Trying Something New

There are some days that I am itching to try something new. Often it's triggered by seeing something on the internet that peaks my interest. Then I scour the internet and fall down the rabbit hole into information and inspiration overload. Other times I call it Crafter's ADD. Wave something new or shiny at me and I am immediately distracted. Most of the time I curb the desire to start something new by allowing myself to browse the internet to my heart's content. After that, I remind myself I still have 10,000 work in progresses that I have neglected. Then there are times that I give in because the desire stays with me for days and weeks. Hey, we all have our weak moments. I am only human.

 This week, I decided to indulge in a few small projects. I saw some pretty woven squares and rectangles on a Pinterest board that uses small hand looms like the Weave-its or Weavette. (No, I do not have a account. I already get distracted enough. I don't need more temptation.) I noticed it was not woven the same way as I usually use those looms. It was warped like a regular loom with warp threads running just up and down. Of course, I immediately wanted to experiment and give it a try. That little square above was my first go at it. Not bad, but I need to experiment further. I was satisfied that I gave it a try so now I can move on.

I am not sure how I found out about Rag Rugs. I saw a colorful rug online and boom, I fell down the rabbit hole head first. I spent a few days researching techniques and different styles of rag rug making. The technique that I came to focus on is called Toothbrush Rag Rug or also called Nålebinding. Basically, if you can make knots, you can make this rag rug. I happily dug through my collection of fabrics and ripped up strips of fabric. Since I didn't have a toothbrush handle that I could cut up, I took a large paperclip and altered it with pliers and electrical tape. It works great as a "needle". With any craft, there are many ways to go about doing something and it takes a lot of trial and error to find a technique that produces the results I want. I made mistakes along the way, but I think I have the look I want and the rug is growing and growing. Okay, enough writing. I need to get back to my new obsession rug making.

Have a great weekend! And go out and try something new. :-)

Over the Weekend

During the early morning hours while everyone was still asleep, I pulled out a old weaving project. It's a 6 inch Weavette and the yarn is Stonesthrow Farm Vintage IV (53% Cormo/47% young mohair). I am still not sure what it will become and it's fine with me. For now, I am just enjoying a mindless weaving project. I will see how many squares I end up with when I am done weaving.

Another advantage of waking up early is that I get to enjoy one of my favorite breakfasts in peace. A toasted NYC Everything Bagel with whipped cream cheese, tomatoes and lox, sprinkled with sea salt, black pepper and dill. Delicious. Usually, I am busy making everyone their breakfast requests and I am always the last person that gets to eat.

One of the fun things we have discovered after we moved to the suburbs are Garage, Yard and Estate Sales. In NYC, we were use to Stoop Sales since most people don't have yards or garages. The selections here are very different. Most of the garage sales around here are empty nesters or older folks getting their house ready to sell. There are lots of treasures to dig through. In NYC, I rarely ever bought anything since it's usually younger people or people my age getting rid of their things to make space in their tiny apartments or people moving out. Whenever you see moving trucks in NYC, you can be sure that it's either the end of the month, the first of the month or the middle of the month.

I think we went to 6 yard sales over the weekend. Melody's treasures are on the left of the picture above and mine is on the right. See those clogs? She put them on and never took them off. The girl does love shoes! I was happy with my single purchase. One of my neighbors had a box of crocheted doilies, table cloths and runners. She told me that her mother-in-law made them for all the daughter-in-laws in the family. I picked out a very large table runner. It just needs to be washed and blocked.

As you can see, she adores everything she got. The doll has never left her side once. It plays music when you wind it up and the song is starting to grate on our nerves. She plays it in the house, in the car, while eating dinner ...etc. Lol.

What did you do over the weekend?

Birthday Gift - Woven Kitchen Towels

Making the warp.

Weaving in progress.

Simple 100% cotton yarn from the craft store transformed into pretty fabric.

Washed and dried.

