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Free WoolPosted by on Friday 21 March, 2008 09:53 AM
I have 2/3 of a garbage bag of yarn that was cut for selling as decorative embellishment for felters and textile artists. Each piece is about 25cm long and it's fingering weight. There is a lot of bright blue, some turquoise, red, salmon, yellow ochre and I think a little black. It would be great for a felting guild or fibre shop to repackage and sell, or it could be used to make a few rya rugs if you're a weaver. Also could be repackaged for workshops on weaving with ghiordes knots etc. I'd use it to make rugs myself but it's just not my colours. Free to anyone who can pick it up (contact me for my location). Or I can mail out a 3 kilo bag of various colours or just bright blue to anyone who wants to pay postage. (That's whatever will fit in a 3 kilo post satchel, may or may not be a full 3 kilos) How to make a rag rugPosted by on Sunday 16 March, 2008 07:20 PM I don't usually put tutorials straight in the blog but I couldn't wait to finish my rug to show you this! I will eventually put the measurements of the loom and detailed instructions for several projects on the small looms page but I really wanted to show you this much now :) About 6 months ago I saw some vintage rag rug looms on ebay. Postage from the US to Australia was prohibitive because they were so heavy, so I copied down the measurements in the description and my Dad made me one.
It's about 20 inches long with a cup hook at the front for tensioning the warp, two posts at the back for sitting your spools of warp on, and a perpendicular piece of wood with two slits in it for keeping the warp tensioned and at an angle so you can get your hands underneath for speedy knot tying (for the sake of this tutorial I'm going to call this the "tensioning post"). If you're a woodworker please feel free to make and sell these. We need to keep the old crafts alive! Here's how to make the ghiordes knots. (I have read the ghiordes rhymes with forties, but I've never heard anyone say it out loud)!
First, cut your strips of fabric. For my first try I have cut them 1 x 3 inches. I'm using fabrics that are mostly cotton that were left over from a Suffolk puff quilt that I made last year. (I'm going to experiment with other fabrics later on).
Tie your two warp ends together and put the knot in front of the cup hook. Pull the warp tight, thread it into the slots on the upright bit of wood and make a few loops over the outside edges to keep it tight.
Take one of the strips of fabric and fold it in half lengthwise. Hold it across the top of the warp. (I usually make knots with two hands but one hand was holding the camera).
Fold the ends to the back, around the warp threads.
Pull the ends to the front, between the two warp threads. Use the ends to pull the knot down towards the cup hook. As you add more knots, keep pulling them down towards the ones already formed as you pull them tight.
This is what a length of finished knots will look like. When you have made a lot of knots it will become difficult to tighten new ones because the warp will want to pull them apart again. When this happens, untie the warp threads from the tensioning post, take the other end of your warp off the cup hook, move it along and retie the warps on the tensioning post. The last ghiordes knot you made should be in front of the cup hook. Keep making knots until you run out of warp or it's long enough. Whichever comes first. To make a rug you twist your length of knots into a large flat spiral, keeping the pile on one side. Stitch the fabric together on the back with a strong thread. I don't have any tips for this part yet as I haven't got that far. You can also use these knotted lengths for other things. I'm going to try making some with 6 inch long strips of fabric, then trap it in the seam of a cushion for a rag strip fringe.
I also made a long piece with yarn. I could see making three long strips and tying them together at regular intervals with another piece of yarn to make a big, thick, fluffy boa. I'm going to have fun playing with this. It's remarkably quick to make. I'll show you the rug when it's finished :) I Have to Try This!Posted by on Tuesday 12 February, 2008 02:58 PM Catching Up With the Square Deal Weave-AlongPosted by on Monday 11 February, 2008 12:40 PM After falling ill in the last couple of months of last year I fell drastically behind in the Square Deal Weave-Along so I have spent the past few days catching up. Here are lots and lots (and LOTS!) of pictures and details from my adventures :) Since there are so many images I'm making them a bit smaller than usual. You can click on the images to view the larger pictures in my flickr account. Firstly, Wide Wale Corduroy. (Am I the only person who always wants to spell that "Wide Whale"?)
I love this weave. It has a lovely texture, it's soft and squishy and generally encompasses everything I like about hand weaves (textured weaves are my favourite). I used up a whole skein of Cleckheaton Country 12 ply and made quite a few squares. When I began to run out of that skein of yarn I wove this square. Rounds 1-3 are the Cleckheaton Country 12 ply and I wove with two strands of hand painted 8 ply wool. (That's DK weight to those who don't know Aussie yarn weights).
