Out from under the blankets!

Are you sick of snow/ice/winter pictures yet???


The dreaded baby blanket warp is finished. The shawl above is my favorite piece off the warp.


These two are adult-length shawls ... peach is cottolin and rainbow is acrylic.


These five are the actual baby blankets and there were two more that were woven at the beginning. These are cotton, cottolin, or acrylic. I'm very pleased to be able to move on with my next, very belated project which should have been started in November.

I hope we all have safe, happy, productive days this week because I know spring can't be far off now.

Chris

Lament of a production weaver ...

The trouble with being a production weaver is, well, sometimes you get tired of some of the projects. I'm there right now.
I haven't made baby blankets in years and, after getting some requests, put on a thin cotton flake warp last summer. About 20 yards. About 12 baby blankets. What was I thinking?
I am SO SICK of this warp. I'm not having any problems with the warp, I'm just over it. Pastels. Who would have thought it? I actually have changed my focus on this warp and I'm making shawls on it instead of baby blankets ... that's helping some, but it's still slow going.

I'm not allowing myself to cut the finished pieces off because I know if I do, I won't want to go back to it. As it stands, with 7 or 8 pieces already woven, I'm *slightly* motivated to keep going. I really want to use this loom for my next clothing warp. I love this loom. It's in the living room with all the family pictures and a nice little TV for entertainment or music. Only 6 yards to go ... give me strength. Or maybe just another cup of coffee ...
Weatherwise, I'm still stuck on the hill, or at the top of the luge run, however you choose to look at it. Perhaps just a touch of cabin fever ... I haven't left here for over a week. My sweet hubby brought home a pair of Yaktrax for me yesterday so I will be able to walk on the ice now. What a guy!
There is hope of an early spring, if you believe groundhog prognostication. Here's the view from my back deck this morning.

The studio is closed for business for the time being ... no rugs being woven on the porch this week for sure. I think the cow needs a scarf.


Ok, back to the loom. At least I'm inside.

A brief breath of spring

It was a nice winter day. Some sunshine, warmer temperatures ... enough to thaw some more snow. I had projects at the studio, and one of them was on the porch.
Since I weave A LOT of rugs, I try to keep the mess outside the studio ... as in outside-on-the-porch. It's easier to clean up when I'm done weaving, and often I just get out the green leaf blower and round it up that way.
But today the porch panels were shut tight and the only heat you get is that which you make yourself. In my case, it's an old heating pad on the loom bench.
The rug I wanted to weave was shades of blues, greens and lavenders; just what I needed for this time of winter. I was determined to finish it and I did. I had on three pair of wrist warmers and a pair of those tiny stretchy gloves. I must have looked pretty funny, but it got the job done.
Never mind the cold feet.
The cats wanted to see what was happening at the big bird feeder ... here's Smitty having a conversation with the birds ...Perhaps tomorrow a picture of the rugs that came off the loom today?

Chris

Thoughts for a snowy day

"Weaving is a handcraft which, with a comparatively small expenditure of money, can give almost limitless outlet to a person's creative urges, and, at the same time, the creation is thoroughly practical since every throw of the shuttle helps produce something both beautiful and useful. It has the advantage over many crafts of appealing to almost countless types of personality and interest. The current enthusiasm for the craft almost proves the lightly made statement that handweaving is a highly contagious disease for which there is no known cure." ~ Harriet C. Douglas, Handweaver's Instruction Manual, 1949

Amen, Harriet!

While many months have elapsed since I last posted, I have been keeping busy. We have had an unusual winter, with snow coming earlier, after months of drought late last summer. The birds have been prolific and here is one of my favorite, the Pileated Woodpecker, although he's usually hard to catch with the camera.
If you have never seen one, these guys are BIG!

I have been doing some weaving, too. My plan was to retire my plastic bag rugs in 2010 and the last of the old bags were woven last week. After working with the bags for 12 years, I've noticed a difference in how they "hold up" and while I'm glad that steps are being taken to help the bags biodegrade more quickly, I don't want them to do that in a rug. If you want to know more about why I even bothered to weave plastic bags, here's the scoop.
The last batch of rugs were very colorful, here are two of them:

These will be kept as examples of plastic bag rugs along with a wallhanging which has not been completed yet (but I will post pictures when it is).
On another note, my work and mission has been turning up in numerous blogs recently ... here is an example. This is thanks to the blogging of Delia Montgomery of ChicEco so thanks, Delia!

