Category: weaving

  • an afternoon with denny

    Denny came over today for some fibrey fun! She brought her warping mill for me to borrow/keep, and showed me how to use it:

    And I gave her an email tutorial.

    I wove! It’s a looong way from perfect, but whatever. Fun!

    It’s…I dunno, a scarf or something. Long. All cotton, white with pink stripes. We wound two more warps, much wider ones, so those will be the next couple projects.

    And Denny took some photos of my latest finished dress – don’t mind the blurry, you get the idea, right?

    Pattern is McCall’s 5137.
    Fabric: “Carmen Paisley” in brown from Reprodepot; brown cotton twill from Fabricland. The paisley is really light and gauzey, and has a ripple texture. I thought the twill might be too heavy (especially doubled for the neckband and waist) but it gives the garment some good weight.

    Thoughts on the pattern – well, I think there are some unnecessary seams. You could cut the back bodice and centre back skirt panel on the fold and eliminate those seams. And it’s very low cut! I made the size 8 on the recommendation of Erin from A Dress a Day, and it fits fine. Very comfy.

    I decided not to do doubled sleeve ends and just did a normal hem around the sleeve. There’s supposed to be an extra panel at the bottom of the skirt, but I nixed that too and just hemmed. All in all the pattern was fairly straightforward.

    Now I’m all tempted to buy more of that paisley!

  • hmm, that’s a bit better

    I’ve been getting comment spammed like WHOA. After realizing that I’d deleted over one THOUSAND comment spams in less than a week, I realized something had to be done! I upgraded my WordPress and installed a plugin that seems to be doing the job (although some spam is still making it through).

    In the meanwhile, I’ve been busy spinning up a storm. Why yes, the spinning has been taking over the knitting a bit. But knitting pictures next time, I promise!

    These are two skeins of skinny skinny stuff I’ve been spinning up – one thicker, one skinnier. Check it out: skinnier on the left, louet gems pearl in the middle, thicker on the right. These are both three ply merino!

    I also motored through these singles from a single piece of Fleece Artist roving (I think it was BFL) – I loooove the colours. It’s charcoal with sections of bright teal and green.

    And after two weird failures with the weavette (curling squares), I finally got this one to be flat. The colours remind me of a country kitchen, or something. Warp is handspun blue/red, weft is yellow Merino Style.

    Finally, I finished my Soumak weaving piece. It’s small (about 9 cm x 8 cm, or 3.5″ by 3.25″) but awesome!

    *click to see the back*

    Unfortunately I hadn’t really left enough warp at the bottom edge to tie off properly, so I had to kind of wing it. This is about the maximum height of piece you can get off the 6×6 Weavette, I’m thinking (you could get wider than I’d done). Super fun!

    Knitting progress next up. And dyeing results!