This is the front and
this is the back. I like both :)
I also tried rounds 1-3 in blue and wove with red. All 8 ply thickness, 100% wool I want to try this weave on my table loom, worked in a single colour. A while ago I posted about weaving triangles on a 4 inch square weavette loom. I made more triangles and stitched them together in a pinwheel design.
The triangles are really fiddly to weave but they do look nice :). The triangles were woven using various 8 ply wools. Little LoomsPosted by on Saturday 9 February, 2008 02:03 PM Anyone who has seen my daisy loom tutorials will probably have realised that I am totally enamoured with small looms. So, while I catch up on the Square Deal Weave-Along, I thought I would leave you with this "how to weave on a potholder loom" video tutorial by Noreen Crone-Findlay. I really, really, really want one of the potholder looms that has pegs in the corners but you just can't find them in Australia anywhere so I am left to dream about the cool artworks I could make with one... ~~sniff~~ :P (I also would love one of Noreen's Elfin Friends knitting spools. They're so cool). Part One: Part Two: Bias Weaving on a Regular Weavette LoomPosted by on Wednesday 24 October, 2007 12:18 PM Jana from Eloomanation.com recently mentioned on Ravelry that she found some vintage instructions for weaving a bias triangle on a regular weavette and my curiosity had to be assuaged so I sat down with my little 4 inch loom to see if I could figure out how to do it. First I made a bias woven square so that I could see the effect that the missing pins on a regular weavette have on the finished look of the piece.
Answer: None at all. No wonder Weave-It bias looms didn't sell well, if you had a regular weavette you didn't need one :P The weaving technique for the triangle was the easiest part to figure out as you can find several excellent sets of instructions by googling instructions for weaving on a triangle loom. Here's just one set of instructions that I found. On a triangle loom, the hypotenuse of the triangle (the long edge) is supported by a row of nails so it can't be pulled too tight. However, on a weavette the edge is completely unsupported. The trick to keeping the unsupported edge neat is to place a spare weaving needle across the loom and weave around it.
The selvage can't pull in and you're left with a lovely neat edge.
Now that my curiosity is satisfied I can get on with my Christmas knitting! The All-Yarn PostPosted by on Sunday 21 October, 2007 09:19 AM There's an awful lot of crafting going on around chez knitting-and lately, most of it due to my deciding to knit a lot of Christmas presents, but some of it just for fun. Not that the Christmas knitting isn't fun, because I'm having a riot with that (all the Christmas projects are small!) Having found the proper white balance setting on my camera, I am no longer relying on the really pointless "daylight" and "incandescent" settings so my colours are accurate! I've only had the camera for about 7 years... **ahem** As an aside: If you're looking for a digital camera to take photos for your website and your budget is under AU$50, take a look on ebay for a Cybershot DSC-F505V. They're old technology and only 3.3 megapixels but they're still a great camera, especially for web photos. I paid over AU$2,000 for mine brand new when they first came out, it's paid for itself time and time again and I still use it daily. OK, back to the fibre crafts. Remember that blue wool that refused to be used up? It has been conquered! Not only did a measly 168gms of blue corriedale make one large adult sized watchcap and one toddler sized jester hat but it also made some lovely stripes on this watchcap-in-progress. (Pattern from The Any Yarn, Any Size Knit Hat Book)
but that's not all! Yes, even after all that stripy goodness, there was still some left over. Determined to use every last scrap, I used the very last few meters in a weavette square for the Square Deal Weave-Along, week 3. (bottom right hand corner).
I can honestly say that there is not a single scrap of that blue yarn left. Not an inch. Not a centimeter. Not even a millimeter! These four squares are made with the "Fancy Weave" design from week 3. And so are these:
The next 8 squares are made with the "Basketweave" design, also from week 3. They look just like the back of the fancy weave squares. I made 8 of each because I was having so much fun playing with colour.
My original intention was to make a blanket using weavette squares and crochet granny squares but I'm thinking that it might look nicer if I just use the weavette squares and crochet around each one. I'll have to get all the squares I've done so far out and have a play with them. I'm going for a vintage "scrap quilt" look, as you can probably already tell. I can always use the crochet squares in a blanket later on. But wait, there's more!
I'm having great fun knitting a dalek or two. These are being made using the Extermiknit pattern by Penwiper. I tried to resist, but they're so cuddly and evil. Sigh. I gave in :-). What really made me cave was that the designer made the pattern to the specs in the Dr Who technical manual. Now that's dedication! I'm going to see if I can strengthen their appendages with some leftover millinery wire as these are intended for adults. I hate knitting the bobbles but they're over with pretty quickly and the end result is so incredibly worth the trouble! Speaking of cuddly evil, I made a Kate Gilbert bunny too.
