Roving Weaver

2011-09-24T22:51:00.001-04:00

I am not in England. I do not need money. My e-mail was hacked and I forgot that I had all of my blogs set up for e-mail posting, so the evil Nigerian Hacker posted his plea for money on my blogs, as well as to a gazillion yahoo lists, friends and family, and businesses and weather and news update services. Sigh.You may now resume not hearing from me for months at a time.Laura

still not weaving much

2010-12-05T04:04:00.003-05:00

Wow, did not realize how little I have posted in the past year.

I am finally unpacked. Have painted a bit over the past couple of months, but not woven or done any embroidery, so I haven't updated either of these blogs. I tend to get out the embroidery in the winter, so I guess I will probably do that here pretty soon. I need to be wrapping Christmas presents and figuring out what I have bought and still need to buy, however.

I still love the Ashford Inklette, but haven't used it since June. I need to find a table which is lower than any TV tray or the folding table I have, and clamp it down when I use it, because I think holding it the way I was in May and June was at least partly to blame for the back pain that I had in June and July. Well, and still have. I had an MRI in July and found out that I have arthritis my lower three vertebrae - have had injections twice since then - but I do think that the way I was sitting and holding it, and having to lean and stretch forward to use the loom brought on the pain.

Well, hopefully I will have something to post in the next month or so. Maybe I can try and figure out a way to clamp the Inklette - I have a very pretty green and grey warp on it, and would love to finish it. Someday I'll get a larger Inkle loom so I can do actual belts and camera straps and guitar straps. Maybe I'll get a floor Inkle so I don't have to worry about clamping it! :-) The book I have by Helen Bress has plans for making one. Hmmm.

Picture test

2010-12-02T18:11:00.000-05:00

spider video 005

2010-10-26T03:46:00.000-04:00

Spider on my front porch. Happy weaving and happy Halloween this week. :-)

Inkle Loom

2010-07-21T22:11:00.009-04:00

Long time, no update!

In May, I got a new-to-me Ashford Inklette. I love it! Here are some pictures of the two bands I have finished so far:

Actually, I guess I didn't take pictures of the first band. I'll post those later.

non-weaving content - breakfast bar in the bedroom

2010-02-02T02:11:00.008-05:00

I have a new schedule at work - one which involves getting up in the MORNING, of all things. Since I am pretty much always grouchy in the morning, I moved the baker's rack from the kitchen (there wasn't room for it in this kitchen anyway) to my bedroom, and set up a breakfast bar by my bed. Important note! Someday (hopefully soon) the walls will be pink instead of teal, and the burgundy woodwork will be white. :-)

The top rack has the Scentsy (tm) my mom got me for Christmas, which perfectly matches my sheets and curtains. :-) It also has cannisters of teabags, chocolate, dried fruit, and nuts.

The coffee pot is set to start brewing at 8am, half an hour before my parrot's full spectrum light comes on, so I have a half hour to gradually wake up before he starts demanding food.

I moved the alarm clock from my nightstand to the lower rack because it's actually easier to see here. The milk glass container holds breakfast bars.

And, we have water and a measuring cup to fill the coffee pot with (and coffee!). Now all I need is a mini-fridge for the milk, cream, yogurt, fruit, and bird food (Jerry is picky - his food has to be cold). Oh - and I need a chocolate fountain. THEN, my room will be complete. :-)

Still unpacking...

2009-11-21T07:54:00.002-05:00

Since I work 7 11 hour nights in a row, I haven't had a lot of unpacking time since I moved my stuff here. I do have most of the kitchen boxes unpacked (and still no blender), but it's amazing how much stuff that means I have to WASH and try to figure out where to PUT... and now I'm getting to the boxes that I'm just not sure what to do with right now, because they are in front of the bookcases, etc., that they have to be unpacked into, and the boxes are just really heavy. And there's a mattress and box springs leaning against one bookcase. So, I guess I will just have to unpack things on to the floor for a while so I can move them.

I hate moving. :-) I will be so glad when it is all done!

Cranky unpacking weaver who isn't weaving

2009-11-10T11:48:00.003-05:00

Hard to believe I have done NO weaving or embroidery for MONTHS now. No wonder I'm going crazy.

I finally got all of my stuff moved up here October 27th, and am in the process of unpacking. Had the movers not piled boxes in front of my bookcases and shelving units, that would be easier. I'm focusing on the kitchen first, will deal with the books and art stuff later (which, of course, means any "play" time will end up after it's all done - a cruel scheme on someone's part, I'm sure).

My poor furniture has mold issues, which isn't helped by the fact that this HOUSE has mold issues - the plumbing had problems before I moved in, and the crawl space under the house flooded, and now every time you open a cabinet door you almost can't breathe because of the mildew smell. Add to that the layer of mildew all over my furniture from the theoretically climate controlled storage unit (which was over 100 degrees when I went there in August), and my allergies are not happy.

Yes, I am complaining. I'm quite certain it will all be better eventually, but right now, I am CRANKY. I just want the mold to be gone, everything to be unpacked, there to be a PLACE for everything, people to do what they SAY they are going to do, and all of these boxes to be GONE so I can just weave and be happy again.

And I WANT to find my BLENDER. I have three, and the only one I have found is the one I got for my wedding, which doesn't even work anymore and I had thought I got rid of it when I got the second one when I lived in Dallas, but apparently not because it got packed, but I can't find the replacement OR the one I bought when I was in Brenham. I need to be able to make smoothies again!

Okay. Going to go find my allergy pills and get back to unpacking again...

