Dishies

I've weaving some dish-scrubbing cloths to accompany an order of the Autumn Leaves towels I wove last month. I wound a separate warp for these, so they're not exactly the same - my random warps are just that - RANDOM - but I used the same colors, so they'll coordinate. I'm using a different draft of huck texture, to create more "nubbies" for scrubbing. The warp is 12" in the reed and I'm weaving them to 13" on the loom, which will translate to 9"x9" after washing and hemming.

I'm spinning this lovely 50/50 blend of superwash merino and tencel, Enchanted Knoll Farm club for December 2014, called "Poinsettia". I'm planning to spin the whole 4 oz, then chain-ply it.

Hoping to finish this one by day's end and begin the plying...

Rainbow Napkins, Done!

I've finally finished weaving the napkins. I decided to experiment with weaving using a temple for this warp. Not for my edges, they're always fine - but it was suggested to me that a temple would reduce draw-in, and therefore allow a wider cloth for the same amount of threads. Since I weave long production-type warps of 12-14 yards, this should in theory save me on thread cost. 

Well, it slowed me down dramatically. I could have woven twice as many napkins for the same amount of time. The temple has to be moved every half-inch or so, in order to be effective. Even though the temple removal and replacement took just a few seconds, it interrupted my "flow" and took some of the enjoyment out of the weaving. And it's got to be FUN, otherwise it's not worth doing!

A temple is a great tool for keeping the woven cloth stretched to its proper width, and I'll use it for weaving rugs, but for towels and napkins, it's not for me. Lesson learned!

Here are the finished napkins - washed, dried, pressed, and hand-hemmed (available in my shop, link on the right):

Catching Up

So where was I? 3 months of silence. I really meant to keep you up to date... Best intentions, best laid plans, etc. Anyway, I've been spinning and knitting and weaving and even crocheting, and I haven't taken the time to tell you about any of it, have I?

So far in 2014 I've spun 7.5 POUNDS of fiber. Seriously. Look - I've been keeping track on Ravelry and also on Flickr. That's a lotta yarn. I've also knit a vest, finished knitting a sweater and started knitting another one, and started weaving some soft cotton napkins, random rainbows like the dishtowels I love to weave. Since the napkins were started this week, you get a picture:

When they're done, I plan to list them in my shop in pairs. I'll let you know when they're ready.

I also have TONS of the aforementioned yarn to photograph and list in the shop. Photograph - ah, there's the rub. My least favorite part - but it has to be done, otherwise you can't see the yummies.

What else? Well, we tripled the size of the vegetable garden this year. Mr. Debbie has gone all out - he put down black garden cloth, planted the veg, and mulched everything. My part was planting the seedlings indoors and nurturing the little guys under lights. We have a lovely crop of lettuce that we've already been harvesting for salads, and I'm hopeful for tomatoes, zucchini, spinach, and beans. We have some other things planted that I'm not so sure about, but only time will tell.

Hmmmm... Oh! I got a breadmaker for my birthday in mid-February, and I have been baking all our bread since then. Mr. Debbie is in heaven - he adores bread, and has declared that my bread is tastier than store-bread even the few times it's lasted long enough to get slightly stale toward the end. The smell of the bread baking is delightful.

And I bought a bicycle to ride back and forth to my Jazzercise classes. It's a 3 mile roundtrip, which is a nice addition to the Jazzercise workout. I worked out a route that only requires crossing 3 busy intersections, all at traffic lights. I haven't ridden a bike in years, I'm having so much fun! And of course I'm wearing a helmet, something we never did as kids.

So much to tell you... I'll try to be good and update more often. Promise!

Towels with Rainbow Borders

I started a new set of towels yesterday - I'm using a natural/off-white cotton slubby yarn for lots of texture, with borders of thin rainbow stripes. I wove a set of these last winter and loved how they turned out. They should weave up quickly!

Coupon Code, and Towels

Valid for the whole month of December: coupon code FREESHIP for free US shipping on everything in my shop (I'll refund $5 on international sales). Use this link: DebbieBHandspun, Handwoven - or click on the shop in my sidebar.