What do you mean pink bunnies aren't evil? That's what they want you to think... I think these are nicer made with a novelty or fluffy yarn but mine is for a baby so I made it from two smooth yarns held together because it's safer. I used 2 DK (Aussie 8 ply) weight yarns on 4mm needles so the stuffing wouldn't show through. I also gathered the neck slightly after stuffing to give it a bit more shape. The very last thing that I finished recently is a kitten pot holder made from a book published in 1946.
The book is called "The Complete Book of Crochet" by Elizabeth L. Mathieson (misspelled Matheson on the cover of my printing). It's full of wonderful vintage patterns such as this kitty pot holder, lots of bedspreads, table cloths, doilies and other wonderful things. If you like vintage crochet snap up a copy of this book! It sold so well over the years that you can still find a copy relatively cheaply even 61 years later. My copy cost me US$3 on abebooks.com (about AU$12 including postage from the US) and I'd have happily paid twice that. Tomorrow I'll tell you all about my fantastic finds at the local book fair. Stay tuned! Yarn from the Twilight Zone...Posted by on Monday 15 October, 2007 11:59 AM Have you ever started knitting a project, sure that you were going to run out of yarn? Have you ever been **this** wrong? I started with 168 grams of handspun 2 ply blue corriedale.
Not an excessively large skein of yarn (or so I thought), so I decided to make this watch cap, thinking that if it looked like I was going to run out of yarn I could just make the turn-up shorter. I didn't have to make the turn-up shorter.
Not only did I have yarn left over, but I had enough to make this toddler sized jester hat.
And yes, even though I started with only 168 grams of wool, I still have a handful left over. Literally.
So I've put it into this kit to make another watch cap.
Who wants to bet that I have a whole bunch of the light brown left over? If I do, maybe I'll use it to make some of these (after I stop whimpering). (BTW, both of the hat patterns are from The Any Yarn, Any Size Knit Hat Book)
I made three more squares for my weavette/crochet blanket using the diagonal weave method for the weavette loom. I'll definitely be trying more of these! I also made one in plain weave, to get used to the method of weaving across two rounds of yarn. Next I think I'll try herringbone! A Little WeavingPosted by on Friday 12 October, 2007 06:04 PM And I mean little! I have a great big unfinished crochet/weavette blanket lying around so I joined the Square Deal Weave-along. I wanted to have a bit more fun making squares than if I was making them all alone :) I'm also experimenting by working the squares in different types of yarns and colour combinations. They were up to week two by the time I found out about it so I had some catching up to and made these last night (while sort of paying attention to the telly) Week one, window pane lace on my 4 x 4 inch loom:
Clockwise from top left these are: Orange cotton, purple wool and cotton slubby yarn, dk weight wool (Aussie 8 ply) with the first two rounds in purple and the third round and weaving in plum (and I made a mistake which I shall embroider on so people think I did it on purpose) and finally 8 ply caramel wool. I also did one in light blue fingering weight wool but I need to rephotograph it on a dark background so you can see the pattern better. You'll get to see that one tomorrow, along with my zigzaggy baby hat with the flower in place. Unless I forget... Week two: Crossroads, also on my 4 x 4 inch loom.
These are all dk weight wool. Clockwise from top left: Caramel, caramel woven with plum (shown from the back), yellow and pink woven with plum (shown from the front). I might try a slubby purple wool/cotton one woven in another colour tonight and then I'd better get working on my knitting until the week three square comes out. More Free Stuff!Posted by on Wednesday 25 April, 2007 05:08 PM Woohoo, I've finished writing the very last of my daisy winder and flower loom tutorials!
You'll find the on the small looms page. I will be adding more vintage patterns as I unpack them, more original patterns as I design them, and will rewrite the looms and yarn article when the most recent additions to my collection arrive. I did give up trying to make an attractive butterfly but I might retry that one in the future. :-) I hope you find the tutorials I have written inspiring and useful. Let's make loomed flowers the next big thing! More Flower Loom Tutorials!Posted by on Sunday 22 April, 2007 08:54 AM
I've uploaded yet more flower loom tutorials today to the small looms page. Only four or five more articles to go and I will have shared every last little thing that I know about using daisy winders and flower looms with you :-) On the Home StretchPosted by on Wednesday 18 April, 2007 10:13 PM I've almost completed my set of tutorials on using daisy winders and flowers looms. Here's what I'm working on now.
