daryl – Page 11 – Daryl's Blog

Works well under pressure…

Truth be told, deadlines are my friend. I am focused, organized, and have been doing this long enough to expect roadblocks, detours, and the myriad of things life throws at you when you are planning something else.

Like a fractured shoulder the end of December.

Like another flood in my sewing room last week.

My shoulder is progressing. Chris, my PT, is confident that I will gain back most of my rotation, and he doggedly pursues a course of action that is helping slowly but surely. He knows what he is doing, that is pretty obvious, and I trust the professional. I’m about 75% there, but that obviously doesn’t stop me. I’m always a woman on a mission, and figuring out how to meet deadlines in spite of what the universe throws at me, is my specialty.

Tuesday morning I had the plumber in, because once again, I took water in the basement sewing room. It was a bad storm, on top of an already ridiculous water table in NJ, much of the town flooded, but I should not have taken water under the wall in the corner where the sump pump lives. Turns out the hose of the dehumidifier was laying on the float, probably causing it to work improperly. You can’t make this crap up. So plumber installed a completely new sump pump, because why not, I don’t want to take a chance with a unit that is probably 25 years old, now that NJ is slowly sinking into the Atlantic, and the dehumidifier hose is properly mounted so it doesn’t interfere. Meanwhile, scrubbing the concrete floors and mats with heavy duty cleaner, on my hands and knees with a fractured shoulder that is still healing wasn’t my idea of a fun and entertaining couple of days…

But I persevered…

And was hugely rewarded. I will be honest and say I’m so freakin’ proud of myself, in spite of the tears these last couple of months. I had a deadline and I had to meet it. Three years ago I was asked to be an invited artist at the Convergence Fashion Show in 2020 in Knoxville, TN. I of course agreed, and started thinking about what I would send. We all know the curve ball Covid threw into the works, not only was the conference postponed for two years, but I retired from teaching on the road, and spent those two years developing content for my YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews. I’m not planning to be at the conference.

And so, back in January with one arm in a sling, I looked at the loom with the narrowest warp, which happened to have two shuttles, and I wove slowly, 6 inches a day, with one hand. Just clearing that 4 yard warp was a feat that I still marvel that I accomplished. I had no idea what I was going to do with a 9″ wide 8/2 tencel warp, about 3 1/2 yards long, but then I saw this piece from Urban Outfitters. I have not been able to find the piece on their website.) It was part of an article on sustainability with fashion designers, trying to use what they have. (Shacket is the term for shirt/jacket, apparently)

The shacket is not my taste, but it inspired me to do this.

My jacket is constructed almost entirely by hand and is completely reversible. The most challenging part was finding a reversible separating zipper. Though the piece doesn’t fit with my regular body of work, the response to everyone who has seen photos of it has been really wonderful, Jennifer Moore, whose workshop I wove the double weave fabric in, was really hoping to see it at Convergence.

The pattern for the jacket is from my pattern collection, a combination of the #800 vest and the armholes and sleeves from the #1700 tunic.

Meanwhile, if you have been reading my past posts over the last couple of months, you know I’ve managed to design, set up, and weave off yardage, hand dyed yarns, mixed structures on 12 shafts, inspired by a puzzle we were fixing. All with a fractured shoulder. I was able to get this walking vest out of the fabric I had, and I’m so freakin’ thrilled with this.

I used scraps of a caviar leather I had to make epaulettes, since there was no way I could match the shoulders, and there is leather piping down the front and armhole bands. I finished up the handwork yesterday. The pattern is from my collection, the #600 Walking Vest. It has pockets!

And because this fabric, woven a couple of years ago, kept calling me from the shelf, (it sat on the shelf for the last couple of years because I couldn’t think of what to make with it) asking me to make a dress. For the runway. Something that celebrated the stripes. Bias… I listen carefully to my materials.

