Weaving In and Out

A lot went on this week. As you may remember, the mattresses arrived and exploded (under control). Well, Wednesday the table arrived. We put it together and pushed it to one side. Friday the bed arrived. Putting it together was more complicated, but we managed to put the bed together that day.

Saturday we put together the trundle. 

(It looks like DH is the only one working, but someone had to take the photo, and I did help.) The trundle was easier to put together, because the construction was identical to the bed.

I still need to make pillow covers for the bed, but in the meantime, I just folded Joanie's quilt over the pillows. I put the new pillow cases on the pillows and used the little bags the bedding came in as covers for some smaller pillows we had. 

This will give you a better idea of how the room looks in use. (The other pillows were from another bedroom. They will be more useful here.) The old folding table was hard to use for storage, because the folding mechanism was in the way. It was also too big.

DH needs to put up the curtain rod for me. When the sun is at the back of the house in the morning, we have nice light in this room, but when the sun shines on the front later in the day, we have to close the room-darkening shades to keep the house from heating up, and then you can't see anything. The curtains will help keep the room from heating up so much if I want to be working in there during the afternoon and need the light to see.

The Kevät is finished! Here it is blocking:

I chose to block the bottom ribbing in points because it was expedient. It wanted to do that anyway, and it only needed to be pinned in 6 places. I used my lace blocking wires for the sides and shoulders.

Here it is blocked and getting acquainted with some of my other pieces of clothing.

Here's how it fits. (Excuse the crepey arms. I'm an old lady.)

I finished the dish mat while we talked with the kids during our regular Sunday Zoom call.

The loom is finally in use, but not before much groaning and gnashing of teeth. If you remember, I wound the warp last week. The different kinds of fiber didn't cooperate with each other the way I hoped they would, and they made a big mess when I tried to warp the loom. It was great practice, though. I had some Peaches 'n' Cream cotton yarn, so I wound the warp again, using only the cotton yarn. I still had some issues, but I managed to get past where I had the mess. I've been using the Craftsy class Floor Loom Weaving as my guide. One thing the teacher mentioned that I hadn't remembered from when I used it to make the project was that all the heddles should be leaning to the right for a right-handed person and to the left for a left-handed person. If they are the wrong way, you need to turn them upside-down, not just turn them over to the other side. I remembered we had taken the heddle frames out of the loom to move it (twice), so I decided to check. I found one set that were all on the same way, but the whole set was up-side down. That was easy to fix by taking the frame out and replacing it the correct way. ALL the others had some the right way and some the wrong way. They must have been this way when I received the loom! Here you can see what I'm talking about. Look at the two heddles in the center of the photo. The heddle on the right is set up for a right-handed person. The other one is for someone who is left-handed.

I took out each heddle frame, took off all the heddles and checked each one before putting it back on the heddle rods. When I got to the third and last frame I had to do this with, I noticed the paint on one end but not on the other. See the one with no paint? It's upside-down compared with its fellows. I discovered that when you have all the painted ends together, all the heddles will be facing the same way.

It should have been easy to realize. It did make it easier to finish the third set. Duh! I don't remember anyone's mentioning this before, but they probably did. Threading the heddles was easier than I remembered from previous projects. This must be why.

Next was to put the beater bar back on with the reed in place to sley the reed. (That black thing in the bottom of the photo is a sleeping Rocky, not a discarded sweater or jacket.)

I managed to get all the threads into the reed in the right order, which I found shocking when I discovered I had done it right. However, when I went to tie up the treadles, I discovered that the job was made more difficult because the treadles weren't quite in the right position. I have figured out that the guys had installed the treadle assembly upside-down. See those holes at the bottom of the photo where the screws go in? That's side is supposed to be facing the floor. The treadles needed to be flipped around to be in the right position. 

It's supposed to fit  down on the floor, as in this photo from our old place:

I explained to DH, and he unscrewed the two bolts holding the base of the assembly, so we could flip it over. 

I managed to tie up and throw a few picks to even out the warp, so I'm finally off to a good start. Now I'm going to weave a narrow border that will hold the fringe at each end of the rug.

I didn't need to undo anything when we fixed the treadle assembly, other than to untie the treadles.