2009-11-10T11:33:00.003-05:00

http://lala412.livejournal.com/819925.html#cutid1

That is a link to my livejournal post that has the pictures of my cast iron muffin pans. I thought it would take up way too much space on here, and I don't know how to cut and hide things here like I do on LJ, so, there you go. Linking to another site is the best way I know how. :-)

Posted for http://oneparticularkitchen.com/

Short update

2009-07-11T21:28:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't updated for a while. I got a job in Ponca City, Oklahoma at the end of May (or was it the beginning of June? I'm confusing the two job offers I had - I accepted one and not the other, and they were a week apart) and moved here in mid-June. I am still not completely settled - I had been staying in a camper my parents let me borrow, at an RV park just outside town, but at the beginning of July started renting a house with a lab tech who works for the staffing agency I used to work for - she will be working in the lab until I am out of training.
Once she leaves and the owner empties the house (she was renting it fully furnished, decorated, bills paid, etc), I will be renting it on my own and moving all of my stuff up from Dallas.

So for now, I am less "moved in" than I was even when I stayed with my parents the last few months, because I have to have all my kitchen stuff but yet there is no room in the kitchen for it... and I don't want to put stuff away in furniture that will be sold off in less than a month, so everything in my room is staying in boxes. Needless to say, no embroidery or weaving has been done in about 6 weeks, between the camper and here!! I haven't done much besides play computer games and work.

I will definitely update again when I do more!

Alligator

2009-05-19T00:44:00.002-04:00

Here is the page on my website for the alligator I made for the triplets. Wrestle Me

Frog

2009-05-19T00:38:00.002-04:00

Here is the frog I made for the girls. Here is the pageI made for it: Kiss Me

More Monkey Pictures

2009-05-19T00:35:00.003-04:00

I made a page on my website with more pictures of Jessica's monkey. I am also working on pages with closeups of other animals I have made. Here is the page of Stuffed Animals.

Woven Journal/Card

2009-05-18T23:23:00.002-04:00

Woven Journal

I created a page on my website for the Woven Journal I made for my nephew. It was also his birthday card. Here is a picture of the front of it.

Stuffed Monkey for Jessica

2009-05-18T21:19:00.006-04:00

Here is a stuffed monkey that I made for my niece, Jessica. She's pretty smart - all I had done was the body - just a stuffed blue and purple tube with the separation for the head and body, and she looked at it and asked if it was going to be a monkey. :-) It's made from her favorite colors, so I'm thinking it wa equal parts deductive reasoning and wishful thinking, but she was right!

The muzzle is a spool-knitted piece that I rolled in on itself and then couched to the face, a lot like I did the rabbit's tail, but with a wider base attached to the surface. The ears were done in a stitch which I think has several names - I have been trying to find instructions for Peruvian Single Needle Knitting, which I had in an issue of Piecework from the mid-90s (still have, technically, it's just in storage), and I think this is it, but I wouldn't swear to it. I saw an embroidered teacup on another blog which looked almost exactly like it, but the stitch had another name, but I don't remember the name. At any rate, it's basically a buttonhole stitch done over a thread up away from the fabric. The pattern in Piecework had you doing it in a circle around a felt form to make finger puppets, and then coming out from that base to form the features - I made two puppets, a maroon-bellied conure and a rosy bourke parakeet (both based on birds I had at the time). The rosy bourke didn't get completely finished.

Anyway, I'm glad I found that post and adapted it for the ears - I plan to use it for a crown on some frogs, too.

I made the limbs and tail extra-long, which Jessica liked - she can fold the arms and use the tail to wrap him around things. She now wants an entire collection of woven and knitted animals - she has another creature, a rectangular one, which is knitted, and a leash which she spool-knitted herself.

Spool-knitted, felted crochet hook and weaving needle case

2009-04-24T12:51:00.006-04:00

Here are some pictures of the case I made for the crochet hooks and needles I use for weaving. I used some Peruvian yarn I bought at Twist, my mom's favorite yarn shop, when I was in Wichita at Christmas when she took a day off for us to go out shopping and to a couple of museums. The yarn felted nicely. I spool-knitted it on an eight peg spool knitter and used a safety pin to thread a flour sack towel through the center before washing it in the washing machine in a laundry bag in hot water. I can't remember if I dried this one in the machine or not. I stopped drying the stuffed animals, but I think I went ahead and machine dried anything that didn't have limbs. :-)

Below are details of the case. I sewed up one end and then use the tail to embroider a couple of flowers at the bottom. I liked it so much I did one at the top on the opposite side, as well, and then I added a drawstring.

figuring fabric "count" on weavette fabric

2009-04-23T22:12:00.003-04:00

I think maybe nine for the Sugar and Cream on the Weavette (top photo), and six for the Lion Brand wool on the HR Tumbling Block loom.

Woven Brooch

2009-04-22T02:20:00.002-04:00

While browsing through blogs tonight, I found this wonderful woven brooch tutorial! I'm going to have to definitely make a couple of these!

New blog

2009-04-21T23:54:00.002-04:00

I have started a new blog for the band sampler - it is at Floss, Needle, Muslin.

Tumbling Blocks

2009-04-21T22:22:00.003-04:00

Tumbling block unit. The diamonds are from the Tumbling Block loom by Hazel Rose Looms. They are woven from wool - I have four more sets to piece together, then I'll fill in the edges till it's relatively rectangular, and then I'm going to felt it and use it as the binding for a journal.

stuffed bunnies

2009-04-21T22:19:00.002-04:00

Three unfinished bunny bodies and one finished bunny.

Actually, the blue and purple one may end up a monkey.

stuffed alligator

2009-04-21T22:14:00.004-04:00

I started making rabbits, but this green did not look like it would make a good rabbit. :-) It also looked too long to be a frog, so I turned it into an alligator. No legs yet, but I couched the head and tail on.

More Coffee-dyeing, and band sampler progress

2009-04-21T12:53:00.013-04:00

These are the pink fabrics after I left them in the coffee for another hour and a half. They are definitely darker - I like them a lot better now!