I’m not certain how the dress will ultimately perform, it fits like a dream, being bias and all, but how will it hold up on exhibit in a fashion show? Normally I would have the dress folded on the shelf. I’m still up in the air whether I should send it. But I love the look of the dress, the way it chevrons on the side. The yarns are a combination of a bunch of stuff that was on my shelf, including a hand dyed warp from Blazing Shuttles, that’s the aqua tones large stripe. Again, a combination of structures, plain weave, twills, and some supplementals. And it has pockets! I modified my #900 bias top pattern.

So I’m sitting back and smiling at myself and all of my hardwork these last couple of months, mentally, physically, and all because of a postponed deadline from two years ago. I am my happiest when I meet a personal challenge head on and win. And I won this one.

Stay tuned…

Slow and Steady…

I’d like to think I’m a patient person. I suppose it depends on what or whom I’m required to be patient with…

I’ve undertaken a couple of major projects in the studios, which completely thrill me, yet create stress, and challenges, and a couple of probably unrealistic deadlines. That’s my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I work best under unrealistic deadlines. Except when my body doesn’t want to cooperate…

Though my fractured shoulder is improving, little bits at a time, I’m impatient. I’ll admit it. I carry on with great fanfare, but secretly cry a little bit each time I am held back from what I want/need/have to do.

The Rainbow Double Weave Jennifer Moore Workshop sampler turned into a completely reversible jacket is nearing completion. This wasn’t so physically challenging, I just had to sit for hours hand sewing. And I mean hours. About 90% of it is sewn by hand. Including the entire interior. All that remains is the collar, and I hope to get that finished up this week. At least get it mounted on the jacket and ready for handwork.

I am just so in love with this jacket; it is how I imagined it in my head. I combined my 800 vest, with added seam allowances on the front, with the armhole and drop shoulder sleeve from the 1700 tunic, patterns from the Daryl Lancaster pattern collection. There are two layers of wool suiting to create the garment, basted together, with windows cut out, where the double weave cloth fits between the layers, and both layers are then sewn to the double weave cloth in reverse appliqué. Once the individual sections are completed, the outer garment layer is sewn together by machine, and the entire inner layer is sewn by hand at all the seams and hems. There are days I think I’m absolutely brilliant, and there are days where… I’ll leave it up to your imagination 🙂

The fabric inspired by the Magic Puzzle Company Busy Bistro Puzzle I fixed with my daughter, has proven one of my most difficult physical challenges. I use a heavy end feed shuttle, which is tough enough on my poor fractured shoulder, but the loom I’m weaving on, new to me, is a monster. 12 shafts and 54″ wide. The beater alone could kill you! Yet it is gorgeous and comfortable in the hand. Assuming the hand isn’t attached to a fractured shoulder. The most difficult part though, is lifting the shafts. Most picks required lifting 6 of the 12 shafts, and each shaft had 225 inserted eye heddles, which I didn’t remove because there was room on the sides to store them, and I spent so much time putting them on to begin with! Trying as hard as I could, I just couldn’t consistently lift 6 shafts and get a consistently clean shed every time. I’m past my mid-60’s and my joints just can’t lift what I could in my 20’s.

I’d lay awake at night, with my fractured shoulder aching, especially when bad weather approaches, and think, how am I going to weave this… If you ever watched the Queen’s Gambit, a Netflix series, you might remember how the main character, I’ve forgotten her name, could see chess moves happening across the ceiling. That’s the way I sometimes think, I can see the mechanics behind a draft, and how things need to move up or down to create what I want. And what I wanted was a clean shed opening. When that happens in any other situation, I revert to using two feet to help lift, break apart the tie-up, and figure out a logical treadling sequence that will get me what I want with a lot less physical effort. I watched the ceiling in the dark and saw how I could do it. I flew out of bed in the morning and went to the software and reconfigured the tie up and crossed my fingers. (An apology to my non-weaving readers, this all makes no sense, just know it worked.)

Revised tie-up and treadling using two feet.

It was miraculous, and magical and I just wove like the wind, or maybe a slight breeze because I’m still dealing with a fractured shoulder. I use to be able to weave like the wind. Maybe someday soon. But I’ve got a deadline now, and I’m frantically trying to pace myself to get what I need to get done before April 15th. That’s the deadline to submit the five garments I’m planning to exhibit at the Convergence Fashion Show this summer, sponsored by the Handweavers Guild of America, in Knoxville, TN, as an invited artist. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to send, but I want more choices than I have, from what I’ve made in the last two years, and I’d love for this puzzle inspired fabric to be one of them.

