A word of warning to the wise: NEVER let your kids loose on the South Park avatar maker!

Here I was, innocently making a rather sweet and lovely cartoon of my daughter, Miss Brittany

When she took over the computer and made such terrible, terrible parodies of her parents!

I mean, really! Insinuating that I like ACDC. How insulting.

;-)

Well, the packing did not get done today. I suddenly felt sleepy around 11am, went to bed for half an hour and woke up at 4pm

:-P

I get the feeling that slight, tiny cough and on-again-off-again fever I've had for the past 3 weeks isn't hayfever and an allergy to camomile tea like I thought it was. I seem to actuallly be sick. Boo. Boring.

Maybe a good night's sleep will give it a good solid kick in the arse and II'll be able to finish my packing tomorrow.

~sniff~

I finished my latest (and last!) sampler and quickly became bored with trying different twill-type-things so I had a play around with some other stuff I've been interested in as well.

Firstly I will say this: Please ignore my edges. I was :-)

Now, on to the pikkies!

From the left: Herringbone twill. Some of my books call this herringbone twill and some call this herringbone twill only if the zigzags are offset vertically. Either way, whatever I did looks pretty cool IMO :-)

Next there's the same twill with a point twill treadling. I think that's what you call it... Either way I think that one's terribly dull and if I did it again I'd use more shafts and fancy it up a whole bunch. Love the whole twill diamond patterning that goes on, but this simple version is dull as dishwater. As a small stripe it would be lovely in it's simplicity I suppose, but certainly not as an allover design.

Click here for a proper look

Next I scavenged some thrums from previous projects and used them to play with some ghiordes knots. Long ones with a few picks of tabby between, then short, thicker ones with only one pick between. Love the look, love the technique. It's slow if you want it to stand on end like the multicolour section, but it's really lush. If I was to do it again I'd put 2 picks between the rows of the multicolour section though because it's REALLY packed in tight. The multicolour yarn is aran weight, BTW.

Finally for the 1st image I tried some twill and plain weaves with a thick weft. I like the effect, but if I were to use a handpainted yarn like this again I think I'd want a warp with a lot more contrast, either a lot darker or a lot lighter. I think a contrasting colour (such as bright green) might make me nauseous :-P

Ok, I KNOW it would make me nauseous.

From the bottom up this time: More ghiordes knots! This time I used a bit over 1/2 inch of tabby between the rows of knots and I made the knots with 3 strands each. This is quicker to do than the one strand technique and a lot squishier to the touch. I think it would make great cushions or a nice floor rug. I ran out of blue wool scraps so I finished the row with some nasty pink acrylic just to see what effect that particular yarn would have. As I suspected, it's nasty. :-P

Above the knots is some weft chaining. This is another technique that I really enjoyed. I found the instructions for the ghiordes knots and weft chaining in "The techniques of rug weaving" by Peter Collingwood. It's full of knotting, looping, wrapping, and other fun techniques that you can use in a zillion ways other than just for rugs. You can usually find a copy on ebay for minimal $$ but Peter has also been kind enough to make his books available for free on the net, along with many other things at http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/webdocs.html

At this point I got really bored with doing a sampler so I played wit using 4 strands of weft doing various things just to fill up the rest of the warp.

From the left: the herringbone twill thing

The 1st pick of the herringbone twill thing repeated over and over with a pick of tabby between each one (love this one)

The boring diamond thing (still boring and I'd be afraid of the long warp sections getting caught on things with this weight yarn)

I then started the boring diamond thing again, this time with a pick of tabby between each pick of diamond twill but it looked awful so I didn't do much.

Finally I finished with more weft chaining. I wouldn't do it with 4 strands of weft again because it was a pain keeping the tension on the various strands even, but I might try it with one really thick, very flexible weft, just to see what it would look like.

Well that's it for me with samplers! I'll definitely do samples for various projects, but the idea of doing another sampler just for the sake of playing around has lost it's shine.

Now I have to finish packing. Talk about boring :-P

The Cure Shares Your Taste in Music

See their whole playlist here (iTunes required)

Cooooool.

You Are Somewhat Machiavellian

You're not going to mow over everyone to get ahead... But you're also powerful enough to make things happen for yourself. You understand how the world works, even when it's an ugly place. You just don't get ugly yourself - unless you have to!

You are

You Are 55% Normal (Somewhat Normal)

While some of your behavior is quite normal... Other things you do are downright strange You've got a little of your freak going on But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself

You Are Best Described By...

Farbstudie Quadrate By Wassily Kandinsky

You Are the Very Gay Velma!

She might not even realize it... But Velma is all about Daphne ... not Fred!

I love Velma :-)

:-P

You are "Face with Glasses"

Wow, I was REALLY bored...

Last Monday Miss Binky Brittany came home with a note from school saying that the kids needed a costume for a "multicultural" party on Friday.

