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Archive for the ‘fiberarts’ Category

Lochinver finished

Posted in knitting on September 3, 2011| 4 Comments »

It’s done, the hand of the knitted fabric feels great, and it fits as well as you can expect from a drop-shoulder design.  The extreme taper to the sleeves seems a little odd, but I will wear it for a while before deciding if any adjustments are needed:

I found these 3 buttons in my stash and they are perfect.  I don’t plan on buttoning/unbuttoning as it pulls over my head just fine.  But they make a nice decorative finish to the neckline:

I’m entering it in the county fair next week in the “Fleece to Finished Item” category.

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Lochinver progress

Posted in knitting on August 25, 2011| 3 Comments »

I’m in the home stretch on the Lochinver sweater from Alice Starmore’s Fishermen’s Sweaters.  Here it is with the body, collar and one sleeve done:

I have modified the sleeve patterning from the pattern as written.  In the book version, she alternates pattern bands with plain stockinette stitch sections.  After looking at pictures of finished “Lochinvers” on Ravelry, I wasn’t crazy about the look.  I also looked in some of my books on traditional fishermen’s sweaters of England and Scotland.  They tended to have patterning at the top of the sleeve (ending either above or below the elbow) then finish with plain stockinette stitch before the ribbing.  I think this was because they tended to snag and wear more on the lower arm – these were working sweaters, after all.  It would be easier to tear out and re-knit the lower part of the sleeve this way, to keep the sweater going.

Anyway, after the first pattern band where you decrease away the underarm gusset, I continued with 3 of the body charts and the same 8 rows between them as in the body, making for double purl bands between patterns.  Had to keep track of the decreases every 3 rows but that wasn’t so bad.  Then finished with a short section of stockinette and the final ribbing.  I was able to try it on to get the sleeve length just right for me, which is always nice.

Hopefully I will be done with this by next week – block and sew on the 3 buttons for the collar – and post one final picture!

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Sea Scallop

Posted in weaving on August 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

As promised, here are pictures of the latest plaited twill scarves in the warp colorway “Sea Scallop”.  For those of you who are not weavers, the warp is seen as the threads that run lengthwise through the scarf, and which you see in the twisted fringes at each end.  The weft is the thread or yarn that is woven back and forth across the width of the scarf, forming the pattern.  All of these were woven using the same tie-up (how the treadles are attached to the harnesses on the loom) but I used two different treadling patterns (the order in which the harnesses are lifted for each shot or pass of the weft) so that’s why you see two different patterns.

SeaScallop with soft pink chenille weft

Sea Scallop with chocolate brown chenille weft

Sea Scallop with eggplant tencel weft

 

Sea Scallop with Pompeii (rust) tencel weft

Sea Scallop with taupe tencel weft

I’m taking two of these to each gallery tomorrow (see sidebar) and setting one aside for the holiday sales.  Which one do you think I will set aside?  I haven’t actually decided yet!

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Start-itis

Posted in fiberarts, Methow Valley on August 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Lots of new projects underway here lately, but the blog has lagged behind.  I have had start-itis, wanting to start many things all at once!

I started a new sweater using some yarn that I spun last year.  Actually I brought this one along all the way from the fleece, which was from a multicolored Corriedale named “Tsuku”.  After washing, I separated the fleece into 3 color groups (gray, white-to-pale gray, and dark-gray-to-black), carded them separately and then put the 3 colors onto the drum carder in layers.  The goal was to preserve some color variation in the final yarn, which more or less worked.  Spun it up as a 3-ply yarn sometime last winter and wound up with quite a lot, maybe 2800 yards or so.  So now I am knitting it up as a traditional gansey style sweater, using the pattern Lochinver from Alice Starmore’s book Fishermen’s Sweaters.

Lochinver sweater completed to the underarm

As of today, I have almost finished the front and back yokes and will be moving on to the collar and sleeves soon.  More pictures to come!  It’s going amazingly fast and it feels good to be knitting an actual sweater again.  I had kind of gotten stuck on hats and small projects there for a while.

I started spinning some merino/cashmere and merino/tencel fiber that I purchased at a conference several years back.  Dyed by Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks, both in the same colorway called Copper Slate.  Taking an idea from last February’s spinning camp on Orcas, I am alternating the two fiber blends in the spun singles (instead of alternating colorways of the same fiber) and hope to wind up with a 2-ply for a lace project.  No pictures yet but I will get some once I actually have produced some yarn.

Started another round of plaited twill scarves down at the weavers’ guild room.  I am calling this warp colorway “Sea Scallop.”