So given my arm limitations, I’ve just resigned myself to only empty one pirn a day, with 2/12 wool, which is about what my shoulder can handle. Still, that’s about 15″ and that adds up. I looked at my warp beam, and was shocked to see the I’m on the last round of paper. This was a seven yard warp. I’m almost there…

What really surprised me, is I’ve had no tension issues at all so far, which I completely expected given the dozens of different yarns I’m combining together in a dozen different structures. It will be interesting to see what happens when the fabric is off the loom and washed…

On a completely different note, spring is here, though we are supposed to get one last frost tonight through Tuesday, but in celebration of my late husband’s 71st birthday last Tuesday, my daughter and I went to the garden center and bought a couple flats of cold weather greens, and some pansies. We got everything planted, started the spring clean up in the yard, which means bags of animal excrement, because, well, if you have dogs, you know what spring means…

The garden center was just a riot of color…

And last Tuesday I was interviewed for the Handweavers Guild of America series Textiles and Tea, which I adore; The Textiles and Tea interviews are the highlight of my week. They are live interviews, over zoom, but also simulcast over Facebook, and of course recorded. You don’t need a Facebook account to watch, it is a public site. The recording will eventually be posted on the Handweavers Guild of America YouTube channel, (it might take a couple of months) but for now, if you missed the interview, you can watch it here. Kathi’s questions were thoughtful, and fun to answer. Apparently there were 600 people watching in the webinar, and another couple hundred watching the live Facebook feed, which they said was a record. I don’t know, I just had fun answering the questions. Everything for me has a story, which is why I still have something to say after almost 14 years of blogging. I know few people blog anymore, and far fewer people read the blog than did a half dozen years ago, but that isn’t why I write it. I used to journal, but it is more fun to type what I’m thinking and be able to add cool pictures, and then be able to go back and search for what I want, because blogs have that built in feature. And it is there forever, or as long as I pay for the hosting fees…

So dear readers, spring is upon us, and that means outdoor stuff, and I have a lovely garden with ponds and fish and places to sit and weave, all coming to life, and I’ll have a garden full of salad fixin’s, and I think, each spring, that this season I’m going to spend my time outdoors and do fiber-y things, and by fall I realize that none of that happened. It is an amusing cycle, but still, I am determined each spring and we will see how the year progresses… Deadlines await…

I worked hard for this one…

To say this has been a challenging couple of weeks would be an understatement. Considering what’s happening in the world, there is nothing I should be complaining about, but in my own world, nevertheless, life has been more challenging than I’m use to…

My daughter, not without sturm und drang, left for a Star Trek cruise about two weeks ago. That put me alone to run everything, deal with all the animals, and my fractured shoulder, for about 10 days. I had mourning, mopey animals that waited for her return.

Nights were the most challenging, they all needed to be close to me, and I was struggling to sleep anyway with a fractured shoulder, and I didn’t sleep the entire time she was gone. No, I couldn’t lock them out of the room, I would have had a dog fight, broken doors, or worse. They need to be where the people are…

I struggled with my shoulder as well. Now weeks into PT, I seemed to be going backwards, near tears trying to do anything, and after much discussion, changed a number of things, including switching to ice packs periodically to reduce inflammation, and trying to curb my enthusiasm in my studio, since I was developing secondary stress related injury like tennis elbow. It is hard to keep a good artist down. Or weaver, or whatever…

Meanwhile, I did manage to wind a warp, dress the loom, and I started weaving the 20/2 overshot placemats I promised my friend. This is going to take awhile… A long while…