In the pictures of the pink fabrics, the coffee dyed fabric is on top, and the original fabric is on the bottom.

Here also are the print fabrics - they were in the coffee the same amount of time as the pinks, a total of two hours.

And, here are pictures of the strips for my band sampler as I had them laid out on the floor, deciding how to sew them together. I decided that I couldn't bring myself to mix the coffee-dyed and non-coffee dyed fabrics, at least not when I had the pinks and prints in there (at some point I will have a section that is all white and off-white) (and coffee-dyed), so I did two different panels, then added some of the blue stuff to the first pink and white panel, then transitioned with plain unbleached muslin... but I haven't decided if I'm going to go ahead and add the second (coffee-dyed) panel on now, or wait and see how long the first one takes me and whether or not I want to add some evenweaves, etc., later on before adding the second one.

After I took these pictures, I decided to go ahead and start piecing them together by hand. I stayed up way too late, since it was about - well, let's just say it was really late when I decided to do that in the first place. By the time I decided to go to bed, I had learned all about ten minute workouts, being mortgage free for life, and making money in the current foreclosure market... BUT, I got all of the pink and white side pieced together, and the first three strips of the coffee-dyed side pieced together, too.

I know some of those pinks look awfully dark for this, and the card print may look crazy, but I like them. I can work around them. Although I suppose I'd better be working ON them. :-)

I need to find another program to use to pubish this blog to Blogger. This one is driving me crazy. I just previewed it and there are huge gaps that aren't really there. Any ideas? I'm supposed to have a program for that with OneNote, but I couldn't get it to connect. Argh.

Ah-ha! I posted it, the huge gaps were there, and then when I edited it they showed up so I could delete them. I still want a bigger window while I'm typing, though.

I may start another blog for the band sampler. Not sure I want to mix weaving and embroidery. :-)

More woven-then-felted items

2009-04-20T01:58:00.007-04:00

Here are a couple of other things I wove and felted. One is a bag, the other a random rope I was felting because... yeah, I don't really remember why. The rope was done on a spool-knitter. The bag was made using diamonds woven on my Tumbling Blocks loom from Hazel Rose Looms and then embellished with a spool-knitted rope on the front, which is also going to be used as a closure once I get a button sewn on the very bottom.

Stuffed animals

2009-04-20T01:45:00.010-04:00

These are pictures of the stuffed animals I spool-knitted and then felted in the washing machine. I used Lion Brand Wool. I don't have any pictures of Annie (the elephant) before I felted her, apparently, but I do of the dog, so you can see the before and after of him.

2009-04-20T01:15:00.002-04:00

Well, I just looked at those last two posts - good to know, they look nothing like what they looked like when I was typing them. :-P I may try to edit them later. Maybe not.

More Coffee-dyeing

2009-04-20T01:01:00.006-04:00

Here are the fabric strips before I dyed any of them, and then as they are wrapped up and ready to be dunked in coffee.

Finished products:

These two pictures show the dyed fabrics with strips of the original fabrics on top of them. You can tell more of a difference in person than in the photographs, but there's still not a lot of difference. They were dyed for half an hour. I finally got irritated and put them back in the coffee (with the print fabrics) for another hour and a half. I'll post those pictures tomorrow - I haven't taken them yet!

Embroidered Band Samplers and Coffee-Dyeing

2009-04-19T19:07:00.015-04:00

Inspired by the band samplers I found online yesterday, I decided to cut some strips for my own sampler. I had bought a fat quarter pack of pink fabric back in January in when I was in NH, and also some fabric with music notes and some with playing cards, for a yo-yo quilt project I thought I might someday make (hahaha), and I figured it would be better used for this. I also had bleached and unbleached muslin. I'm not sure what the exact width of my sampler will be, but I cut the strips all to 9" wide, then cut them in varying lengths so I can piece it together as I go, like this one by Sharon B of the blog pintangle.

That link takes you to a series of posts about the sampler, but the whole thing can be seen here.

Hers is 44 feet long! Wouldn't that just be amazing? Like a stitched journal. My paper journals are already feeling unloved thanks to Facebook. :-) I don't have any of the nicer linens made for embroidery right now (well, I do have some blue that I got in Texas a couple of years ago and just haven't used - it's not the right size for this, but I suppose I could piece it...), so the muslin and quilting cotton will do.

I have some embroidery patterns that I bought (and some were free) from Urban Threads back in January that I am going to use on the sampler, as well as using it as a stitch sampler. Right now the free pattern is the gorgeous Green Man, for Earth Day - I can't wait to start working on that! I wish I had all my floss with me. At one point I had "All the Floss" from Victoria Clayton but now she has almost 700 colors, and I think has retired some... she has a monthly floss club, and it would take five years of subscribing to get all the colors now!

I love Urban Threads. They have patterns from the "gorgeous" range to the "cool" to the "kewl" to some that I'm not sure how to categorize. Two that I have are coffee-related (here and here). I'm going to use them in a wall-hanging that I have planned, and also in a set of four coasters, made from this cork-backed coaster tutorial on Urban Threads. Since they are coffee related, I decided to coffee-dye them with the dregs of this morning's coffee pot. Well, since I was dyeing THOSE, I figured I might as well dye some more for my band sampler as well.

These are the undyed squares and rectangles I used. Towards the back are the seven inch and five inch squares for the wallhanging and coasters, in the middle are the white (bleached muslin) pieces for my band sampler, and on top are the strips of unbleached muslin that I used.

Since I wanted a mottled look on the fabric, I scrunched the pieces up and wrapped them with rubber bands before I plopped them into the coffee, which I heated up in a measuring cup first.

I did some playing around with the "auction mode" on my camera - I love it! Here are some shots of the fabric while it is dyeing.