In other news, you may have heard about the terrific heat wave that has descended on the Pacific Northwest. It isn't quite as bad here as locations lower in elevation and closer to the coast, like Portland, but it's still expected to be over 100ºF for the next few days here where we are. However, the difference between sun and shade is much greater than most places. This is what we had yesterday evening, as the sun was getting low and shining right on the front porch.

You may remember that our furnace went out last Fall and we replaced it with a unit that included air conditioning. It's a very efficient and quiet unit, operating with a fraction of the energy older models require. Here's a photo of our thermostat inside the house at the time it was so hot outside.

We have it set on 78ºF, and it pretty much stays there. Upstairs it's a little bit warmer, so we run our little portable air cooler in the bedroom, which keeps it comfortable.

What a week! And DH has an unpleasant medical procedure today, which requires that I drive him. It's supposed to continue to have record-breaking temperatures, but I hope this week goes more smoothly.

Where's my blog: As you may know, the entity that notifies people when a blog they follow posts will discontinue notifications in July. This motivated me to link my blog to Bloglovin', as I did some time ago with The Doll's Storybook. If you are following my blog want to continue following after July, I recommend you go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Just finished the Dish Mat, but there's still the Brioche Shawl Feathers shawl. I will be working on it again, now that the Kevät is done.

What's on my sewing machine: Its cover. However, I will be making the pillow covers and revising the curtains soon.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. No progress this week. (Are you kidding?)

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Look-alikes. Pippa wishes she were more like the other dolls.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to The Rose Code by Kate Quinn.

What's in my wine glass: Crystal Range Barbera 2019. Excellent.

What's my tip of the week: We occasionally eat vegetarian hot dogs with buns, but so seldom, we need to freeze most of the hot dogs. I put the hot dogs, two-by-two, into sandwich bags and tuck each pair into a larger zippered bag with two buns. When we're ready to eat them, I just pull out the pair of dogs and buns, just the amount we need.

Where's my book: Mariah: Stories from the Doll's Storybook is available from Amazon worldwide. Also available from BookBaby, Barnes & Noble and other booksellers. Royalties go to support pediatric cancer research and treatment. The three stories in the book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with few changes. The stories (and links to them) are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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High Fiber--Warp Drive or Impulse?

I started warping/dressing my loom on Sunday afternoon. Um...I made a few mistakes.

My mistakes:

1. I picked soft, thin, stretchy, clingy sock yarn for my warp for a nice scarf.

2. The pattern that was my inspiration called for two yards. I upped it to three to make the scarf longer and to be sure I had enough. Then I doubled it, so I could make two scarves without re-warping. Bad idea! Longer warp means more trouble to get into!

3. The pattern called for several colors of yarn in the warp, so I couldn't just go through the process with one yarn. I had to spread the different yarns across the warp. (What was I thinking? Don't answer that.)

4. I didn't want to bother DH to play my DVD "Warping Your Loom" for the third time, so I started doing it from "memory." (Don't attempt this at home, especially if you have ADD!) I somehow missed that one circuit of the warping board (pictured above) would make TWO lengths of warp, not one.

5. When the instructions said, "Cut at the point furthest from the cross," I did it. Too late to undo it, I discovered they wanted me to cut right by the cross, too. (Weavers will understand this part.) I didn't do it, because I realized I would have twice as many warp threads half the length I wanted. My cross was in the middle of the warp threads, instead of the end.

6. I proceded anyway. Sleying the reed was no problem, but it left me with very long warp threads hanging behind the reed. Then they were hanging over the warp beam after I had threaded the heddles. (If you aren't a weaver, you're probably lost at this point, but bear with me.)

7. Concerned about all the looooooooong warp threads hanging off the back of the loom, I wound them up into little tidy balls and tied them with yarn (somehow, although I spin, not realizing that I was adding twist to them by doing so.)