My daughter returned to much fanfare from the animals, but had been exposed to Covid on the ship, and by the time I picked her up at the airport, with a rapid test in hand, which was again negative (she had been tested daily on the ship), she was pretty sick. She got a PCR test the next day, but it took until late Wednesday to find out that was also negative. She picked up something and it seems to be responding to antibiotics, but she has been basically unavailable and hiding in the opposite end of the house, mostly sleeping, so I don’t get what she has. And with her constantly asleep, the animals have been more than needy. Sigh. There is something completely unfair that one goes on vacation and then comes home and is down for the count for a week…

So what do I do when life is at its most challenging? I dive into a project so intense that I sometimes forget to come up for air. Which is why my arm flared up and I developed a sort of tennis elbow. I still like to think I’m invincible, it helps me get through the days, but I will say that more than once over the last couple of weeks, even I was feeling discouraged. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and I can’t even weave a new handbasket… Whatever that is, I’m trying hard to figure it out and if it will help at all…

In a previous post, I talked about the yardage I wanted to weave inspired by the puzzle I fixed with my daughter, and had pulled all the yarn for it.

About 98% of it was hand dyed, still in the skeins. I decided not to “cake” the skeins, wind into pull balls on a ball winder, and just work directly from the skeins, since I only needed maybe 20-60 yards of any one color. And there were a lot of colors. I rigged up double skein winders, which went through hooks in the ceiling beam, and then directly to the warping mill. Yes, this was brilliant but very taxing on my fractured, slowly recovering shoulder. I did this for a week.

I wound…

And wound…

And wound…

A total of five warp chains. This last sequence references the upper corner of the poster.

I warp front to back, it works better for what I warp, and the complexity of this warp, on 12 shafts, where every group of threads, 3,5,8, or 13 (all Fibonacci numbers) change structure. I’ve been working on this draft for months.

I started sleying…

I’m just loving these colors and was too impatient to stop and rest my arm. So I packed it in ice and carried on…

Note that I haven’t actually tried weaving anything this wide, at 28″, with a fractured shoulder, but figured eventually I’ll be able to, anyway it would be good therapy to try.

I struggled to get into the back of the loom, there isn’t a lot of room in the studio to drop the back beam of a 12 shaft loom, and I didn’t have the strength to try to actually move the loom forward. This loom came to me just under a year ago, and it is 54″ wide. Long story. There is a blog post about how it came to me. This is the first time I’m warping it and I’m going to assume it will actually weave.

I started threading. Really challenging, as reaching through 12 shafts for the warp ends coming from the reed was tough with my left arm. I found in the beginning I had to have my right arm do the reaching and pull through the heddles. Slow going…

I wanted to ask for help, but this was all that was available…

I kept at it. Eventually I was able to reach through with my left arm, truly remarkable considering where I was a week ago…

By now, my daughter is feeling remarkably better, and to her credit, she did help me get this baby beamed.

The colors are gorgeous. They make me so happy.

So now I can’t sleep thinking about how it will look, how the loom will actually weave, can I even lift rock maple 54″ wide shafts?

Next step was tying on the front and then crawling underneath the loom to do the tie-up.

I looked for help, but my assistant was passed out on the chair behind me…

I managed to do the tie up, and was pleased I could reach further than I thought with my left arm. Getting up off the floor with one arm is a challenge, but I did it.

And so, yes, I could weave. I’m gloriously happy that, though a bit painful, I can throw a shuttle and pull the beater, which is the heaviest one I’ve ever worked with, but I swear, by the time this yardage is finished, I’ll have abs of steel. No Covid belly for me anymore. Dear Lord the shafts on this loom are heavy.

I’m sampling wefts, and think I’m going to continue with the 2/12 lambswool in the mid brown coloring. Though I like the darker blue on top, the brown stays truer to the original poster coloring.

I’m just loving the juxtaposition of the different structures. Each is so interesting. Each could be a yardage all by itself. I feel an article coming on about combining structures, already there are things swimming through my head, but for now, I’m content that I did the impossible. I earned this one, most challenging thing I’ve done under the circumstances…

And of course I’m making slow progress on my double weave sampler jacket. The fronts are done, and I’m working on the back side of the back, all reverse appliqué windows, so both sides of the double weave are visible in a reversible jacket. Thanks to my weaver friends who found me a place online that would make a custom length reversible jacket zipper, color choices were limited, but I got what I needed to make this jacket work.