The birthday girl was thrilled. She had been admiring my weaving, so I thought I would surprise her with a set of woven kitchen towels.

Secret Santa Gift - Woven Scarf

Secret Santa in February? Yes, you read that correctly. For the last 3 years, my knitting group organizes a Secret Santa Exchange. We always exchange our gifts after the holidays. We figure that with holiday stress gift knitting, having the exchange after the holidays takes the pressure off. Plus, it's a lot of fun to get a gift after the holidays, too. Normally, the holiday party happens around January, but this year we had to postpone it to February. Fine by me, since that gave me extra time to work on my gift.

My recipient, Mica, wrote that her favorite colors were fuchsia, green and black. I looked through my collection of sock yarn and pulled out 2 skeins of Universal Yarn Ditto. It was different shades of pink with black mixed in. Initially, I thought it was a variegated sock yarn. As I wove with it, I saw that it was a self-patterning sock yarn. You can see the neat pattern the yarn was making in the first photo above. I also added big blocks of black stripes with Lisa Souza Sock! Merino. I used the black on the warp, too, but I couldn't see much of a difference. The only place that you can really see it is on the fringe. Oh well, that is just part of experimenting. You never know what you are going to get.

After soaking and drying, the yarn bloomed and gave the scarf a nice drape. The scarf is light yet really warm. I am still amazed each time I take a project off the loom. Weaving makes such beautiful fabric.

The details:
2 skeins of Universal Yarn Ditto, 440 yards total.
Lisa Souza Sock! Merino, 178 yards total.
Finished size: 7.5” wide. 62” long without fringe, 70” long with fringe.

90 ends + 8 ends(selvage)= 98 ends (49 crosses)
10 dent heddle
3 yard warp

Rose's Kitchen Towels

Over the Summer, I got the idea to try my hand at weaving kitchen towels. It may or may not have to do with the huge amount of cotton yarn I had acquired during a July 4th sale at Joann's. We were headed to our annual Summer vacation at the Jersey Shore in a few weeks and I thought it would make a lovely hostess gift.

I got to work and made sample towels first. After I ironed out all the fine details, I set the loom up for the final towels. I was very careful with measuring them as I wove because I wanted them to be a matching set in size.

They came out as perfect as I could get them. I threw them in the washer and then dryer and was quite pleased with the outcome. I hem stitched both edges so that knotting the fringe was unnecessary.

I gave them to our hostess, Rose, and made her promise to use them at the beach house. A few weeks later, I received a email from Rose thanking me for the towels. She said, "In addition to looking great, they are soft and very absorbent." That is as good as any endorsement in my book!

Hopefully, these will not be the last towels I weave. I recently pulled out my loom again and wanted to start a new project. Looking through my weaving notebook, I noticed that I forgot to take any notes down on these towels. Whoops!

Warm Up with Blankets

The first signs of Fall had me scurrying for my blankets. Unfortunately, I think I may have been over zealous in my Spring cleaning this year. Lots of things were donated to charity or simply thrown out. So, I quickly dug through my large collection of worsted weight yarns to put together a scrap blanket. This was inspired by a knitted blanket I saw on Ravelry. I am crocheting my own version. It will be done in the style of a coin quilt. I am plan on making 4 strips of colored stripes and then bordered all in white. The edging will be decided when the blanket is assembled.

After the successful blanket that I made with a hand loom, I immediately started another one. This one is done with a 4" x 6" Weavette. I chose to do a diamond pattern for the rectangles. I let it languish over the Summer, but I pulled it back out again. I just need 8 more rectangles before I can start seaming them together.

Speaking of blankets, I received some news from Potter Craft this evening. They have signed on with Warm Up America! to collect knitted squares that will be made into blankets for people in need. Potter Craft is hosting a Knitting Block By Block-a-Thon. The first 25 people who send in their blocks will get a copy of Nicky’s book. The next 25 will receive another free pattern. All the info and address can be found here.

