Charleen's Fiberblog

Ready to Move On

Not such a great photo but it's always fun to stretch out your latest weaving and admire!

Here's the finished products. Since this warp took forever to weave off I'll refresh your memory! WEBS Eight-two, one of my favorites, it's a warp spun cotton that's great for towels and baby blankets. The warp is a creamy off-white (Alabaster) and dark green (Evergreen).

(above) The weft in the top towel is the same as the warp, the lower towel is Dark Teal and Terra Cotta.

(above) The top towel is using Silver Gray and Ink Blue, the bottom towel uses Silver Gray and Gray Blue.

I got six towels out of the warp and with what the leftover warp left I wove a placemat. Think it's time?

I'm not sure that the Eight-Two will be heavy enough for placemats but who knows? I've also had my eye on Janet Dawson's Anything but Plain, article in the Nov/Dec 2007 Handwoven. I love the idea of a somewhat regular random!

Log Cabin: One Color at a Time

Spring Break started with a gorgeous double rainbow! (The second is to the right, it's not showing up very well in the compressed image) I didn't overplan this break, but I knew I wanted to weave a couple of the log cabin towels using two colors of weft that were different from the warp. I first started thinking about adding more colors to the basic log cabin when I was planning some baby blankets a few years ago.

I'm working on the same warp that I wound two months ago. Since WEBS had their Eight-Two on sale it seemed like a good time to try some new colors.

Rather than wrap yarns around a card I like to twist them together. I think it gives a much better representation.

I like this combo. Uh oh! Since the loom is already warped with Evergreen and Alabaster picking 4 yarns that don't include those two doesn't exactly work :-)

So I tried lots of different combinations, changing out two weft threads each time, and came up with two that appealed to me.

The two weft colors are a dark turquoise and terra cotta.

Although the dark turquoise is almost indistinguishable from the evergreen it makes a subtle and very pleasing combination.

These two wefts are silver gray and gray blue. I wanted to keep away from anything that was as dark as the evergreen. I liked this enough to make two

I should have enough warp to try out at least two more combinations.

There was some quilting progress and work on Twist is coming along nicely, but most of my free time was spent with this guy!

A couple of weeks ago I received a copy of Family Circle in the mail. I never subscribed to it but Jackson saw the cupcakes on the cover and kept asking for them. What's a grandma to do? I made them the night before Easter and Jackson was quite impressed.

(That's Laura's hand reaching towards Jackson. Her friend was married the day before Easter in a traditional Hindu wedding. On Friday they had the mehendi ritual. Jackson was very impressed with the fact that Aunt Laura had peacocks all over the palm of her hand.)

The Refined and Not-So-Refined

These finished sweater pics are a little on the yellow side but you can still see the results of the Refined Aran Jacket.

I used a rolled hem for the sleeves, bottom, and pocket edges. I also grafted the ribbed collar instead of using a three-needle bind off. It's noticeable but not as noticeable as the bind off was.

The little cables and the saddles give a nice zing to this understated pattern.

I'm not sure if I was trying to hold in my stomach or not, but if I wasn't I should be after baking this weekend!

First off was a delicious Irish Soda Bread. A little late for St. Patrick's Day but there wasn't anyone around to eat it then.

This was the killer - Peanut Butter Fudge Brownies. I actually made them twice. The first batch was for a friend at work and they turned out so good that I made them for the weekend when the whole family came to see my BIL, who was in PA for a wedding. Can't you just taste the peanutty goodness!

Finally, I'm finished the back and up to the armholes on the first side of Twist.

One Log at a Time

I've been recovering from surgery so the weaving was on hold for a bit. The last week or two I've been weaving for short periods, 20-30 minutes at at time. But that's okay because it gave me time to figure out why the two shuttle weaving wasn't going as well as it did in the past. With a little help from a well-worn monograph, Plain Weave is Anything But Plain by Leslie Voiers, I realized what I had been doing intuitively.

My threading sequence was 1-2-3-4 and ended with 1. It should have meant that when shaft one was up when the I threw the shuttle that shuttle would go down towards me. The threads automatically are locked and all is well.

But it wasn't, because in my waste-not attitude I just thread the last thread on shaft 2 and never realized it. That's why I was having such a hard time getting all the warp ends in the selvedge to be enclosed.
Once my addled brain got wrapped around that I was rocking!

I went to the doctor yesterday and got the okay to weave for longer periods and my weight restriction was upped from 8 to 30 pounds. First thing I did was go pick up Jackson.

Now we can resume our afterschool exploring. He loves looking through my knitting bags and pulling out all sorts of finished and partially finished things. If it can fit on his head - then he wears it for the rest of his visit. Then I gave him the word - no eating for 10 weeks. He weighed 29 lbs at his last visit :-)