And so dear readers, I try to look at the news with only one eye, otherwise it is too overwhelming. I’m laying low, struggling to work with my slowly recovering fractured shoulder, walking into town three days a week for PT, stopping at the grocery store on the way home. I buy only what I can carry home. Life is simple, but complicated. I’m just getting through the days, waiting for spring…

Stay safe, and stay tuned…

Slow Journey…

We take journeys all through life. It is important to cherish each step of the journey, no matter how long it takes. While that is certainly relevant right now as my fractured shoulder begins to heal yet scream out in retaliation when PT becomes too much, but today, 2/22/22 is actually a really huge mile marker in my lifetime journey. 20 years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Obviously I lived. I had a mastectomy, and six months of chemo, and though I was young, I was determined that this would not be one of those things that defined my children’s journey. My son confirmed that when we went out to dinner to celebrate.

Yes, I actually went out to a restaurant. I needed to do that. To have a Margarita, to be with someone who was there. Who, thankfully doesn’t have haunting memories of that time. He was 12.

And so the journey over the last 20 years has been slow, and often painful, but I always had support along that journey, friends, family, and sometimes people I didn’t even know. We are all on this journey together, as partners on the trip fade into and out of our life, we do not walk alone. So thank you to all of you who walked with me on this journey so far, know how much your support has meant and has kept me going.

I find a shift in my days, now that PT and painful recovery are taking precedent over things I’d rather be doing. I think about what I want to be doing and what I need to do, and sadly they are rarely the same thing. I need to exercise my arm, and I really need to clean my house. I desperately need to sit down and do my least favorite task in the world, taxes. And this past week I did a task that has been at the top of my to-do list for a ridiculous amount of time, partly because I hate doing it and partly because I didn’t know how to do it.

That task was to rewrite all of my class/lecture/workshop prospectuses, to indicate what I’m willing to teach, remotely, and how, and eliminate what I’m not, or can’t see how I can. And since I will take in private students, 1 or 2 at a time, I needed to indicate those workshops, or retreats, and what the expectations would be for a prospective student. Those materials lists were easy. I have most everything here. So each day I tackled more, and edited everything, so if you are a guild, the list is updated and refreshed. See all my class offerings here.

If you are a person interested in studying with me, find all that information here.

And, because I had dismantled my photo set up back in December because I needed the guest room, it had been my plan once Christmas was over to reset the photo equipment and shoot many of the new pieces to add to my website. My fall right before Christmas and subsequent shoulder fracture prevented that, but I was determined to do a photo shoot on Saturday, and so I managed with one and a half functioning arms, to set up all the equipment and do a real shoot of five garments. You can see the three most recent here, getting the positioning of each garment just right, and the lighting, reaching up to ‘zhuzh’ the garment details, was all pretty taxing on my shoulder, but I did it. So that part of the website is updated now. If you want any details on the garments shown here, you can read them on the website. Because it has been updated!

But there are still the taxes… Sigh…

Meanwhile, what I really want to be doing are projects I can sink my teeth into. Projects that will keep me awake at night, since I am anyway. Projects that make me think, steer me in new directions and make me push the envelope.

One of them, which I did manage to spend the rest of the weekend on, was to develop this pile of handdyed skeins into an actual fabric. The skeins were pulled from my stash based on the poster included in a puzzle that I had just finished. I spoke about that in my last blog post.

Because I have a naked 12 shaft loom, which is crying for a warp, I wanted to take my usual 8 shaft yardage draft, and see how many structures I could get using 12 shafts. Turns out a lot. Many of the structures I had used in the 8 shaft could be shifted to existing shafts and I kept having more shafts to work with. I’m really stretching this, heading into uncharted territory, not completely sure this will all work with the yarns I’ve chosen and the sett I am planning to use. But that is the point n’est ce pas?

So I took a small snip from each skein, and sat with software (Fiberworks) and spent hours plugging in colors and structures into a 12 shaft draft, using Fibonacci numbers to determine the width of the stripes of a particular yarn/structure.

