Work in Progress – Weaving

Posted on November 12, 2010 by chocolatetrudi

Every sort of priority list (aside from work ones!) keeps telling me that I need to do more weaving. The workroom cleanup requires me to use up the rag rug supplies on the floor, the stash spreadsheet nags me to get more of the weaving yarns woven. But at the moment all I can do is cut warps:

Why? Because Paul has been making me this awesome loom stand:

Isn’t it fabulous? Okay, it’s probably incomprehensible to a non-weaver and not particularly impressive to an experienced weaver since it’s small and simple compared to big floor looms. But I’m over the moon. It just needs a bit more sanding and a coat or two of varnish and it’s done. Later we’ll add pedals so I can operate the shafts with my feet.

Works in Progress – Knitting

Posted on November 10, 2010 by chocolatetrudi

At the moment I have a lot of things on the go, and not many look like they’re going to be finished soon, so I thought I’d write a series of ‘in progress’ posts.

Here are my current socks-in-progress:

I’ve been working on these for months, I reckon. Too many other distractions and not enough waiting room or travel knitting time. The yarn is lovely, though I made the mistake of using the end from the centre of the ball and got constant great clumps of tangled yarn coming out.

In the end I had to unravel the ball completely and re-wind it, which was probably just as well as I found a bad join which I would otherwise have encountered in the middle of knitting the second sock.

I’ve had this yarn for nearly three years:

I intended to knit a vest, with stripes of the more textured yarn next to ones of the plain. But the yarns knit up at a different tension, I never found a pattern I thought it suited, and it’s alpaca, which doesn’t have much memory.

The other day it suddenly occurred to me that I could knit it doubled, putting plain and textured yarn together. I did a test swatch and loved the result. So I took a deep breath, did lots of math, and started designing a sideways knit vest. With short row waist shaping.

It’s already been knit to the halfway point and then frogged and reknit. But that’s what designing is like.

In complete contrast, I have this beside my work desk for when I want to think or de-stress:

It’s a ‘magic ball’ of yarn made from tying together yarn scraps. In this case, they’re loom ends. I’m not sure I’ll end up with something long enough to be a scarf, though. Right now I don’t care. I just want garter stitch knitting therapy.

Argyle Vest #2

Posted on November 8, 2010 by chocolatetrudi

Pattern: Argyle Vest by Amanda Burka
Yarns: Tanis Fibre Arts Green Label Aran. Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 10ply, Cascade 220.

For the last year I’ve been on an unintentional yarn diet. I know this is going to sound strange to most knitters, but… you may want to brace yourselves, cover your eyes or skip this post from this point…

I haven’t wanted to buy yarn much.

Oh, there has been the old moment I’ve felt a mild desire to buy some, usually for a particular project or another, and an odd little regret that I’m not supporting some of the yarn manufacturers whose yarn I like. But mostly the compulsion to buy yarn has been replaced by the desire to buy bookmaking and art supplies.

On the other hand, I haven’t stopped knitting. I’m still producing garments at a respectable rate. Finally getting to use some of the yarns in the stash has been great, and spurring me on to do more stash knitting. So has ‘making’ more space.

However, something is starting to happen that happened last time I had a big stash reduction: I’m getting down to the ‘difficult’ yarn. It’s the yarn that I bought to make something, but it turned out to be unsuitable. It’s the yarn I bought to make something, but then later snapped out of the delusion that I’d ever wear that thing. It’s the yarn I bought because it was beautiful or interesting, but can’t find a pattern for. It’s the yarn that made my hands hurt, or turned out to be a different colour when I got it or it saw it in sunlight, or didn’t hold up to machine washing as well as it should.

Or, as in the case of the yarns I used in the vest above, it’s the yarn I bought too little of to make anything. Except in this case, I had a one of those moments when re-sorting the stash when I realised that these three small batches of yarn went together really well, and I had just the right pattern for combining them.

The result? I absolutely, freakin’ love this vest. If only all of the difficult yarn in my stash would be so obliging.

Sketch Sunday 52 – End of Year 1!

Posted on November 7, 2010 by chocolatetrudi

Another post-kitchen warming sketch. Paul and I both like baking, and melting moments (otherwise known as yo-yos) are one of his standards. He made these for the party, along with forcer cookies and banana cake. Yum!