The blue towels are done, and fresh out of the washer and dryer. I still have lots of teensy thread ends to snip, then the hand-hemming starts. I enjoy hand-hemming, it's good tv-handwork.

More Towels - Blue With Stripes

A Ravelry friend commissioned a set of towels to match her kitchen - she wants cobalt blue, with accents of brown and natural. I'm weaving hers with vertical AND horizontal stripes, and I'll do a few extra with only vertical stripes. I really love this color combo!

Rainbow Candy - 3rd Color, Navy

... and here's the third weft color, navy. As with the first two colors (burgundy and teal) it picks up different shades in the warp and does interesting things with them. Weaving these colors is endlessly amusing!

Rainbow Candy - 2nd Color, Teal

I love how changing the weft color makes such a difference in the overall look of the cloth. Here's the second color, teal:

Rainbow Candy - 1st Color, Burgundy

I'm planning 3 different sets of 4 towels each from this rainbow warp: 4 burgundy, 4 teal, and 4 navy. Here's the first color - I love how it's weaving up!

Weaving Rainbows Again

I love putting on a long warp and weaving dishtowels. Time for rainbows again! It's so much fun to grab a bunch of colors and toss them onto the warping mill as the mood strikes. I change colors a million times to get these multi-color warps, then weave with a textured pattern (huck) using a solid color weft. I'm thinking burgundy, navy, and teal.

Huck Luck Adventure Workshop

Our Weaving Chicks Study Group had a workshop this past weekend on Huck Variations, 12 different patterns using the same threading and tieup, just changing the treadling.

My friend Bonnie organized and presented it. We did two sets of the 12 samples, one set to wash and one set to leave as-is for comparison. We used a thick 8/3 white cotton as both warp and weft, and some people used color for one repeat of each pattern to make the design more visible.

1” cardboard strips were used for separators between samples, and we either used Fray-Chek or hemstitched the ends of each sample. I hemstitched mine.

Here's Bonnie's already washed sample - the texture is so different from the cloth on the loom!

We learned a lot about huck and its different textures, and are already dreaming about different uses/projects for different designs. A great time was had by all!

Mile 1, and Huck Rainbow Stripes Towels

I started off my walking program, and added a little widget in the sidebar to keep track of miles walked this year. My goal is 365 - one for every day (though I know sometimes I'll miss a day, and some of my walks will be more than a mile). Today's mile was on the treadmill, since it's gloomy and has been threatening rain all day. Still, yay mile!

Got my thick 'n' thirsty Huck Rainbow Stripes towels handhemmed and ready for the shop. I'm super-pleased with the thickness of these towels - they'll be nice for handtowels in the bath as well as in the kitchen. The 6/2 cotton washed up nice and squishy. 24" x 16" each. I gave one as a Christmas gift and have 8 left.

I was thinking about buying a corkboard bulletin board for Goal #4 (setting up a planning board for upcoming weaving projects) but then I thought, "Why buy something, when I could make something from what I've already got around the house?" I have some thick cardboard and some older wrapping paper that's not in good enough shape to use for packages. I'll put together a cute board, hang it on the wall, add some pushpins, and Bob's your Uncle. Free planning board!

All Hemmed Up and Ready To Go!

There were 14 towels altogether in this last batch - from a 13 yard warp. Each towel is 16"x24" and handhemmed. My daughter insisted that we keep one for our kitchen. :) The other 13 are ready for their new homes. This was a fun project, and now I'm ready for the next one!

Fresh off the loom!

The latest batch of rainbow dishtowels is done! I've cut the whole batch off the loom, and now it's in the washing machine. Next it goes in the dryer, until only slightly damp, then I'll cut them apart, press, and hem. Yay!

Ready to Weave!

Fotography Friday

Forgive the spelling - I couldn't resist. :)

I've got such a backlog of weaving and spinning to photograph - I'm trying to play a little catch-up here!