To help out, Potter Craft is offering two free block patterns from Nicky Epstein’s new book, Knitting Block by Block. (Click on the pictures to get to their Flickr page so the pattern can be enlarged.) I hope many of you will participate in this worthy cause. I have my yarn and needles ready!

Last day of August?

I am dreaming of cool Fall weather so that I can wear some of the scarves I have woven. This is a Sampler Sock Kit in the colorway, Autumn Leaves, that has been sitting in my stash for a while. I bought it from Knitabulous Yarn. It came packaged in cupcake liners. Oh so cute!
There are a total of 5 colors. I used each color once for the warp stripes. Then I used each color for the weft in sections. I started with orange and then green, red, yellow and ended with blue. (10 dent heddle, 70 ends, 2.5 yard warp)I wove it looser than my previous scarves to achieve more drape and to see how much the yarn will bloom after washing. The results after washing? A light and airy scarf.


We ended August with a birthday celebration. Melody's pal, Veronica, turned 4 years old! I brought my camera and even remembered to charge up the battery. But I forgot my memory card! Sigh! Here are the pics taken with my Blackberry Phone.The birthday girl, Veronica! The birthday party was held at The Messy Artist in New Jersey. It was a great party. All the kids had so much fun and the staff was very nice. One of the best parts was that the kids can get as messy as they want, but leave the party all cleaned up and the mess behind.Melody painted a Teddy Bear that she got to bring home.There was a painting table set up with lots of paint. Melody made a beeline for that table right away.See the stuff that they are scooping? It's Oatmeal! What a great idea.Pizza was served for the kids and adults. The kiddies got juice boxes and the adults had wine.And for dessert, pink sparkly cupcakes! Thank you for inviting us to a awesome party, Jen & Jason.

Scarves 2 & 3!

We just got back from vacation and I am way behind in everything. I am still trying to catch up. So, in the mean time, I am going to show you my other woven scarves.This was actually my 3rd project, so I am going a little out of order. As I said before, there was to be one finished scarf for my class, Weaving 1. That was the red one I blogged about a few weeks ago. This one was done all by myself. A week before our final class, I wanted to make sure that I could make a warp, sley the loom and basically do everything by myself. All the other projects, I have warped the loom under my teacher’s watchful eye and her explicit instructions.I used one skein of Yarntini Self Striping Sock Yarn in the colorway, Grape Ape, for both the warp and weft. With a self striping yarn, I didn't know what to expect. It turned out really well and striped perfectly. As you can see, Miss Melody has claimed the scarf as her own. She has been obsessed with the color purple recently so I was more than happy to give it to her. I am sure she won't mind if I borrow it every once in a while.
This was my second project. It's super long and super soft. Great for those very cold days when I can wrap this scarf several times around my neck and face.The yarn is Pigeonroof Studios Siren Two Sock in the colors: Lettuce and Icicle. One skein of each color. I used both colors to make the warp in a striped sequence. The weaving was randomly done with both colors.

My first rigid heddle weaving project.

I mentioned a while ago that I was taking Weaving 1 at The Yarn Tree. It was 10 weeks of how to set up and weave on a rigid heddle loom. The store owner and weaving teacher, Linda LaBelle, uses the Kromski Harp for her classes. She loans you the loom so you don't have to purchase anything. I already had a loom because last year I had acquired a used 24" Kromski Harp Loom from Craig's List. It sat around under a pile of yarn and fiber until this year, April 2010. I finally took the plunge and signed up for the 10 week class. I can tell you that I do not regret it.

We made a sampler using acrylic yarn. She taught us weaving patterns and techniques for 4 weeks. It was a lot of fun just to practice and not worry about the finished product. After the 4 weeks, we began our final project. For the final project, it was going to be a scarf. After learning that I spin, she suggested I used my own handspun yarn.