And here (right) are the fabric "balls" after I took them out of the coffee. I put down waxed paper to help with clean-up. :-)

Here (left and below) are the first batch of fabric while it was still wet and laid out to dry. I didn't think I liked it at that point. I'm glad I reserved judgement until I ironed them - with every batch, I felt the same way, so if you coffee or tea dye fabric, don't toss it or redye it until you see it completely dry and ironed! :-) Unfortunately, the pictures don't do any of them justice.

Below is the first batch, ironed. I left them in the coffee for half an hour, and I scrunched them very loosely and did not wrap them rubber bands very tightly.

And here (again, below) is the second batch. I left these in for half an hour again, scrunched much more tightly. I didn't like the effect quite as much, but once they were ironed I was okay with them.

And here is the third batch, ironed. I left them in for an hour, and did not scrunch them as tightly as I did the second batch.

More coffee-dyeing to come... next post, the pink fabrics and the prints. :-)

Stitches in Time

2009-04-18T01:18:00.004-04:00

Confession - I originally started writing this as a message to the owner of an embroidery site, but it managed to turn itself into a blog entry. It's more about embroidery, but it's also about how it's possible to pour yourself so completely into your craft that you really do become a part of it, or at least your memories do.

I've been doing embroidery off and on for about 20 years (mostly off, but it's one craft I do come back to, as opposed to all the ones I've tried and the supplies then just waste away in my craft room) and, as a result of my weaving for the last three years, I've been getting back in to embroidery a bit. I love the embroidery designs on Urban Threads - that has me wanting to embroider things for my nieces and nephews. :-) I was wanting to find different stitches today to use on those patterns, and use a couple of the more complicated ones as samplers, and since my books are all in storage right now I did a google search for them. I found a website with stitch dictionary (WOW) and blog, which led me to another with a wonderful Sampler Game, where you can design your own sampler and print it out! Here are the links:

http://inaminuteago.com/stitchindex.html

http://www.pintangle.com/

http://www.simplysamplers.org/content/

The last one is the site with the Sampler Game.

When I was designing my own sampler, which I saved as a screen shot so I can maybe work on at some point (I love Microsoft OneNote!), I remembered that about fifteen years ago I was working on a sampler for the house Ian and I had in Florida. I got all of the "hard part" done; the middle with the new stitches I was learning in a flower design, our address, the date we bought the house - the only thing I had left was the alphabet, which I added as an afterthought when it suddenly occured to me that "real" samplers had the alphabet on them. I used a pink silk floss, ran out, and never did finish. Ian, of course, died at 29 in '97, and I left Florida in 2000. I still want to finish the sampler someday (it's in storage) - it deserves to be finished - I'm just not quite sure what to DO with it when I get it done! Frame it? It should be preserved somehow, not just folded up and stuck in a box. I worked hard on that, and it has a LOT of good memories embedded in the stitches.

I don't know how many people are like this - and my memory is getting worse as the years go by - but I used to be able to look at something I had worked on and remember exactly what I was doing the entire time I was working on it. I know, just thinking of that sampler, that there are big chunks I worked on while we were sitting in bed watching Beavis and Butthead, or Aeon Flux, or The Maxx. It doesn't quite work that way when I'm weaving - the pieces I'm doing don't have enough character for that - but I did notice when I was making some stuffed animals from the woven pieces that afterwards I did remember what I had been doing while I was making them. Maybe it's not my memory, but the intricacy of my work that has diminished... So I do want to finish the sampler not only because I put a lot of work into it, but because it very tangibly holds a lot of memories of "normal" times we spent together, times I didn't journal in any other way. The only question, again, is what exactly to do with it afterwards.

Fw:2 unfinished bunny bodies and a green log for an undetermined

2009-04-14T15:59:00.002-04:00

Fw:2 unfinished bunny bodies and a green log for an undetermined
Originally uploaded by llala412

I thought I was blogging all these from my phone, but apparently that didn't get set up right.

Here is the finished bunny next to two other bunny bodies. One is pink, and the other a kind of odd brown/orange combo. I love the yarn, though - I have some orange yarn that I'm going to use for the limbs and ears. I think I have some solid pink to use for the pink bunny. I used the Sugar and Cream Twist yarn for all three.

I decided the first bunny (Warren) was not pastel enough to give to the girls (plus his face is a little scary to me - I need to use embroidery floss next time), so I made one from a skein that was purple, blue, green, and white. The square from the beginning of the skein came out mostly green and white, with a little blue at the end (the tube in front), so I ended up making it into an alligator. I'm now making another square with blue and purple that will have some green at the end - I think it will make a great bunny. :-)

Woven & spool-knitted bunny in camo colors. Need emb floss for nxt faces

2009-04-14T15:22:00.003-04:00

Woven & spool-knitted bunny in camo colors. Need emb floss for nxt faces
Originally uploaded by llala412

I got this pattern (which I then modified a bit - longer arms and ears, different face) from Noreen Crone-Findlay's blog. Here is the link - http://www.blisstree.com/hankeringforyarn/spool-knitted-andpotholder-loom-bunny/

My new car!

2009-03-09T03:13:00.002-04:00

My new car!
Originally uploaded by llala412

Here it is! My 2009 Dodge Journey. It was a steal because, sadly, apparently no one else wanted it. LOL! It was, quite literally, 33% off!!! Has heated seats, remote start, AWD, sunroof - and CRUISE CONTROL. Yes, it is true. My PT Cruiser did not have cruise control for all 41,750 miles that I drove around this lovely country. Granted, it was only every six months or so, but that was enough!

The "bad" points? Apparently I'm the only person in the world (er, Wichita KS anyway) who wants a crossover without the third row seating. Plus, apparently it has hail damage somewhere, but I have yet to find it - didn't know until they had to disclose it when I actually purchased the car. That's just cosmetic anyway. Never been all that fond of black cars, either (they get too hot) but had said I didn't care WHAT color car I found as long as it had everything I wanted, and this one does!