After a few complaints (not mine!) Miss Brittany's school had been giving us 3 weeks notice about costume days, but apparently this party was a last minute celebration for doing such a good job on their current course work. So Brittany handed over a big oddment of horrible red acetate(?) that's been hanging about the house for years, with the request that I make a kimono.

5 hours later, (somewhere around midnight), I ended up with something that looked a bit like a kimono made by a gifted 6 year old. She liked it, but I wasn't totally convinced. We added a big plastic yellow rose with a safety pin on it to keep it closed and a piece of pink ribbon for a belt and I thought that was it.

Last night she started rummaging around and managed to come up with all the things that make an ordinary costume quite cool :-). Red pantyhose (how she found those, I have no idea), a scarf, a paper fan and a pair of ornate platform soled flip flops (that I'd forgotten about because they were a size too large until her recent growth spurt!), suitable makeup and a pair of chopsticks for eating lunch and she was all ready to go!

I took this photo before she found the shoes and the right colour nailpolish :-)

The Magic of Waffle Weave

I love waffle weave. I love waffle weave so much it's the reason I took up weaving.

In fact, I love waffle weave so much that I cut my sampler from the loom before finishing it so I could see what happens when you take it off the loom and wash it.

It was just as magical as it promised to be!

On the loom it looks all taut and smooth like this:

But when you take it off and wash it, it all squishes up and you get loads of added depth and interest like this:

If I'd used a softer yarn it would be more textural and squishy but I like it anyway :-P

Don't worry, I didn't waste the rest of the warp, I retied it so I can finish my point twill sampler. I'm thinking of trying some sort of pile weave on there too since I've got a threading that works with plain weave as well.

I am totally enjoying being immersed in something new that, until recently, I knew absolutely nothing about.

Stay tuned for more geeky beginner weaver gushing!

Lookie, I made another scarf!

This time I left the novelty yarns and rigid heddle loom alone, put a steel blue warp on my 8 shaft loom (with floating selvage) and wove a 2x2 twill with rainbow coloured wool. The colour isn't right (the rainbow is a lot more intense and the blue is a lot bluer), but this is the best picture I could get.

I thought I'd set the warp too closely when I first took it off the loom, (12dpi) but after I washed it, it loosened up and now drapes beautifully.

I had so much fun that immediately put on a warp for a point twill sampler. I've already started with some waffle weave, then plan to go onto some twill-play :-)

This house is only our house for another 32 days!

I'm in a hurry so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Mostly.

Left: dk wool and feathers (eyelash) warp with magenta boucle weft
Centre: dk wool and novelty metallic ladder yarn warp with brushed alpaca weft
Right: metallic gold and rainbow chenille, and rainbow handpaint dk wool warp with magenta boucle weft. Fringe twisted with one strand of each

I haven't had room to put a warp on my table loom so I've been experimenting with fashion scarves on my rigid heddle loom instead. My intention is to learn as much as possible about the ways different yarns behave when woven while also using up a large amount of my oddball stash.

:-)

Here are the latest 3.

Scarf from Ashford's Wheel Magazine #17 (page 29), made with stash yarns. I used Patons Feathers and a plain 8 ply (dk weight) wool for the warp and a mohair boucle for the weft. I like this one a lot more than the purple Opal scarf so this one is going to be my daughter's art teacher's Christmas present instead.

A shorter scarf this time, with black boucle for the warp and brushed alpaca plied with rainbow thick n thin novelty for the weft.

A simple 3 colour check in 8 ply (dk weight) wools. This one still needs a good steam iron I think.

Next I'm going to weave some yardage for cushion covers and a backpack. The cushion fabric is a secret, but the backpack idea was inspired by this pikkie from the Ashford website.

I have a confession.

I hate knitting socks.

I hate wearing socks.

I LOVE sock yarns. I like how fine they are, I like the added nylon, and I LOVE the self patterning ones when I feel like making something effortless.

So, what do I do with sock yarns?

Here's what I've made so far:

Lots of fingerless mitts! I don't care if my feet are cold, but I hate having cold hands. Click on the photo for the free pattern. :-)

I also wove these (forgive the beginner weaving. I am a beginner, after all):

I made the orange scarf to match my mitts, and the purple one is for my daughter's fabulous art teacher, who needs a scarf to wear when she rides her Harley. (You have to love non stereotypical positive female role models. We live in a small country town where all the women seem to be sports mums or are having lots of babies. It's nice for my art-mad daughter to have a glamorous, artistic, Harley riding woman in town to show her that the women in her family aren't the only ones to break the female stereotypes that the boys seem to insist are real!)

Anyway, I digress.

I also crocheted a belt for my daughter but the photo sucks and she won't let me block it until it gets dirty so you don't get to see that one :-P

I wonder what a hat would look like in yellow sock yarn?

:-)