I've got 2 scarves and a table runner to show you - they've all been finished for awhile, but haven't had their beauty shots until now...

Handwoven Purple Illusion - this is a shadow weave scarf, woven with 10/2 in two different shades of purple:

Handwoven Northern Lights Scarf, woven in a faux-faux-ikat style - the warp is "fairy dust" yarn from Enchanted Knoll Farm, with a lovely subtle sparkle, and the weft is tencel:

Handwoven Overshot Runner, in 10/2 cotton and 5/2 cotton:

And for reading this far, your reward is a sneak peak of the warp I'm winding for the NEXT batch of random rainbow towels:

This is 1/5 of the warp - with a 13 yard warp, I can only fit so many threads (110) on the warping mill before it cries "I'm full, I'm full!" So I chain it off, set it aside, and start a new bout. This warp will be 5 chains, since I need 550 threads for these towels.

Handwoven Huck Rainbow Towels, Finished!

I finally got them all hand-hemmed and photographed! I must confess, the picture-taking is my least favorite thing in the entire process... I'd much rather be weaving! I ended up with 14 towels altogether - 2 of them are reserved for my kitchen, the other 12 went right into the Etsy shop (and as of this afternoon, 8 are already gone - Edit: oh, my! All 12 towels are gone!!!). I wove pairs - 2 pink, 2 purple, 2 navy, 2 teal, 2 burgundy, and 2 black. They're 16" x 24" and nicely textured with the huck structure.

Fun to weave, fun to use! I only have handwoven towels in my kitchen now, in all sorts of colors and structures. They add whimsy and pleasure to the otherwise joyless job of doing the dishes. :)

I may have to wind another dishtowel warp soon... I miss throwing that shuttle! (Edit: since they're all gone so fast, I've started winding a new rainbow warp tonight!)

Rainbow Towels in Progress...

I spent the weekend in the company of wonderful friends, the Weavin' Chicks - learning to weave Advancing Twill. We wove a scarf from bamboo, and learned that "Advancing Twill" means "a zillion picks per repeat"! We managed to get some lovely scarves woven - here's mine, before fringe-twisting and washing (I promise a better picture when it's done):

Happy to be able to report some progress on the Rainbow towel warp. Since I have 12 towels on this warp, I decided to weave 6 pairs of weft colors. The first two towels are PINK:

The second set of two towels is PURPLE:

And the third set is BURGUNDY:

I'll weave more tomorrow - I'm hoping to finish the whole warp tomorrow and Wednesday, so I can bring it to show off at the Saori retreat this weekend. A group of us are meeting at my friend Cheryl's Weavin' Place Saori-Style studio-in-the-woods for a Saori "Kai" ("sharing time") retreat, and as a special treat, my dearest friend Sherie is coming from Amarillo for the weekend! I can't wait to see her again.

I've also made great progress on my husband's sweater yarn - I've got two 4-ounce bobbins spun, and am working on the third (of four). This will be my first 4-ply yarn, and I can't wait to start plying, because the colors are gorgeous (pictures tomorrow, I hope!)

Warped Rainbow

The warp is on the loom, and I love the look of it.

I've started weaving the first towel - pictures tomorrow when I've made some progress.

Never Enough Rainbows!

I enjoyed weaving those rainbow dishtowels a lot! So yesterday I wound another rainbow warp. I'll weave this on my Baby Wolf, in a huck lace, like the last set of towels. Like that last warp, this is a randomized rainbow, designed as I selected threads to wind on the mill. I'm spending today threading the heddles and tying on the warp:

I wound the warp in 5 bouts, because it's a 13 yard warp (for 12 towels) and I couldn't fit more than 110 threads at a time on my warping mill.

Editing to add the draft info: It's from the July/July 2000 issue of Weaver's Craft, #3 - I used the draft from the "Carribean Plaid Huck Towels", but converted it to use 10/2 cotton and a 19.75" weaving width. More details in my Ravelry project page.

It's cool here today - temps in the upper 50's F.  Such a lovely fresh breath of air - it finally feels like Fall!