Of course, my sister's father-in-law bought a black '08 Corvette the same day I bought my Journey. Sheesh. Talk about being upstaged! :-) I had never quite "gotten" the whole thing about sportscars, but after sitting in his Corvette... WOW. I totally get it now. That car is SO SWEET!!!

Triangle looms (but mostly about my car - minimal weaving content)

2009-03-09T01:30:00.004-04:00

Well! My last night working at Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, MA was on Friday the 13th last month. :-) I spent the next few days packing up my car, and headed back Tuesday morning. I did get some weaving done that weekend - I was close enough to being done Monday night that I was able to stop and watch Return of the Jedi and weave for a while. Then Tuesday morning I just had to finish stuffing the remnants in the car and leave.

Hopefully I won't ever have to "stuff" things again - I got a new car! I will try to post a picture from flickr when I finish this post. I love it! It is perfect for me. Apparently they couldn't sell it because although it is a crossover, most crossovers have the third row of seats, and this one doesn't. That made it perfect for me, however, because the first one I looked at DID, and when you folded the seats down there just wasn't enough room for my tubs in the back. I was a bit of a hard sell, though - made the guy go get a tape measurer and measure the length, width, and height (to the bottom of the windows) of both my car and the Journey (it's a Dodge Journey, an 09 but has been there long enough to go through a hail storm, although I still can't see any dents anywhere), and THIS Journey has more room than my car. Plus, since the second row of seats folds down, I don't have to worry about losing them in the storage shed, like I did with the seats to the PT Cruiser! OH, what a pain THAT was...

I found the new car in KS - it was such a good deal that my brother-in-law (James) said he didn't think I'd find a better one in TX, so I went ahead and bought it here, but then had to go get the back seats to the old car and bring them back. So I drove down to TX Sunday, and James and I went to the storage shed after my nephew's soccer game. One of the seats was conveniently close to the front of the storage shed - you could actually see it. The other? Not so close... I think we took at least a quarter of the stuff in my storage shed out and piled it in the hallway (James had me get a cart for some of it after I had moved stuff farther down the hallway for a third time, and we moved a freezer out), but then we (and by we, I mean mostly James, although I did move a lot of boxes) were able to just kind of scoot things around, and he found the seat finally, and then he stacked and rearranged things a bit so that I have some more room in there.

My storage shed, btw, is 10'x20'. And very tall. It's not a small storage shed.

Anyway - weaving. I've been working on triangles for my nephew's afghan again, but keep changing the pattern. I think I'll just weave up all the yarn I bought and then figure out the pattern and buy more yarn if necessary! I have four colors of yarn right now - a lime green, a bright blue, orange, and a variegated blue/green/purple. I just can't come up with a pattern I really like, although I do have a couple of patterns with a "J" in the center (his name is also James) (so is my brother's, so is my dad's...) that aren't too bad.

Well, that's it for this post. Car picture to follow!

Flickr

2009-02-14T12:20:00.001-05:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Testing

2009-02-13T07:57:00.001-05:00

i have never before been able to get this mobile blogger to work with this service. trying it again. so... are we there yet?

4x4 Weave-Its!

2009-02-12T12:56:00.004-05:00

Yay!

In December, I was offered three very old 4" Weave-Its by a lady who lives here in Methuen. Between the holidays, my coming back from them sick, then hurting my back and the weather being bad through most of that, I had yet to go get them. I am leaving here Monday, though, and it is 50 degrees, so I e-mailed her yesterday to see if her generous offer still stood - it did, and I went to pick them up today! Yay! I now have a complete set of looms! Granted, they are technically not Weavettes, but the pin setup is the same (my Hazel Rose loom can be used that way, but the pin setup is for bias weave, and I know I would get confused if I tried to do it the weave-it/weavette way). I will take pictures at some point, but not now... packing comes first! :-)

Thank you to the commenter who gave me all the info about the different rigid heddle looms - I was leaning towards the Emilia, and even more so now!!

Also, I edited one of my first posts, from last fall. Apparently part of what I wrote was misinterpreted by a couple of people who have children and do not realize that I have spent a LOT of time around them.

Six-Word Memoirs, the book

2009-02-12T10:08:00.002-05:00

Okay, non-weaving content, and I missed "Weaving Wednesday." I had WORDY Wednesday instead - one of my six-word memoirs ("Even angry, toes touching in bed.") was the Memoir of the Day on SmithMag.net! I was pretty happy. If you've never heard of a six-word memoir, this video explains it.

2009-02-06T18:01:00.003-05:00

I'm such a sap. If I get married again, I am definitely going to have The Wedding Loom. It may cost more than my dress, but that's okay, I can use it for every other special occasion after that, too!

(just hopefully not as a Divorce Loom, LOL!)

2009-02-06T17:30:00.003-05:00

And now I want to find someplace I can build an EarthLoom... I think it would be a wonderful thing to have at schools. The students could weave wallhangings and then auction them off to raise money for - well, schools need money all the time, I'm sure the wallhangings would be made with SOME purpose in mind. Or, alternately, they could be made and auctioned in order to donate the proceeds to a "sister" school that is in more dire need of funds, or some other charitable organization. The possibilities are endless.

2009-02-06T14:53:00.002-05:00

Weaving a Life - Journey Loom

Found out about this loom from a post on a weaving list today. I love the concept!