This is where I stopped doing things wrong and started to correct my mistakes. I realized the only way I was going to have tidy threads on my warp  beam was by winding the threads forward onto the cloth beam (in the front of the loom). I tied the warp threads to the tie-up bar on the front apron (hope I'm getting the terminology right, but basically, I fastened the front end of the threads to where they belong in the front of the loom). To get the threads to go through the heddles and reed, however, I had to untwist each little ball, straighten out the threads, detach them from each other (they were clinging to each other in fright), and feed them back through the heddles and reed a little at a time. Then I had to wind the warp back in the other direction, onto the warp beam, making sure the cardboard was between each layer.

Success! Here's my warp on the loom:

I wish I had kept track of how many hours this took. I was now into day four of warping my loom...for a scarf! And for plainweave, not even anything fancy! (Too bad I didn't take a photo of all those little twisted balls!)

Then I watched the DVD again, and saw and heard where the warp on the warping board was supposed to be twice the length needed for the warp. Oops!

At this point, I checked to see if I had an open shed (pathway for the shuttle). I had two places where the threads crossed. Piece of cake! I knew how to fix this problem. I unfastened the offending threads from the tie-up bar thingy, pulled them out of the reed...and the heddles, since the cross was there, and re-threaded and re-sleyed.

Here's my open shed (one thread in the middle on each side is the floating selvage and supposed to be there):

I can't tell you how good it felt to get an open shed and all the warp threads on the warp beam! I also wish I could tell you I had made all the mistakes possible in weaving, but I'm still making them. 

Here's a photo of my first weaving on my own warp:

It has been fun so far, in spite of the challenges. Now I'm working on getting my selvages tidy. That may require a temple. (No burnt offerings or religious services required. This is another weaving term.)

Here was my progress as of Thursday:

My first scarf will remind me of all the errors/trials/tribulations/fun I've made/had/committed in my first journey into weaving. Maybe I can get another scarf out of it that will be worth giving to a friend or relative. Here's a look at 30 1/2" of weaving:

The yarns are: Schoeller + Stahl Fortissima Socka sock yarn in color 1006 (green), Essential sock yarn in Grass (no longer available), Essential Kettle Dyed sock yarn in Gold (no longer available), Stroll sock yarn in Tonal Yellow (color no longer available) and Chroma fingering in "New England" (color no longer available). As you can see from my yarn choices, I'm drawing from long-term stash.

Vintage Stitchers met this week at Rebecca's. We had lots of great projects to look at. Ellen's Christmas quilt top is done:

Rebecca showed us a quilt her grandmother made. It's hand-appliquéd and quilted:

Here's a closeup:

Rebecca made and hand-quilted this log cabin back when the only quilting fabric available was "calico."

Ellen showed us her finished quilt top from a Whimsy Cottage kit purchased at the old Whimsy in Heber. This one is based on the traditional "drunkard's path."

Rebecca has prepared this appliqué for sewing:

Julie had finished Barbara's quilt...interlocking squares all in batiks:

Here's the back...

...and a closeup of Julie's quilting:

This was another quilt Rebecca made a few years ago:

Barbara got this little quilt top from a friend. The tulips were paper-pieced and three-dimensional.

In spite of the warping fiasco, there's been progress on my "Delectable Pathways" quilt. I finished a few more paper-pieced blocks and put everything up on my design wall. I placed some scraps of the cheddar fabric behind the rows of blocks and hung up the partially finished appliqué panel, so I could see what it's going to look like. Other than the pieced blocks, nothing has been sewn together yet.

For those needing a baby fix, Soren and his parents have been vacationing in Kauai. They went on some hikes. Here he is, traveling in style:

What's on my needles: Christmas Waffle Cardigan, some progress made this week, and Dogwood Blossoms.

What's on my loom: My first scarf, about 50" long now.

What's on my Featherweight: Still the Delectable Pathways blocks, about 2/3 of them done.

What's on my wheel: Still the Full Circle Roving in "Pigeon," almost finished.

What's on my iPad: Listening to the Weavecast podcast, and The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jaimie Ford from Audible.com. Also listening to The King of Torts by John Grisham on CD from the library.

What's in my wine glass: Bota Box Zinfandel 2011, 3L box. Pretty good. Quantity doesn't matter, since it's Lent, and I've given up my second glass of wine each evening until Easter. (I might have to shop for a bigger wine glass....)

Note: This blog post was produced entirely on the MacBook, using the iPad for photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for or cleaned.