This beautiful roving is Pigeonroof Studios Extra Fine Merino. I think it took me over 6 months to finish it. But only because I wasn't actively working on it. When I knew that I was going to be using it for my final project, I sat down and cranked it out. It was totally worth it because the finished yarn was amazingly soft and springy. And I adore that deep red color.I ended up with 2 skeins of a different gauge yarn. Totally my fault since I let too much time lapse in between working on it. I started spinning it thicker when I decided to finish spinning it because I couldn't remember how fine I was spinning it. The earlier spinning was very fine. Luckily for me, my teacher said that gauge didn't really matter with weaving and I could still use both.
She had everyone use the same yarn for the weft. It's called Tussah Fleck and it's a beautiful natural color silk. It's great to work with because it's super strong. There was no worries about it breaking. It's also amazing that all the students used the same warp, but we all ended up with different scarves. She let us bring in any yarn we wanted for the weft. The Tussah Fleck is neutral enough to go with any color. I plan on using it for future projects when I get a chance.Look at the final scarf! I love it so much. After a soak in Eucalan Wash, it bloomed beautifully.I used a combination of techniques I learned on this scarf: Leno, Warp Face, Weft Face, and added Weft Protector (aka hem stitch) for some texture. For the fringe, it’s a twisted fringe.We were encouraged to not follow a pattern. Just do what we wanted at any point of the scarf. For me, that was hard. Though I did the best that I could to free myself up from being rigid. The great thing about the yarn is that it did a lot of the work for me. I chain plied (aka navajo-plied) it so the colors would stripe like that. I love it!

It took me a week to complete this scarf. Which was 3 weeks earlier than I was suppose to . Um yeah, I think the other students wanted to throw their shuttle sticks at me when I came into class with a finished scarf. So what's a girl to do? I started and finished 2 more scarves before the last class! The last class was about fringe techniques.

I will be starting Weaving 2 this weekend and I am very excited about it. The whole 10 weeks will be dedicated to working through the book, Textures and Patterns for the Rigid Heddle Loom by Betty Davenport, from the first page to the last. There will not be a final project for this class because it's technique based. But I can only imagine the the textures and patterns I will be able to apply to my weaving when the class is done.

Stayed tune for my other woven scarves and other fun things I have planned. There will be 2 book reviews and giveaways coming up soon.

Fini!

Finished! All 42 squares seamed together, and about a million ends woven in. Seriously, if you hate weaving in ends, this may make you go crazy. On 9 of the blocks, I used 2 colors so that meant even more ends to weave in afterward.All that work was completely worth it. It came out even better than I imagined. The blanket is light and warm. Perfect for a car seat or stroller blanket. I am amazed at how small and thin it folds up, especially since it's made with worsted weight yarn.After all the ends were woven in, I crocheted a edging around the blanket. I love the little decorative detail that the Crab Stitch gives to the blanket.When the whole blanket was completed, I gave it a good long soak with Soak. I lightly pinned it down to block it. It practically took no time to dry at all.I have to say that I have fallen in love with weaving and woven fabrics after making this blanket. Maybe even a little obsessed. But that is the way I am about any craft I fall in love with. I immerse myself and try to learn as much about it as I can.DH has suggested several times that I keep the blanket. Probably because he has witnessed me labor over this blanket lovingly and non-stop. Melody has grown quite fond of it, too. But, no it's going to be gifted to a new mother-to-be. Besides, I am already planning the next blanket.
Pattern: All the squares are woven with the regular directions (plain weave) of a Weave-It style loom.
Loom: Arbor Loom 4" X 4"
Yarn: 1 skein each of Plymouth Yarn Encore Worsted in colors: Turquoise (1317) and Gold (1310)
Blanket Edging: I used a US G/ 4mm hook to crochet a row of Single Crochet around the blanket and then finished it off with a round of Crab Stitch (aka Reverse Single Crochet).
Size: 24" X 28"

21 Turquoise Squares
12 Gold Squares
9 Multi-colored Squares (woven with both colors)