2009-02-05T15:04:00.003-05:00

Someday, I am going to get a rigid heddle loom. There is a new one out from Schact, the Cricket, which at one point I would have thought was way too small, but now I think it a pretty good size. However, the Emilia, by Glimakra, is also small, and can have a double heddle setup, which I didn't see on the Cricket. Plus, the Glimakra is Swedish - they're all made in Sweden. And, of course, that gives that company an edge with me-with-a-lot-of-Swedish-blood, no matter how impractical. :-)

But then again, there's the Ashford Knitter's loom, which I had partly ignored simply because it irritated me that it seemed like they were using the name knitting as a gimmick to get knitters to buy a loom and get in to weaving (and I'm sure that's EXACTLY what it was), but now that I have looked at it, it DOES have the special heddle with the extra wide holes for the big funky yarns like all those gazillions of yarns that I collected the summer I was in NH and bought those "scarf-weaving" kits made out of netting... they worked great for them, but not so great for the weavettes once I got them! Those yarns are all in vacuum bags, in storage now.

All of these looms are small - the smallest Knitter's loom weaves a 12" width, so the body would be a little larger. The Cricket's body is 11" wide, so the weaving width is a little smaller. The Emilia weaves 13" wide, so the body would be a little larger, but that makes it close to the Knitter's loom, and it has the double heddle option while the Knitter's loom does not (but, the Knitter's loom has the heddle with the extra wide holes).

I haven't actually seen any of them in person, just done internet research. I won't be able to get one for a while. But I think I'm leaning towards the Emilia, despite the fact that the Cricket is quite a bit cheaper than either of the other two! :-) The other two have extras available that it does not, and I think in the end I would rather go with the Swedish loom that I can use two heddles on than the one I can use the fancy yarn on. Unless, of course, I end up finding out that I CAN use two heddles on the Knitter's Loom - then I may have to go with that one! Of course, ideally my next assignment would be in an area with a really good yarn shop that sells weaving supplies (and looms) and I would be able to try out one or all of them...

I've been packing up this apartment, since I leave here on the 15th (or so - probably more like the 17th since I have to do a walk-through with the apt manager on a business day) and finally decided to put a LOT of craft stuff in storage that I haven't used during the last two or three assignments. All the beads. All the weird odds and ends that I bought in Hutch and then never used. All the books except the rigid heddle books. The Christmas ornaments are going in storage, too, LOL! I may even pack up some clothes that I brought and never wore, and mail them back to myself. I'm keeping out everything weaving related and embroidery related, and the scrapbooking stuff, and mailing the rest. I have four boxes full so far (but they're not huge boxes, just what I had).

Well, back to packing... the weekend is supposed to be warmer, so I want to get my tubs packed by then so I can load the car while it's warm!!

2009-02-05T09:43:00.005-05:00

WOW.

I am a bit behind on reading the weaving groups I belong to, as well as the blogs I subscribe to - I just haven't been weaving much for the last couple of months (in case you couldn't tell by the fact that I hadn't posted at all on my own blog for two months), so haven't been thinking about it in general. Today I have been getting caught up a bit, and saw this post on using binary sequences in weaving from the blog Talking About Weaving. It's fascinating, and led me to the blog, and then website, of the weaver/composer she was talking about, Nigel Morgan. That link is for his website- his blog is here. On the blog I discovered a poet I had never heard of, Kathleen Raine - the poem he posted, "Angelus," is amazing. When I went to his website, I discovered that he has mp3s available for download of all seven of her poems which he set to music for a performance in 2003 (the details are on his website).

Composer, weaver - what a talented person!

Weaving Wednesday?

2009-02-04T14:43:00.004-05:00

My brother, in his blog has occasionally done "Wordless Wednesday" posts, where he just posts pictures of the triplets. I wish he would do that more - I love those posts, because although I think possibly he has only done a couple of them, he seems to pick the most beautiful pictures! So I thought maybe, to encourage him to make it a weekly practice, I would do Weaving Wednesdays. Which is a little silly, since this is a weaving blog anyway. :-) But maybe I will remember to blog on Wednesdays! I did read online that Wednesdays were associated with Athena, who of course was the patron goddess of weaving, so maybe it's appropriate. For now, I will just leave you with the above picture of a block I did on one of my weavettes - black and silver ribbon novelty yarn. I joined a bookmark exchange group on yahoo - maybe I'll use some of that yarn for the bookmarks!

weavette woven lunchbag 08 0001

2009-02-04T14:24:00.002-05:00

I say "okay" entirely too much. I knew I wrote "well" too much - didn't realize how much I SAID "okay." :-)

This is a short "making of" video of the lunchbag I made from weavette squares and rectangles. I love it! It still needs a liner, but it holds its own against all those fancy Harrod's Knightsbridge bags in the fridge at work. :-)

Lunchbag

2008-11-12T14:03:00.004-05:00

I took the lunchbag pieces out of the baggies today (got them all done yesterday!) and videotaped them today. I am off tomorrow through Sunday, so tomorrow I plan to put the three video sections together and post it here, and then actually put the PIECES together and take pictures of THAT (although I think I'm liking video even better - maybe a combo) and post them. I want to get that done so I can work on Christmas presents. I got a book on hats and bags from Hazel Rose Looms a couple of months ago, and I had several things planned to make for Christmas! However, I have this whole "finish what you started FIRST" thing going on (I don't even have the Triplet Triptych WITH me), so the lunchbag needs to get done NOW so I can start on hats and bags. Most of them will be out of wool so I can felt them.

So, that's a combo progress report and future plan, all in one. :-)

Boott Textile Mill Museum at Lowell NHP

2008-11-12T14:00:00.002-05:00

Saturday I spent the afternoon at Lowell National Historic Park. I went through the Boarding House Museum and recognized how lucky I was to have lived in a very spacious boarding house with a relatively relaxed atmosphere when I was in college, and also went to the Boott Textile Mill Museum, where they have the looms! Stills didn't seem to quite capture the moment, so I took video. However, the sound in that room, even with only a few looms running, was deafening, so I toned it down and added music to the video (random music - the one piece I could find that matched the time - sorry, no special meaning).

I'll post more later, just wanted to get this finally posted! It took a day just to post to YouTube!