Sea Scallop with chocolate chenille weft

Sea Scallop with taupe tencel weft

These are actually off the loom now, fringes braided, washed and pressed and trimmed.  I’ll get pictures today or tomorrow and show the finished product.  I have wound the next warp and it is ready to tie on, which I may get started on today.  I’m on a roll, trying to build up some stock for the galleries and holiday sales.

At home, I have been working on more of the small blankets or lap robes.  I have interim pictures only, as I am just concentrating on getting them woven and putting them in a box to be finished up later (twisting the fringes, fulling in the washing machine, etc).  It’s been really fun though, sorting through my Shetland yarn stash and coming up with combinations that work together – and getting rid of some stuff kept in storage for way, way too long!

This one used some handspun Romney yarn that was given to me at knitting retreat last November.  She dyed it the variegated purple color and then spun it as a 2-ply.  I had to use some commercial yarn in the warp as well (Harrisville Shetland) to get the full width, and also for the weft:

# 6 using hand-spun, hand-dyed Romney

This one used up yarn leftover from a fairisle sweater I knit several years ago (Luskentyre by Alice Starmore):

# 7 Luskentyre, on the loom

#7 Luskentyre, off loom but not yet finished/fulled

I finished one 2 days ago in shades of brown, and have a new one on the loom in shades of gray to black:

# 9 underway on the loom

On a completely different note, last Friday we attended the “soft opening” for my friend Sara’s new studio down at the TwispWorks campus in Twisp.  She is calling it “Culler Studio”, a play on “color studio” but Culler was her mother’s maiden name.  Rick and I had been down there the week before helping her paint the walls, and it was amazing to see it transformed:

Culler Studio at TwispWorks

This will be primarily a work space (Sara is a natural dyer, painter, weaver) but for this event she had a showing of her own work, plus that of her 2 daughters Eva (print-making) and Grace (jewelry).  It was certainly well-attended and a good time was had by all!

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So Tempting

Posted in spinning on July 19, 2011| 3 Comments »

I have been spinning more lately, and this led to a flurry of drum-carding activity the last week or so.  The carder had fallen silent and forlorn for quite some time, so it was nice to get drawn back into it.

It all started when I spun up 4 oz. of a prepared batt from Crosspatch Creations in Montana.  This had some of her natural dark brown wool and a lot of dyed mohair – golds and rose tones, mostly.  When I had the singles spun, I decided I wanted to ply it with “something else” and not back on itself.  I started digging through the stash of washed fleeces looking for something dark, and came upon a dyed Romney fleece I bought a couple of years back from Heidi Dascher of The Artful Ewe in Port Gamble, WA.  In her inimitable way, Heidi had dyed the whole fleece rather randomly – a lot of jet black but with lots of red, gold, green etc. mixed in.

So I pulled off about 8 oz of that dyed fleece and carded it into 3 batts, one of which is now spun and plied with the mohair blend as a 3-ply (2 dark brown and 1 of the mohair blend):

Romney batt with final yarn (plied with mohair blend shown on bobbin)

While digging through the fleece stash, I ran across one of the first fleeces I ever bought – back in 2005.  It came from Whitehall, MT and was from a sheep named Temptation.  She was a Shetland x Corriedale cross “with some minor amounts of Romney, Border Leicester and Cormo thrown in.”  Her owner sent me a picture at the time:

Temptation the sheep

Here’s a picture of the fleece, which I then washed and stored away until now.  Lovely warm light grey/brown with blonde tips:

Temptation’s fleece before washing

Well now I have a big box of Temptation batts and a 3-ply sample spun up:

But back to the dyed Romney fleece from Heidi Parra.  I believe the fleece itself came from The Pines Farm in Maple Valley, WA.  It is really lovely stuff, super clean and almost no VM (vegetable matter) or second cuts, nice and crimpy.   I had over 3 lbs. of it left after pulling off some for the project mentioned above, and realized that if I just carded it up as before, as completely blended batts, I would lose all the color distinction that Heidi had put into the dyeing.  So, what to do?

On Saturday I laid it all out on a table and pulled it apart into 5 color groups, working quickly and trying not to “overthink” the process too much.  About a third of it was black (with some color still in some of the locks):

Mostly black

The next biggest group was red – from black with red overtones, to dark red through bright cherry:

Mostly red

There were 2 smaller piles of “gold and oranges” and “olive tones”:

golds and oranges

olive tones

Final and fifth category was “everything else” which wound up a rich brown color when carded.

