New Year...Start Up the Blog Again

One of my resolutions for this year was to post to my blog again. I now have a wonderful, super-powerful iMac and broadband so it should all work a lot better and quicker for me. This post is mostly photos of what I finished up last year. It's not a complete list because there were a few things that got away without having their photos taken.

These are some photos of the finished saddle blanket. This is the first one that I've ever woven and I was pleased with the end piece. The yarn is all organic and naturally dyed by Thirteen Mile Farm here in Belgrade. It was a fun project to work on and I liked doing it at the time but I don't think I'll be doing another one. My heart is still with tapestry weaving.





The horse, Squire, looks like his saddle blanket is comfortable to him.



Here is the only tapestry that I wove last year. I had another tapestry on the loom for a long time and it just wasn't working for me so scrapped it and used the rest of the warp for this one. Right now, I'm working on 3 small tapestries for the small format exhibit in Florida this summer in conjunction with Convergence. I can only send one but decided to warp the loom for 3 so that I could send the best one hoping I got a decent one. So far I've finished two, love them both and can't decide which one is better. I'll be thrilled if I have a problem picking from the three which is best. Photos of these will be coming in the next week or so.



I made this doll for a good friend for Christmas. When I was in Washington last summer, I did a lot of hiking and the woods were so lush and overgrown, it seemed they just had to be inhabited by fairies and elves, or Smurfs. I was sure that I would see some little forest folk peaking from behind a leaf. That got me thinking of dolls and some little forest people so I made this doll. Her body is an inkle band, her head and limbs are crocheted and her skirt is weavette squares. I figured out a way to weave small beads into the squares to look like dew drops. She has a wire armature inside which I had to figure out how to do but it was well worth it to make the doll poseable.



In the evenings when I'm too tired to work on anything else, I've started making these little crocheted amigurumi. I am having so much fun. I hadn't crocheted in years and I'm enjoying that but I also like making the little animals. Mostly I use patterns out there and change details and features, etc. It's great for using up all the odds and ends of yarn too. Mine are all wool and I stuff them with wool too, so they are very cuddly. I've made several more but they've gone to live at other homes.





I love cats and really love making fortune cats, Japanese maneki neko. The first ones I did were from a knit pattern I found online but I converted it to crochet to make it easier for me. It's fun to decorate them with coins and bells.

NOT Hibernating!

I wish I could say I have been hibernating because for several years, I've thought that is really what the human body wants to do in the winter. At least sleep more, like all the time it is dark! But I have been busy even though it doesn't seem like there is much to show for it.

I've spent a lot of time figuring out how to weave a saddle blanket and designing for them. Until I made a sample last fall, I've never even thought about how they are woven or of weaving one. Some one asked me to do one for them and so I started to look around for information on various ways they are woven. There is not a lot of specific info on them but there was enough for me to get started and then work it from there on my own. The designs I have ready are for boundweave threaded in rosepath. The woven patterns themselves are determined by color and weave and so once I got started playing with them, the possibilities on this simple threading are endless. This coming week, we'll finalize the design and work on getting the yarn. It's really different for me to be collaborating with others on a project but fun too.

I also spun some yarn for a pair of socks for Howard and am trying to learn to knit socks now by hand. I have a sock knitting machine so I've knitted zillions of socks but not handknitted and I wanted to learn to do that so I could have a useful, portable project to carry with me. I love to knit mittens but it seems like there are only so many mittens people can use. We need to have more pairs of socks and I often have yarn that won't work in the knitting machine because it is very picky about just what size of yarn it will bother with.

This yarn is a three ply. The darkest brown ply is a romney cross, another ply is gray with some blue and green corriedale carded in and the other ply is some gray mystery fiber I found in the stash. Overall, I probably used wools that were slightly too coarse and spun them just a little too much. Not sure these will be the most comfortable socks ever but they will no doubt wear well.

I'm using the instructions for knitting from the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook and they are easy to follow. It's taken me about 2 weeks of scattered knitting to get this far but that is only because I've ripped out so much. I started from the top down and got most of the way down the leg and decided it didn't look very flexible and stretch so needed more ribbing than just 1 1/2" at the top. The next time I started from the toe and you can see the wacky provisional cast on I did. Thankfully I do know how to graft so I can straighten that out without a problem. I got to the heel and decided that the foot was way to wide for Howard so I ripped back to the toe increases and decreased the number of stitches for the circumference. Now, I'm over half way back to the heel again and it looks about right so maybe this time I'll make it around the bend. Good thing I made strong yarn or I would have worn it out already. I don't know, I might just stick with the machine socks after this pair is done! It is certainly a lot faster.

Tomorrow I'm teaching 2 knitting classes at our church. They are having a big Humanitarian Service day for the whole area and asked me to teach a beginning knitting class and one on reading patterns and increasing and decreasing. The difficulty is that I don't know how many people will show up and so that beginning class could be 20 or more students. If it is that large, I've decided to break them up into groups of 4-5 and then they can help each other and I can go around to each group one at a time. It's a little scary. During the week, I've been practicing and watching how I knit so I know how to explain it as I go. I've been knitting so long that I just do it and don't have words for the actions so I had to think about that. I was looking at an Elizabeth Zimmerman book and realized that I cast on weirdly. I learned from a book when I was in high school and didn't know any one who could knit. I guess that old book had a little different explanation for the long-tail cast on but it comes out exactly the same. So I had to learn what all the books show now so that if any one looked in a book, they would remember what I had taught them. The classes are only 50 minutes so I'll be really happy if they can learn to cast on and knit a little garter stitch and bind off. In the second class, I'm just going to go over how to determine gauge and making a sample swatch, a couple of increases and decreases and generally reading a pattern and the yarn label band. I don't consider myself that much of a knitter and really just fool around with it a little so it is funny to have to be teaching classes on it. It would be nice to think it might inspire someone to go on and find an enjoyable pastime.

I did do a little weaving and will have some photos of that next week. I can't get the sock and yarn photos to upload either so will have to try again with them too.