Woven Lunchbag - progress report

2008-11-09T12:29:00.002-05:00

I have only 3 2"x2" waffle grid squares to weave, and then I can begin construction of my lunchbag! I started this project back in February, I think - a couple of cities ago. I was in Brenham, TX at the time, and I have since spent 6 months working in Hutchinson, KS and the last two months here in Methuen, MA (four cities, if you count the fact that I am actually living in Salem, NH). I am determined to get it done before I leave - everyone here has the cutest lunchbags! Almost everyone uses a Harrod's Knightsbridge bag as their lunchbag - apparently it started when someone went there and brought some back, then someone's son lived in London for a while, then after that people were ordering them online... I confess I looked online but didn't see them. Besides. I love my bag design. And you can't beat a handwoven lunchbag, right? I just need to find some vinyl fabric for a liner, I think.

I will post pictures to Flickr as I get pieces and parts put together.

Ravelry

2008-11-09T12:26:00.003-05:00

I had thought that Ravelry was just for knitters, but I heard from a fellow weaver that there are weavers on there as well. So, I went to the site today to sign up. I didn't realize what a small operation it is - I'm very impressed, but also a little sad that I have to wait six days to receive my invitation to join. :-) I'm sure it will be worth the wait.

There is nothing in the FAQ about weaving. It mentions crocheting and spinning and dyeing and designing, but no weaving. Ah well - I suppose I'll just have to wait and see.

Some random fiber links

2008-11-09T10:39:00.002-05:00

A friend sent me a link to a website which shows how mathematician Daina Taimina used her crocheting skills to create a physical model of hyperbolic space that wouldn't fall apart as easily as the paper models they used with students. Quite frankly, I think I've done this on accident before - I'm a weaver. Not so good with the crocheting. :-) I started a scarf one time that turned into a Barbie dress.

Hyberbolic Space Crochet Models

Want to make your own? Here's an Interweave article with a pattern! I may ask my mom to make me one. If I tried, it'd probably turn into a scarf.

Taking Crocheting to a Higher Plane

I'm sure I'm the last one to know this, but I just saw in my Halcyon Yarn catalog that Opal Sock Yarn has Harry Potter sock yarn! I confess to not being a Harry Potter fan myself, but I think it's cool anyway, and the yarns are gorgeous. I did, however, find this complaint about Opal Sock Yarns from back in April. I suppose ymmv.

Personally, I want yarns from their Rainforest 4 - Emily, the Gouldian Finch, and Rocky, the Hyacinth Macaw - two birds Ian and I always wanted, but they are just so expensive! The Hyacinth much more than the Gouldian, of course, although part of the reason with the Gouldian was that we had so many Java Rice finches. Cassandra, the beautiful red and blue dragonfly, is a gorgeous yarn, too. I think my Mom should make my Dad a pair of socks from the Daggy yarn - Daggy is a mallard, and the yarn just LOOKS like a hunter should be wearing those socks! My niece Jessica would probably love Elvira, the blue butterfly yarn. I'm not sure what kind of bird Harald is, but he's all orange and yellow and reminds me of my nephew, James - although Otto, from Rainforest 3, is orange and blue and looks "more manly." I have half my family socked! :-) Now if only I knitted.

The Hundertwasser 1 Collection has some gorgeous yarns as well. In fact, the only one I saw that I didn't love was Sea Serpent, and that's only because it was just a little too bland for my taste.

In the Hundertwasser 2 Collection, my favorites were Rain on a Rainy Day, Good Morning City, and Tender Dinghi, with the latter being by far my favorite out of all I've seen so far. These yarns are just gorgeous! Of course, I love themes. I'm a sucker for a theme.

My advice - when looking at the slideshows of Hundertwasser 1 and 2, use the fullscreen mode. It only helps a little, but it's definitely better than the regular view. And if anyone knows of a site with better pictures of worked samples using this yarn, please let me know! Especially woven samples. I'm going to try to resist buying any to use on my weavettes until after the new year, at least. Maybe I'll put it on my Christmas list. :-)

Links to weaving posts from my LJ

2008-10-26T17:50:00.004-04:00

Weaving a stripe on a weavette

Post from my LJ - with pictures! on how to weave a stripe.

Closeup picture of Rigby done on my 6x6

It's blurry. I didn't have a macro setting on that camera.

Non-closeup of the Rigby block

Triplet Triptych

Still not done. Let's not talk about it. Never start a huge three-piece project as your first project in a craft.

For Stacy

2008-10-25T19:17:00.002-04:00

I added a Dallas Cowboys News gadget to the sidebar just for my sister. :-)

Weavette looms

2008-10-25T18:32:00.002-04:00

carrabbas and weaving 053
Originally uploaded by llala412

I am currently uploading all of my weaving pics to flickr so I can actually use them in my blog and website. I have been working on weaving test blocks of many different kinds of Sugar & Cream and Peaches & Cream yarns on the five different Weavettes I have to see how they stripe differently on each loom - now I just need to get the pictures all taken, uploaded, and on my website!

Here are the looms I have. I am missing the perpetually-out-of-stock 4" x 4" Weavette (Buxton Brooks). I do have the 4" Multiloom from Hazel Rose, but of course since it is woven on the bias it won't help for purposes of striping examples.

Laura

Time Management Tools, Scheduling, Complaints, and a little bit of "Luck"

2008-10-25T14:34:00.011-04:00

I have always had a lot of problems with time management. I procrastinate in big, huge, insane ways. I loved doing research for papers in school, and I didn't mind the writing, but when it came to actually finishing the final drafts and typing them up... well, I couldn't type, for one, and my mother (bless her) was always typing them up at midnight the night before the paper was due. The paper I wrote on drug resistant TB when I was finishing my AD after I was married was typed up by my late husband... also the night before it was due.

