Finally some Pictures…

In think one of the cardinal rules of blogging is lots of photos.  Especially in the fiber world.  Everyone loves photos and no one wants to read a lot of words.  That’s why my monographs are about 75% photos and 25% words. (This is a rough estimate since I’ve never actually counted either the photos per square inch or the words per page.)

So it was quite unusual that I put two lengthy blog posts out there this past week that had absolutely no photos.  Unless you count the links to the Weavezine blogs and those had lots of photos.

And so, I’m trying to wrap up loose ends so to speak before I head out Friday morning at an ungodly hour to hop on a plane to Chicago and then on to Green Bay and then up to a sheep farm with my lovely friend Ginnie where we will stay overnight before heading up to the ferry and then on to Siever’s.  This year I wanted plenty of extra time, like a whole extra day to travel since last year I finally arrived after my class started.  One never knows when one is dealing with airlines.  (See previous post.)

When last we left off in project land, I was in the midst of winding balls from dyed skeins for more scarves.  I will say that I started weaving this run and within the first two inches I wanted to rip out all the supplemental warps and change them, and I called in my daughter who happened to be home and down the hall at the time, to come and help, and she looked at it and said, “Mom, they are lovely.  Leave them alone.”  So I trusted her, and kept weaving and I have to agree.  I’m really loving this batch.  The colors are perfect together.  Just the colors of a sunset.  I have one left to weave off of the run of five.  Hopefully I’ll get that off tomorrow morning while I’m cooking a quiche for a luncheon.

And I was about to cut out a dress from a lovely floral rayon I got during my April fabric buying trip to NYC with Peggy Sagers. (Vogue 1192)  If you are new to this blog, I detailed all this in a blog post the end of April.  This fabric was one of the ones I ordered from Stylecrest in NJ.  Here is the post where I featured the fabrics once they were sent to me.  I will say that this dress gave me fits.  I’m a fairly straightforward Vogue fit, 12 on the top and 14 on the bottom.  I rarely have to tweak much, ( be kind, I know you are all rolling your eyes, but I get my challenges fitting real people in classes.)  The right side of the dress sweeps up in about 8 large tucks that are angled just so, and it crosses over a left front that is only a half garment.  Meaning it ends just below the boobs.  The sharp angles of the right side of the dress make it largely bias, but the lining is cut as a straightforward darted on grain pattern piece.  I found it really hard to adjust and tweak this dress because of all the opposing grainlines, and because well, this kind of thing is nearly impossible to do on yourself.  Hence the popularity of my classes where you can bring your stack of patterns and get me to fit them on you.  It is so much easier for me to fit someone else than to try and take in and adjust the back  on my own dress when I can’t really get back there.  So I had to guess.  I took the dress apart four times, and tweaked some more.  I’m finally happy with it but this one literally did give me fits because of the fit.  It is a pretty summer dress and I think I’ll wear it to the luncheon tomorrow.  It is a pool party but I don’t do pools.  I prefer to sit in the shade and sip wine.

I’m still working on the sweater, but I haven’t spent a lot of time this week on it, since knitting is mostly my airplane project.  And I expect to be spending a lot of Friday in an airport and on a plane.  Sigh.

And last night and most of today I spent redesigning the beginning project for the “Weave Your Own Trim” inkle class at the American Sewing Guild Conference in Arlington, VA in August.  I have 20 students, and have to provide kits of yarn and Ashford Inklettes for them to use.  Since this year the class is only three hours, I thought I’d introduce a supplemental weft technique on a simple band, quick to warp up and then they can play with rattail (really bug tail if you want to get technical) and see how many ways they can manipulate it within the band.  So I came up with a sampler, variations on the trim I made for this jacket.

The heat this week has been unbearable.  I keep checking the radar hoping for a severe thunderstorm to cool things down, we are struggling to keep our gardens fresh and alive, and it is a huge thanks to my husband who is in Dallas this week, that before he left he rigged up a number of drip lines to keep things watered.  We will do another hand off of the car keys on Friday at the airport.  For old times sake…

Stay tuned…