Tuesday, May 27, 2014

The week in review

Sunday May 18- finished knotting back of red and black tapestry #1
Monday May 19- Trip to Woodstock to see Grandma and Grandpa. In the car worked on fringing rag rug samples. Decided that one of the techniques was something that I was going to NOT recommend to my students because it was tedious and horrid to work on.
Tuesday May 20- Made new cotton seine twine tapestry warp. Started to put it on the loom
Wednesday May 21- finished dressing the loom with new warp.
Thursday May 22-Made a new small warp for yet another rag rug sample. This one is a double bind technique.
Friday May 23- Dressed loom with the new rag rug sample warp.
Saturday May 24-we were having people over Saturday night so spent the day cleaning and cooking. I cleaned under and around my looms so that will have to be my craft related thing for the day. That and cooking can be considered crafty work, right?
Sunday May 25- Dug through some of my bins of yarns and picked the colours and textures for the first bit of my tapestry.
Monday May 26- Trip to Woodstock to visit Grandpa and wish him a happy 91st birthday. In the car I fringed the rest of my finished rag rug samples
Tuesday May 27- Started winding some of the skeins of yarn for the tapestry into balls. This was definitely a case of "even 5 minutes counts. I also ran (mostly) 7.25 k tonight and am off to reward myself with a soak in the tub.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Tuesday May 13-
A bit more designing on tapestry.

Wednesday May 14-
Borrowed a 27 inch loom from the school to weave the tapestry.
Started to dress the loom

Thursday May 15-
Continued to dress the loom. Tied on the warp and did a test weave. Didn't really like the results and decided to sleep on it. Reminded my self that unweaving is part of weaving.

Friday May 16-
Spent most of the day at the school dressing another warp for a new rag rug technique. I also got some of my homework done for my online class.
When I got home, I took a look at my tapestry warp and in the harsh light of day, realized that not only was the sett incorrect for what I wanted to do, but the warp was also starting to shred and wouldn't hold up to the abuse that I was about to inflict. So I took the warp off to be used for another project on another day. I tucked the experience away to drag to later when I have to explain to my students that sometimes "Plan B" means starting over.

Saturday May 17-
Knotted the back and trimmed the ends of red and black tapestry #1.

Monday, May 12, 2014

update

Thursday May 1-
Wove on Blue Hiro warp

Friday May 2-
Last day of work-
Wove on Blue Hiro
Mapped out a new project involving all my colleagues
Started the warp for the above project

Saturday May 3-
Wove on Blue Hiro. This warp is so slow weaving. It is an silk i-cord yarn and very stretchy. It takes dye beautifully and I want to keep the colours of the warp from being muddied with the weft, so I am using a fine 20/2 silk in blue. Each weft shot needs to be slowly beat in place. The selvedge threads are super stretchy too and subject to a lot of draw-in. I wove a sample with this material before, but I paired it with stripes of closely sett 20/2 silk and it was much easier to maintain an even beat. I have one more Hiro warp so I may have to consider making a sister warp out of the fine silk and pairing the two.

Sunday May 4-
Spinning about an hour
Sewing in ends on tensel scarves

Monday May 5-
Wove on blue hiro scarves and finished the first one! Started to fringe it.
Designing of new tapestry based on colours picked by my colleagues

Tuesday May 6-
Decided that I didn't like the warp that I made for the tapestry on Friday, so I rewound it onto the bobbins and started a new warp from two tones of purple linen.
Cut strips for a couple of rag rug samples for a workshop that I am teaching this summer.
Felted a small green piece of felt to cut into pins.

Wednesday May 7-
Made a small rag rug sample warp. Used the strips I cut yesterday for a new rag rug technique where you lay two different coloured strips of fabric back to back and flip them over mid way through the warp so that you change colours. Dressed a loom at work and wove one sample.

Thursday May 8-
Wove two more samples on the rag rug warp. I made the warp extra long so that the students could try the technique before settling on it.

Friday May 9-
Made another small sample warp for a new technique for rag rug workshop. Dressed a second loom at work and wove two samples. Let enough warp for students to try this sample also.
Worked on design for tapestry. Gathered a couple of more colours from a few people from whom I hadn't received answers to the question "pick a colour"

Saturday May 10-
Trip to Woodstock today to visit Grandma and Grandpa. In the car I finished one side of my tapestry making knots and sewing in ends. Started second side. Brought Dorset loom (with blue hiro warp on) to the lake for the summer.

Sunday May 11-
Finished second side and knotted all the ends on the back of two tapestries.

Monday May 12-
Wove on Red Hiro scarves.

Thursday, May 01, 2014

Challenge update

Before I begin, just a note to let you now that my posts for a bit will probably consist of just a list of what I have done. It helps me to track my progress.

Monday April 28-
Felted blue fleece that was laid out Sunday
Cut 45 hearts and 1 sun out of the red felt. Soft felted the edges and set them to dry
Tuesday April 29-
Knotted the fringe of one scarf
Started twisting the fringe of a second scarf.
Wednesday April 30-
More fringing on my brown tencel scarves.