It would be very easy for me to keep going today, posting pictures, bringing this blog up to date, but my office calls ... come do your filing! Come clean off the desk! Come sew (yes, my sewing machine is in the office)! So, hopefully it won't be another six months before I return ...

Chris

Hungry for color

I have a new toy. It's a walnut scarf loom. I don't usually warp without a sectional beam, but this one doesn't have one so I wound a "spool-cleaning" warp where I get rid of odds and ends of yarn left from other projects. This is a rather southwestern colorway, and it feels warm. It helps that the loom is right in front of the wall heater, too. Pike, the studio cat, loves the loom.

The snow was coming down in big puffy flakes when I spotted this gray squirrel hunting for missed acorns. He'd walk a bit, dig, walk some more ... all the while dragging his tail behind him. It just kept collecting snow on top of it. When he got some distance from the oak trees, he flicked the snow off his tail and scampered away.

Winter respite

We've been having a mid-winter thaw here in Indiana. Always welcome this time of year. Our driveway was snow-packed, then ice-packed, and is now just muddy.
I've been exploring more uses for these organic dyed T-shirt scraps ... quite small pieces and odd sizes, like maybe they were neck opening cutouts? Not sure. But very time consuming. I had been through the box once and what was left was up for grabs to anyone who wanted them. Until Hilary asked if I had ever made a rag rya rug. Which got me thinking ... with a little bit of effort (like just a few more hours) these remaining scraps would work for that. So, here is the end result, front and back:
There is a dark blue ground weft that is constant throughout the rug and the cotton scraps provide the alternate rows. If my blue weft had been thinner, I might have included the short pieces in each row. As it was, I only put them every other row, overlapping by a few threads and leaving the ends to stick out.
A fun project for a winter day. My husband says it looks like a flower garden ... I think he's thinking spring, too!
You could also use quilting scraps or pieces of clothing for the rya.
If you try it, send me a picture!

I'm amazed ...

at how much time I seem to spend online. Writing emails, checking out websites and blogs, visiting Facebook (when did I start doing that?) and writing in this blog ... all seems to take hours out of the day. Filling orders from the emails at least gets me out of the house and into the studio for awhile.
Snow's melting here but groundhog saw his shadow. But, I saw robins yesterday ... so spring can't be too far off.
I've been finishing purses and tote bags and building a page for them on my website. I think handwoven totes are a great way to go green!

Snowed in, making lists and mentoring

The beginning of the snow ... how beautiful.

No rag rug weaving today.
So we had snow overnight here in the Heartland ... not a lot, by Wisconsin/Minnesota/New York standards, but enough to cause cancellations and travel problems. My hard-working husband drove the 20 miles to his job and I had the whole day to finish some projects. I made a list. Only about 7 or 8 items. I have a pad of paper from decades ago when I was a Mary Kay consultant. It says, "The Six Most Important Things I Must Do" ... so my list was simple, housework things ... copy tax forms, get mail ready, unload dishwasher, do laundry ... etc. Now it's almost dinner time and the list is only half finished. Do I expect too much? Or am I just easily distracted? Or both?
One of the items on the list was to update my blog. My last entry was in April. How embarrassing. Of course, it was about Obama ... and now that he's president, it looks pretty good in retrospect.
But I digress ...
My weaving friend, Hilary, paid me a compliment in her blog this week. We have been buddies for years, talking through emails, IMs and on the phone. But we've never met face-to-face. Someday we will, I'm sure of it.
Our relationship began when she bought a rug from me. She's a late-blooming weaver, but catching up quickly. She occasionally would call with questions about weaving ... which usually were preceded by, "Have you ever ...?" And I almost always had, so I offered suggestions to solve her dilemma. Among other things, she has the coolest studio name, "Crazy as a Loom" and she has more energy than people 20 years younger.
As she notes, we're technically competitors. But I've never felt that way. Hilary likes to weave fabric rugs and I prefer shaggy selvedge rugs. Besides, there are plenty of people needing rugs (especially now, when you want to put your money into things that are beautiful and will last). Sometimes we compare our customers and find that the same person has contacted (and even bought from) both of us.
We've shared other things through the years, but that's business. We've even talked about mounting a joint-venture rug weaving website, but that's still a ways off.
When she had knee replacement surgery last year and was having trouble getting back to the looms, I was there to kick her b**t and tell her she could do it.
We've joked that we're siblings raised separately because we're close in age and very close in the way we view things. I just know that I'm proud of her and what she's achieved in her short weaving experience.
I know she's shoveling through snowbanks to be at her studio, stoking her pellet stove, and I wish I could just sit there with her and dream up even more bizarre things to weave. You go, girl!