I spent most of Sunday carding up the 5 color groups.  This is when I love, love, love my big electric carder which I bought from Judith MacKenzie (built by her ex, Nick McCuin).  It does nice big batts, and leaves my hands free to tease and/or feed on the fiber.  I did a first pass with each color group to tease out (loosen) the locks and then re-combined the resulting batts in a second pass to get fairly even color in 3 to 6 batts of each color.

Romney on the carder

The five color groups all carded

These were so pretty that I was tempted to leave them as-is!  But I did want a final fiber preparation that would spin up into a yarn that included, but did not completely obscure, each of the colors.  So on Monday I went to work on making multicolor batts using ideas from Deb Menz’s excellent book, Color in Spinning.  In order to keep colors distinct, she will make separate batts including some of the final colors in each, then stack them on top of each other to be pulled apart for the spinning.

So I made 16 batts, each of which consists of 2 smaller, layered batts.  The first one has a “thin layer” of black on each side, with 6 stripes across in the center, alternating gold/orange with warm brown.  The second one has a “thin layer” of red on each side, with 5 stripes across in the center, alternating black with olive tones.  And here is my lovely big box of 16 batts, each about 2.75 oz., with a little of the initial dyed fleece on top as a garnish:

The final product!

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Pomegranate

Posted in weaving on July 9, 2011| 3 Comments »

I finished the 5 scarves on the red perle cotton warp I am calling “Pomegranate”.  This time I used tencel for the weft on all of them, but a different color on each.  I am really happy with these, and will be taking 2 each to the galleries today for consignment (Confluence Gallery in Twisp, and Winthrop Gallery in Winthrop).

Pomegranate with Black tencel weft

Pomegranate with Eggplant tencel weft

Pomegranate with Taupe tencel weft

Pomegranate with Navy tencel weft

Pomegranate with Shale tencel weft

We just spent 3 days (2 nights) over on the coast – Rick’s birthday, his sister’s birthday, seeing friends, doing errands, etc.  It was a beautiful drive in both directions, although a bit cloudy and drippy over there.  Good visits with family, although as always we are happy to be home in the valley, where it is forecast to be sunny and in the high 70’s this week – how perfect is that?

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Quinault Weekend

Posted in family & friends, knitting, outdoors on July 3, 2011| 1 Comment »

Last week we spent 3 nights out at Lake Quinault at our friends’ cabin resort:  Lochaerie Resort on the north shore, in the Olympic National Park (see link in sidebar).  The occasion was a fund-raising bike ride around the lake (31 miles if you make it all the way) for the Quinault Cancer Fund.  I believe this was the 22nd annual ride!  There were 10 of us plus our hosts:

who moved there last year after retirement and spent the wettest winter in recent memory (which is saying a lot, since this is the rainforest we are talking about) tearing down and rebuilding the main house, while living in one of the cabins.  But it is substantially done and they are moved in now.  It’s a fabulous house:

The bedrooms are on the top floor and Rick and I got to stay in the guest room in the main house.  The view is magnificent out to the lake, and down on the cabins below:

On Friday Rick and I drove out to the ocean (only about 45 minutes from Lochaerie).  We went for a little beach hike at Beach 4, just north of Kalaloch.  It was a beautiful day and we hadn’t been out to the Washington coast for quite a long time.   So nice to see and smell the ocean.

trail to Beach 4

looking north up the beach

Tide was low so we had tidepools!

Saturday was the actual bike ride, and we had a perfect day for it – sunny but not hot.  We made it about 20 miles, over to the Rainforest Resort on the south shore, lunch on the lawn and the “sag wagon” back to Lochaerie.  That’s what we managed last year, as well, and our behinds were just as sore and legs as weary as last year, too.  But it was fun!

Here’s some of the group having wine/beer/appetizers after the ride:

They all like to cook, so our potluck meals were delicious and I came home with 2 new recipes.

While there, I finished the shawl I have been knitting out of handspun wool & silk.  It’s a pattern from the internet called Bell Pattern Shawl.   Just got pictures today:

One of my pet peeves about triangular shawls is that the ends don’t drape nicely but want to head off towards the side.  In an attempt to avoid this, I added two extra repeats of the Bell Pattern just at each end, using short rows, so the first repeat spans 8 “Bells” at each end, and the second repeat only the 4 outer “Bells” at each end.  Kind of hard to describe, but here is a photo:

short row shaping at end of Bell Pattern Shawl

I think it worked, as you can see in the first photo above.  The points hang straight down instead of pointing off to the sides.  I am quite pleased with how this turned out, actually.  The pattern was suitable for this rather rustic yarn with lots of flecks of silk in it – it didn’t show regular lace patterning well at all (I know, I tried…).  It was easy but not boring to knit.  The size is just right for wearing over a shirt in the evening.  And, I only had about 2 feet of my handspun yarn left when done!