I’ll keep you posted on that adventure. There is going to be a lot of cake winding from skeins ahead of me…

Meanwhile, I’m haunted by the possibilities of the Rainbow Double Weave sampler I pulled off the loom last month, after painfully weaving it off with one hand, two shuttles, 40 picks per inch out of 8/2 tencel. Of course my brain only thinks in one direction, all points in a journey lead to clothing. And so I found a remnant of a fabric from a gown I made and wore for two weddings, as matron of honor, which I thought really complemented the sampler.

First though, I couldn’t see myself just randomly chopping up the sampler, I needed a plan. So I scanned the entire 3 1/2 yards, and pieced together all the pages, so I could play around with a paper example of the real cloth.

I cut out all the pieces of a jacket which is a combination of my 800 zippered vest, using the drop shoulder sleeve of the 1700 tunic. I cut them in the wool satin weave fabric from the gown, and for the back side, the wool suiting. I arranged the paper replicas of the sampler all over the pattern sections.

I created a basted border, to allow seaming, and then had a stiff drink and cut out windows for the sampler which would sandwich between the two layers.

Now all I had to do was reverse appliqué both sides, to create a completely reversible garment. ‘Cause you know, the point of double weave is that there are two sides…

Spent most of the last few days hand sewing. The fronts are done, except for removing the basting, which I’m not doing until the rest of the pattern pieces are finished. This one is a really slow journey.

Right now, slow journeys are really appealing. I drop my daughter at the airport Thursday morning, she is off on a Star Trek cruise to points south. There is a lot of anxiety and trepidation on both our parts, we have not really been apart since March of 2020 when we both returned from our travels, her from the cruise in 2020, and me from my last travel adventure, teaching in Oregon. We have not left the dogs, and 10 days without her in the house, will be kind of challenging for not only her dog, but for me.

I have lots to keep my focus, and keep me entertained. The world is changing, and part of my discussion tonight with my son, who is in the military, was about what is happening in parts of the world that seem hauntingly familiar if you have studied history at all. I needed that Margarita.

Stay tuned dear readers, hopefully the journey will continue for another 20 years, and that many of you will continue to walk it with me. There are lots of looms to dress, lots of fabric to be sewn, lots of yarn to be dyed, and lots of ideas to be explored. I love you all!

I’d just hate to call it an addiction…

It’s just that I can’t resist those emails. The monthly ones from Peter Patchis Yarns. The frequent ones from Webs. The one to me personally from a yarn company that shall remain nameless, “Hi Daryl, we are going to discontinue a product line, one we know you like, let us know if you want to purchase what’s left…”

I had even avoided opening the monthly newsletter from Peter Patchis, until a friend on a Zoom call mentioned the great yarns for the month. It is only $6. a pound. Sigh… So after filling up on one of almost every color of Webs 8/2 cotton, on sale for an OK price, and a number of $6. a pound cones from Peter Patchis, and another box from the unnamed company… I sort of panicked. Where the heck was I going to put all this yarn when it came in? I swear there is no room in the inn… And no, as a friend suggested, I’m not renting a storage unit… Can you imagine wanting to know what colors I have in 8/2 and driving to a storage unit to retrieve a couple cones? Absolutely not…

So sitting in the studio, doing odd tasks like winding cakes from my dyed skeins, a boring and tedious task, I’ll get to that in a minute, I just sat looking at my wonderful, incredible, overfilled monstrous space of a studio and it occurred to me that I could move some of the Structo Looms out of Yarn Alley, the alley behind the bookcases, to another location in the studio, and the felting supplies I have for teaching, which I’m not doing, could store someplace else.

In case you are wondering, I have 18 Structo Looms, I believe five are 8 shaft, plus I have 2 of the 10″ wide Leclerc versions of the Structo’s. Those are the greenish ones on the top shelf.

That left the top of the bookcases in Yarn Alley empty.