I made these for a tutorial about embroidering with loomed flowers.
I've embroidered the stems and leaves and just have to sew the flowers on. Most of them will look quite different once they're stitched down. I'm really looking forward to finishing this, but I lost the light so I couldn't document it for the tutorial if I finished it tonight. More Daisy Loom Tutorials!Posted by on Monday 16 April, 2007 09:05 PM But I'm sure you already knew that. You'll find them on the small looms page
Including instructions for my cute little caterpillar which I'm thinking of making into a puppet. GigglePosted by on Sunday 8 April, 2007 10:35 PM This video makes me think I've been winding my flowers incorrectly (but I like the way I do it so there). I will try it this way though to see if I can make the centres a bit smaller. The fashions, however, gave me a real giggle! And Yet More Daisy Winder Projects and Instructions!Posted by on Saturday 7 April, 2007 05:40 PM I've added bunches more info on daisy winders yet again, including instructions for making my monkey and robot toys! You'll find them on all the small looms page. Enjoy! Monkey Got His BananaPosted by on Friday 6 April, 2007 12:59 PM
and a little friend too :-)
Gimme a Banana!Posted by on Friday 6 April, 2007 09:08 AM I'm currently writing some tutorials on making little characters with a daisy winder and I thought I'd show you the in-progess shot of my little monkey
I decided to design his face in photoshop before I started sticking felt bits on permanenlty in case I screwed it up. Cute huh? :-) More Free Projects!Posted by on Monday 2 April, 2007 09:46 PM Another set of daisy winder tutorials! My attempt at putting all of my daisy winder and flower loom knowledge online continues with five more tutorials, including instructions for how to make faux French beaded flowers! You'll find it all on the small looms page. Even More Daisy Winder Tutorials!Posted by on Saturday 31 March, 2007 10:36 AM
I've added lots more daisy winder tutorials yet again! http://www.knitting-and.com/small-looms/index.html Enjoy! More Flower Loom Tutorials!Posted by on Wednesday 28 March, 2007 10:40 PM I've uploaded another large collection of daisy loom tutorials at http://www.knitting-and.com/small-looms/index.html The new tutorials include several new centres, several different ways of joining flowers together and how to make beaded wire daisies. A Little GardeningPosted by on Wednesday 28 March, 2007 12:02 PM With the help of a little crochet my flowers have become gardens!
I also had a little play with making wire daisies on the one and a half inch loom from the 1000 Flowers set.
I think they turned out so well that I'll be including instructions for the wire flowers as well. Now that I have finished the photography for the next installment of daisy loom tutorials I guess it's time to get writing! More Flowers Than You Can Poke a Bee AtPosted by on Tuesday 27 March, 2007 07:45 AM Today I'll be writing the daisy loom tutorials on joining multiple daisies together for the purpose of making stuff. Nine little windswept daisies all ready to become part of the first tutorial.
A whackingly big square. I really love the colours in this one. I need to make another one so I can show how they're joined together.
and here's my favourite flower from the tutorials I wrote yesterday (but haven't uploaded yet). A tri-colour flower with rosebud centre.
Daisy LoomsPosted by on Sunday 25 March, 2007 10:08 PM
I've been writing a lot of tutorials for using daisy looms this weekend. You'll find them linked on the small looms page. I've done tutorials for: Plus I've started a Flickr group for people who like using daisy looms called Crazy About Daisies. I'm probably the last person in the universe to find out you can do that. I'm going to see if I can finish the daisy loom tutorials this week so keep a look out for more! Flow-wowsPosted by on Thursday 22 March, 2007 11:19 PM At least that's what my daughter used to call them when she was three. Ten years ago (how did that happen?) So, what about flowers, you ask? I've been making them!