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Coming up for air

Posted in family & friends, Methow Valley, weaving on June 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Wow, it’s been almost 3 weeks since my last post.  Life has been busy but wonderful!

During our week at home after the trip to Oregon, we had a little time to catch up on home life.  I had applied to join the Winthrop Gallery, an artist cooperative, before we left for Utah, and was accepted.  We are expected to take one day a month to staff the gallery and it was time for me to get some training and put in a first day there.  I “worked” on Sunday, June 12, and things went well except that I only sold one note card during the entire day.  But now I have an outlet for my weaving again in Winthrop and have my rugs, scarves and a couple of small blankets there on consignment.  I am also showing at the Confluence Gallery in Twisp.

An old friend of Rick’s, who lives in North Bend, came over for a couple of nights with his friend Fukiko from Japan.

Dave & Fukiko

She brought a bottle of special sake which is made in her village near Kyoto, and the first night she cooked us a wonderful sukiyaki dinner, including ingredients she had brought from Japan.

Dave originally met Fukiko a couple of years ago when he was on  trip to Japan with some friends.  She has worked as a travel agent, but most recently has developed a home stay program at her family home in Kameoka.  Here is her website:  Japan Reservation Network.  Lovely woman.  We hope we can pull off a visit to Japan in the next couple of years!

The following week (last week) we had a small family reunion here.  My sister and brother-in-law flew up from San Jose (soon to be from Colorado instead).  My dad came over from Anacortes in his RV.  My brother and sister-in-law came over from Camano Island.  The weather was cool-ish but not raining! and a good time was had by all.

Family dinner at Wolf Creek

The gathered clan

I have managed to fit in a little weaving during the last month or so.  I wound a new scarf warp after returning from Utah/Colorado and got it set up on my loom at the weaving guild room.  It is a mix of reds and I am calling it “Pomegranate” in my head.  So far, with all the comings and goings, I have woven off 3 of the 5 scarves it should allow.  Today finished number 3 in a navy tencel warp:

Navy tencel weft on Pomegranate warp

Tomorrow we head out to Lochaerie Resort on the north shore of Lake Quinault on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, for the annual fundraiser bike ride around the lake and a get-together with old friends.  But tonight we went down to the Twisp River Pub for dinner, and discovered it was the beginning of summer, with the first Wednesday night jazz music in the beer garden!

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ANWG 2011

Posted in travel, weaving on June 4, 2011| 1 Comment »

Sort of dropped the ball on chronicling the rest of our meander through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and onward to home in the Methow.  Suffice it to say that we encountered a lot of wind, some heavy rain, but also some partly sunny days and lots of beautiful vistas of the Rockies and other mountain ranges of Montana (which was incredibly GREEN – a lush, verdant spring green).  We particularly enjoyed the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.  It is a beautifully done (and obviously well funded) complex of 5 museums.  We only had time to visit the Plains Indian and Western Art museums, but they were well worth it.

Our last night was spent outside of Spokane, and we spent the evening with our friend Austin who has relocated there from Seattle.  Check out the band he is playing (guitar) with: the Angela Marie Project.  This is just a sideline for all of them, they have actual jobs….

Then we had 5 whole days at home!  Teasel was so glad to see us, although she wasn’t really frantic – obviously she has bonded with our trusted housesitter.  It rained like crazy from time to time.  This is May in the Methow?  But it does make it so green on the hills, and the wildflowers are loving it.  We washed everything in sight…clothes, the trailer, both cars,etc.  Then packed up the truck with miscellaneous furniture and household belongings (since we have finally consolidated into one domicile only) – this for Rick to take down to the kid & grandkids in Medford/Ashland.

So last Tuesday we set out again for Oregon, without trailer this time.  We stayed with our good friends who own the Real Mother Goose Gallery in Portland, then on Wednesday Rick dropped me off at Willamette University in Salem, OR for the Association of Northwest Weavers Guilds (ANWG) biannual conference.  He kept going and is down in Medford/Ashland visiting with the family until tomorrow, when he comes back to pick me up.  Meanwhile I am staying at a somewhat tatty dorm on campus (my friend Holly is in a much nicer and newer one – jealous!) but having a great time at the conference.  At least the food is better, MUCH better than 2 years ago at Gonzaga U. in Spokane.

The first day Holly and I set up the guild booth display for the Seattle Weavers’ Guild:

Seattle Weavers' Guild booth at ANWG 2011

Our theme was “Use Your Weaving Every Day” and we had 3 “rooms” in the display.  Left-guest bedroom, Center-family room, Right-kitchen.