Which I immediately filled up with all the yarn that came in the past few days. It really isn’t an addiction. Of course I’ll live long enough to actually use it all… Stop laughing dear readers, stop laughing…

In between all that, I took that pile of dyed skeins that I thought would be pretty together, refer to my previous blog, and I lined them up to plan out a scarf warp.

I thought of calling this run “Winter Sky”, because that’s what I saw out my window, January in NJ. But then the title A Winter’s Tale, with a nod to the Bard, popped into my head, and this has certainly been a winter to tell about, what with my fractured shoulder and all, and getting this warp on the loom, especially one I haven’t put 12 yards on two beams before, I earned the title.

So, skeins have to be wound into cakes.

Cakes have to be wound into warps.

Warps have to be sleyed, I work front to back, and had to use an 8 dent reed for my 27epi, because the 9 dent is tied up with the Drunken Squares Warp, which I can’t weave on yet because my arm won’t do a 25″ wide warp easily. Note to self, you need more 9 dent reeds…

Sleyed warps need to be threaded.

Threaded warps need to be tied onto the back apron. Tensioning devices are added…

And the warp is wound. All 12 yards. I did have my daughter help, it really does go easier with two people, though I rarely have that luxury.

And then I had to rig up a way of attaching my sectional box to wind the supplementals onto the lower warp beam. My Leclerc Sectional box does not fit on the second back beam of the Macomber. Weavers are so resourceful.

Everything is now in place, second back beam installed, and I’m ready to tie onto the front.

And the weaving has commenced. I’m loving this warp. Very understated. A true winter’s tale…

Meanwhile, I cleared the Harrisville Warp I put on my small four shaft loom. I was trying out an idea, and threw on five yards. I wove a couple narrow yards with the two skeins of sock yarn I have, sett way too dense for a scarf, which I did on purpose because I was testing for garment weight fabric, and the end result is pretty cool.

I must have screwed up the calculations because I thought one 50 gram skein of sock yarn would do a two yard scarf length, but it took both skeins. So I pulled some small leftovers of mohair I had laying around and wove the other couple of yards. Both are washed, and these will eventually become panels for some sort of garment. I’m mulling over possibilities…

I’m always thinking, always thinking. Nights are the hardest to shut off my head, and especially now because my shoulder constantly aches, and I just can’t get comfortable. So I spend many hours at night just thinking…

I’ve mentioned before that my daughter and I adore fixing puzzles. She purchased a series that she adores, from the Magic Puzzle Company. We were working on one called The Busy Bistro, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about the color relationships in this puzzle. They were gorgeous. I spent many hours at night just thinking… And I have all this dyed yarn.

So I took the poster from the puzzle box and started pulling color groups, lining them up in the apron of my 12 shaft loom, which I got, new to me, last Mother’s Day.

I’m determined to get a warp on this before this Mother’s Day, it cries every time I walk by it, “Warp me, please…” I’m basing this on a fabric I did before, except I want to expand some of the design areas, to include an additional 4 shafts. This is the fabric I wove years ago, probably 10, and made a tunic out of it. It was 8 shaft. Now I have 12 to play with.

I’ll move yarns around and eventually start snipping samples on a draft, and see what I get.

Meanwhile, I found fabric to use with my 3 1/2 yards of the Rainbow Double Weave sampler I painstakingly wove off right after my accident. Of course this fabric was on my shelf, and there is a story behind it, but that story is for another day. First I want to see if this will work… Everything is hanging up to dry, and I’m loving the palette.

And finally, I got a large envelop from the US Government earlier in the week. And this just made me smile. Back when I developed the YouTube channel, and came up with the name, The Weaver Sews, and had my daughter help me with a logo, I thought it would be beneficial to have it trademarked. What a process. After a couple of rejections for technical reasons, I failed to read the unreadable directions properly, I managed, after a year and a half, to procure a real trademark document. Perseverance, a typical trait of most handweavers, paid off and I’m official.

Spring is coming, and I got out for a walk today. It was near 50 degrees. I am still terrified of ice, but I got out, bought a couple things from the grocery store, and walked home. It felt so great. Stay tuned dear readers, there are more adventures to come, and lots of yarn to play with. and lots of looms just calling for warps…