I've been taking photos for a bunch of instructional articles on different ways to stitch the centres of flowers on a daisy loom. These photos show the back stitch centre. I hope to have to whole set finished and uploaded by Monday afternoon, Eastern Australian time. I have no idea if that's daylight savings time or not. Anyway, I'm off to bed. I'll try and post some more photos of daisies tomorrow :-) Be Careful What You Wish For...Posted by on Tuesday 24 October, 2006 09:16 AM Recently I was wishing that I could find some interesting additions to my daisy wheel (winder, flower loom etc) collection at a reasonable price. It seemed that even simple sets of the 1000 Flowers looms were selling for $20 or more, a price I would only be willing to pay for something a bit more rare like a Hiawatha Loom. Then I saw these on Ebay:
Even better is that I won them! Even with postage from the US the price is an absolute bargain. Aside from the daisy looms there are also spider looms which are for making teneriffe lace. I've been looking for spider looms for years. I'm a happy camper. Especially since if I sell the duplicate looms singly I'll recoup my costs and still have lots of interesting additions to my daisy loom collection! Yay! As for my spinning: the clown in a blender yarn is coming along nicely (sorry Zeeppo. I like clowns, really I do. I'm totally with you on the mime thing. Totally...)... Where was I? Oh yeah. The clown in a blender yarn is coming along nicely. I hand carded the red and blue, which took forever because my drum carder is still in the lockup an hours drive away and I had to use a really old crappy pair of hand cards. On the plus side, I'm now really fast at making good quality rolags with hand cards! I've finished spinning the red and green singles, and should have the blue finished tonight if I don't have to card more of it. I'm not sure yet. I'll post a picture tomorrow, right now I'm off to research the history of some of the looms I've won :-) No really, I'm going to get a coffee and do some work. I'm good. Really I am. I have vintage embroidery patterns for you and I'm off to scan the two booklets I haven't done yet. You'll love them, I promise (sorry Zeeppo, no clowns. Just cowboys) 'nother ScarfPosted by on Thursday 8 December, 2005 08:25 PM
I finished another woven scarf. I have to admit that I really hate this one. The yarn I used for weft can only be described as slimy and was impossible to weave with an even beat. Whilst it looks OK and certainly won't fall apart or anything like that, I'm really not happy with it at all structurally. More Weaving!Posted by on Wednesday 23 November, 2005 09:07 AM 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. 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 Unexpected Homework and The Adventure Continues...Posted by on Friday 18 November, 2005 01:36 PM Last Monday Miss 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! Are You Bored Yet?Posted by on Thursday 17 November, 2005 02:07 PM 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 :-) Lovin' the Scarf ThingPosted by on Friday 11 November, 2005 10:53 AM 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 New Scarves!Posted by on Monday 7 November, 2005 08:10 AM 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.
Things to Make With Sock Yarn When You Don't Like SocksPosted by on Tuesday 1 November, 2005 10:50 AM 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? :-) Learning to WeavePosted by on Saturday 29 October, 2005 06:57 PM Regular readers will already know that I've been learning to weave. My first couple of "plays" were on my rigid heddle loom (an Ashford 80cm), but over the past couple of weeks I picked up my 8 shaft loom from Rustic Forge Crafts, where Carol worked her magic on this twisted and rusty "thing" I didn't understand (the loom) and returned a perfectly aligned and functioning piece of textile equipment. If you live anywhere near Bendigo (Victoria, Australia), you can't go past Carol when it comes to loom and spinning wheel repairs. Back to my weaving... Look, I made a sampler!
I'm teaching myself with an excellent book called "Learning to Weave" by Deborah Chandler and I highly recommend it to anyone else who wants to learn to weave. Weaving was a total mystery to me when I started (aside from a couple of inkle bands), and now I feel confident designing a simple project, reading drafts, and identifying what I can do better next time. Finally, the website beyond all weaving websites if you're looking for weaving drafts to play with. Handweaving.net. View it and be gobsmacked! I'm currently downloading simple drafts suitable for a beginner so I can play with weaving some cushion covers. After playing around on my sampler I'm totally in love with twill checks at the moment, so I can see some tartan-like fabrics in my near future. Fun fun fun! :-) Finishing a few WIPsPosted by on Sunday 4 September, 2005 05:52 PM My very first piece of weaving :-)
I love it because of it's enormous number of inconsistencies <VBG>. It was supposed to be fabric for a cushion but I've decided it's a table runner instead. Commercial warp with handspun weft. And the Gladys scarf/stole is finally blocked!
When it's dry I think I'll sell it on ebay to raise money for charity. Weaving of Questionable Taste...Posted by on Sunday 3 July, 2005 11:13 AM
I finally got around to purchasing a rigid heddle loom. This is my 2nd project, a sampler scarf, made mostly with hand dyed commercial wools. As you can see, I didn't realise quite how sickeningly bright the colours would look together, but Miss Brittany loves it so it's all hers. My edges aren't too bad, if I do say so myself! It actually looks quite decent with the part that goes round the neck folded over like a shawl collar. :-) I haven't quite finished my first project which suffers greatly from "beginner's edge". The wibbly edge problem was then compounded when I washed it because I used 2 breeds of wool and one shrank while the other didn't. The yarn that shrank was spun a long time ago and I suspect I didn't wash it after plying. Once I turned the edges over to sew a straight hem it looked ok so I'll post a photo if it looks nice once I've actually sewn it. |
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