Right now I am taking several online and correspondence courses. Nothing is due. Ever. You can imagine my motivation. I have read through the material for all of them, and I've done the "fun" assignments - taking pictures for the photography course using the tips in each lesson - but I am currently two months behind in one six month course (the first of three six month courses I have signed up for in that series), I'm not really sure how far behind in two other courses, and I just got my first installment of yet another course. And then there's the exercise program I somehow manage to put off. I put it on my calendar so I would remember, and that worked really well - not - I never look at the calendar.

So I am trying another tool. I have a lot of goals for the future - they are the primary reason I am taking these classes which I am putting off (we could probably go far into my deep psychological fear of failure, or perhaps even fear of success, as the reason, but let's save that for a shrink), and getting this blog re-started for my weaving and future etsy store was a step towards those goals. When I was setting up the blog, which I hadn't touched in a year and a half (I had tried valiantly to use my LiveJournal as a weaving blog, but I always digress to more personal subjects rather than business - this is business related, honest - goals and time management HAVE to be important in business), I found the gadget (sidebar) for TSheets. TSheets is basically a time sheet business. The cool thing is that you can create a free account and clock in and out from the website or a google gadget (which of course I cannot find, except for the version for blogger - I want a desktop version!). Their slogan is "Time is money, Track it!" So far I have spent an hour and forty minutes on this blog, although that did include setting up TSheets.

What I love about TSheets:

You can track your time and see how much total time you spent on each thing at the end of week
You can give yourself PTO :-)
You can create different job-codes for what you are going to spend time doing, and clock in and out for each thing
It's free for the basic account

If you want to get really in-depth with how you spend your time - for instance, if you do work freelance and want to be able to give a client a report of how much time you spent on their project - the freelancer account is $10 a month. Not bad. With the freelancer account you can clock in and out using text messages, so you are not tied to a computer. If you have an iPhone, they have an application for that, as well.

I created job codes for each class, weaving for etsy, exercising, and updating this blog and my website. I think I will also, in the future, create job codes for individual weaving projects when I first begin them. It would be interesting to be able to see the amount of time I spend on each project! I'm planning to make some hats soon, maybe I'll do that then.

If I actually worked on every project I have - classes, weaving, work, etc. - I would never have time to just goof off and relax, which is pretty much all I end up doing. My sister and I had a conversation about this the other day - there are people we both know who drive us crazy because they complain about how "busy busy busy" they are and how they never have time to do anything else or relax or take time for themselves, blah blah blah... The truth is, your life is what you make it. You are as busy as you schedule yourself to be. Obviously I run at the opposite end of the spectrum of the people who complain about how busy they are, but I recognize that I need a lot of down time. I just need to, ah, convince myself that I don't need quite so MUCH downtime. :-)

The people who TRULY drive me crazy, however, are the ones who complain and complain and complain about their kids and how busy they are - and this has happened at every single assignment I've had - and then look at me and tell me - even knowing my history - how "lucky" I am to be single and not have kids and be able to travel for a living. Luck? What exactly did luck have to do with it? This was not luck, this was taking what life threw at me and - eventually - deciding to make the best of it. My husband and I couldn't have kids. Then he died. I spent plenty of years wallowing in self-pity and feeling like the world was out to get me, that life was cruel, and that I would never be able to make any of my dreams, aspirations and goals become realities. I finally got over it and decided that if my former dreams couldn't happen, I would go back to the dreams I had in grade school - being an author, living in a converted bus RV and traveling all over the US, which I had never quite let go of anyway - and work on that one instead. There was no luck there.

So. I travel. I weave (see the "About Me" section). I am saving up for that RV - but not a bus, a van, unless I somehow decide that I would be able to drive such a large vehicle before I actually buy the thing. I'm very fond of Sportsmobiles. I'm pretty certain that's what I'm going to get. Although a bus would certainly give me more room for a big loom... :-)

The next post, I promise, will have more weaving content! In fact, I may start it now. Not sure what the problem is with this slideshow app - it's showing pictures that are NOT from my flickr account. Not sure how to fix that.

Laura, the Roving Weaver

edit 2-12-09:

Since a couple of people have taken the last part of this post the wrong way, let me clarify:I do NOT think that people with kids are somehow NOT busy. When I lived in Florida, my best friend had a very young son - we spent pretty much all of our free time together (all three of us). After I moved to Texas, I started spending all of my free time with my sister, who had two kids under the age of four, and she was a SAHM. So I do know what it's like to have one or two very young and demanding* kids around all the time. There's a difference between that and scheduling yourself into a black hole and then complaining (or bragging, rather) about it.

The other people I was talking about are the ones who actually *complain* about their kids - as in, they don't seem to want them around at ALL and resent having to take care of them instead of being able to go out partying. I've met plenty of people like that in the last few years, and it drives me NUTS.

And furthermore, the argument - which always seems to go with the "childless people think SAHMs just sit around eating bon-bons" complaint - that people who have children cannot possibly be friends with people who do not have children because they will eventually have nothing in common, and people with children are just friends with other people who have children, is a great big load of crap. If the friendship is truly a strong friendship, it will last. My Aunt Pearlie was childless - her best friend of 50-some years had kids. Whether or not the people do or do not have kids doesn't matter. It's the strength of the relationship and whether or not they care to continue it. If one decides to let it go simply because the other does or does not have children, obviously the friendship didn't mean that much to them to begin with.

Just wanted to clarify.

*not that I think they were any more demanding than any other kids that age. :-)

2007-03-27T11:51:00.000-04:00

You know what? I didn't actually want a blog here. I have Xanga, okcupid, myspace, and tripod blogs that I never update, a yahoo 360 blog which is rarely updated, and a LiveJournal blog which IS updated but no one reads anyway. I created this account to post a comment and ended up with a blog!!

Sigh.