfortunate thing is,I realized that AFTER I had put a big warp on it. So I haven't done anything with it yet. And I have a bit of a deadline.

So I did the craziest thing ever and transferred the warp from the 45" loom to the 60" loom. Before I dove in, I thought about what the best way to do that would be. I figured would be nice to not have quite as much work, so I left it attached to the front apron rod and through the reed and wound it all on the front beam until I got to the end of the warp on the 45". Now I'm threading the string through the heddles backwards (using a twill, so it's not too difficult to do backwards). Then I'm going to tie on the back and wind it back through until I get back to the front where I can fix the tension and start weaving.

Definitely probably not the wisest thing to do, but I want to get it done as soon as possible and I don't know when I will get to learn about how to rebalance looms.

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