On Thursday I had an all-day class on using Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) to produce a free-form weaving pattern design and then import it into your weaving software that will generate threading, tie-up and draw-downs.  I have Weave-It Pro to do this but it works with a lot of them.  It was pretty interesting but it became clear, for reasons I won’t try to explain, that you have to have a computer-driven dobby loom with at  least 16 shafts to make use of this idea.  Won’t really fly with an 8 or 12 shaft floor loom like I have.  Well you could do it with a 16-shaft table loom (the thing is you need to be able to raise any combination of 16 or more shafts – can you say 16 factorial?) but that would be tedious IMHO.  Not having the spare $10,000 or so to buy an AVL or Louet Megado loom at the moment – not doing this!

The next day I had a great class in the morning on “Polychrome Crackle” with Susan Wilson.  Very organized teacher, good handout and Powerpoint presentation.  In 2-1/2 hours I got a lot of information on a technique that I am very interested in pursuing.  Crackle is a weave structure – polychrome is what happens when you start introducing a lot of colors.

Sue Wilson with polychrome crackle blanket

My Friday afternoon seminar was on “Analyzing and Reproducing Commercial Cloth” with Teresa Ruch, who worked at Pendleton Woolen Mills for 18 years first as a sample weaver and later as a fabric designer.  Since then she has taught fabric design at the college level and has a thriving dye studio and art-to-wear business.  A little disorganized as a teacher but I still got some useful information.

Today I had the morning off, which was wonderful since the weather has turned warm and sunny and the campus is quite beautiful with a steam meandering through it and gorgeous landscaping – lots of rhododendrons in bloom right now.  I lazed around and went to look at the garments from the previous night’s fashion show.  Just showing a few things here, I have more pictures but these were kind of favorites:

This dress with peacock feather train was the Grand Finale of fashion show!

Really liked this sleeveless dress with side pockets

OK, this is a needle-felted "hat"

Looked amazing on a Young-Thing Model in a black leotard!

Awarded "Best of Show" - cloth and garment both fabulous

This afternoon I had another half-day class with Teresa Ruch on “Dyeing Hand-Painted Skeins and Warps”.  Got some great handouts and took a lot of pictures, but more of the sort to remind me of what she was doing, not for the blog.

So here I am in my down-at-heel dorm room on a Saturday night, which fortunately also has great internet access so I can catch up on the blog, as I fear it may get by me when I finally get home.  It has been a great experience (both the trip to the Southwest and the time in Oregon) but now I am ready to be at home after an extended absence of almost a month!

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Stormy Weather

Posted in travel, weaving on May 22, 2011| 2 Comments »

After leaving Pueblo, Colorado our plan was to stay near Boulder for a few days, visit the Rocky Mountain National Park and then work our way up through Yellowstone on the way home.  Well, it is snowing/raining in both national parks so that is just not an option.  We drove up to Golden Gate State Park in the mountains west of Boulder on Friday, which was a beautiful drive, only to find 4-6″ of snow on the ground at the park- so not camping there!

Drove back down to Boulder and fulfilled my mission of visiting Shuttles, Spindles & Skeins, a fabulous yarn store.  My mentor, Judith MacKenzie, told me about it years ago – they have a lot of mill ends for weaving.  But they don’t show these on their website, as it is a constantly revolving and unpredictable selection.  The place is huge and staff very friendly and helpful.

The mill-ends area in the back room

weaving classroom and more weaving yarns (not mill-end)

classroom area in back including dye kitchen

the main store (retail knitting yarn etc)

From Boulder we drove north and stayed at Boyd Lake State Park just south of Fort Collins.  Although we drove in through essentially a suburb, the park itself was very nice and we were able to go for a bike ride on their extensive trail system before leaving the next morning.  We also went up to Fort Collins Friday afternoon and visited the New Belgium Brewing Co. (think “Fat Tire” and others).  Quite the scene, being late Friday in a college town!  But they give out 4 free tasters per person so between us we were able to try 8 different beers, including seasonal specials.  Kind of fun!

Yesterday we started working our way north into Wyoming, where it was (is) extremely windy, with some pelting rain mixed in last night.  We are staying east of the Rockies for now, and visited Guernsey State Park to see the historic CCC buildings there, and also Fort Laramie.  Thought we would stay at the state park, but due to the nasty weather of late they were not really set up and open yet.  So we holed up in a KOA at Douglas, WY last night and rode out the storm.

Beautifully crafted museum built by the CCC in 1930's

Today it is still very windy, but at least the sun is out!

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