And as number 52, this sketch marks a year of my weekly sketching challenge. It’s been a good motivator, a great excuse to try out different mediums and techniques (some more successful than others) and a way to ‘keep my hand in’ at a time when inspiration for painting and art hasn’t been consistent. There were a few weeks there where I didn’t get around to sketching, but I missed it and enjoyed ‘catching up’ by doing a handful at once. Now I’m even more determined to keep it going. Maybe I’ll make it to 104 sketches. I’ll just have to keep on going and see.

Workroom Tidy-Up Stage 1

Posted on November 6, 2010 by chocolatetrudi

I’ve been getting stuck into some bookbinding projects that use up some of the materials I’ve collected, in order to make space in the workroom.

What to make out of paper shopping bags?

A two single signature bound doodle book or journal:

Some excess signatures left over from a project? Bound with longstitch into a cover of marbled watercolour paper reinforced with cloth tape:

A Discovery Channel bag and security envelopes? A chain stitch book:

All those bits of card from packaging, interior design and yarn colour cards, and leftover scraps of wall paper from the concertina sketchbooks? More notebooks:

I have at least another four bookbinding projects like these, and two more complicated ones, to go. Then all the leftover materials have to fit onto the shelves somewhere.

And then there’s the weaving…

Doodle Shoes #2

Posted on November 4, 2010 by chocolatetrudi

When I bought these shoes, it was at a two-for-one sale. After I drew all over the first pair I set the second aside until I had decided what sort of doodling I wanted to do on them. Black on white seemed a little too stark, so I hunted down some coloured fabric pens. Blue seemed like a good idea, since I wear a lot of blue.

But then I couldn’t decide on the pattern. I wanted to do the same doodle all over, to make them different to the first pair. Spurred on by the workroom tidy-up and wanting to get some projects done to make space, I finally settled on this pebble design, which I used on the back of the iPhone cover.

(By the way, I’ve had to abandon the iPhone cover. The ink blurred with wear so it looks like I needed to seal it with some kind of matt varnish. I was going to paint over the doodles with acrylic paint, but I had such a struggle getting the phone out of it that I was afraid I’d break it. I didn’t, but next time I might not be so lucky. However, I like the idea of decorating a phone cover so I’m going to get one like Paul’s to doodle on. His is made of the same fabric but doesn’t hold onto the phone so stubbornly.)

Spring Cleaning

Posted on November 3, 2010 by chocolatetrudi

The other day I cleaned my workroom. It was as much to do with avoiding work as finally being bothered by the dust and mess enough to want to do something about it. If the amount of dust was anything to go by, I’ve been procrastinating over cleaning for a LOT longer than I’d been procrastinating over work.

I got things as tidy as I could, but I wasn’t completely satisfied. That folding table is supposed to be used occasionally, not constantly. I don’t like that the loom is tucked away in the corner, where I can’t easily get to the back of it for warping and I have to keep the blinds down all morning to protect it from the harsh Aussie sunlight.

There’s too much stuff living permanently on the floor under the loom and on top of the folding table. The reason for both is that the focus of my crafting has been shifting so much that I’m accumulating and buying materials and tools faster than I can find easily accessible places to store them.

It may be odd to say I think the solution is to have less furniture, but it kind of is. I’m going to remove the folding table put the loom in that position instead, on a stand that Paul is going to make. (I’d buy the nifty folding stand Ashford makes for the loom, but I have doubts that it’ll be sturdy enough for rug weaving.) The table the loom currently sits on will be where I do bookbinding, paper craft, sewing, knitting machine-ing, etc.. The light coming in won’t be a problem: it’ll be a benefit (except in summer, when it’ll just make the room incredibly hot.)

As for the excess stuff currently on the table… well I’m going to either make things out of it, find a place to store it, or get rid of it.

Above: the stuff on the table, spread out. At least half of it wants to be made into books or notebooks.

Above: the stuff under the loom. All of it for rag rugs, though the basket of jeans is full of leftovers from the two denim rugs I’ve already made, which could also be used for non-weaving projects.

There are a couple of other projects that, if they were done, would reduce the clutter in there, too. But it looks like I have a lot of mainly bookbinding, paper craft and rug weaving projects to do.

Turns out doing a spring clean can lead to more creativity. Can’t complain about that!

Rara Avis XX

Posted on November 1, 2010 by chocolatetrudi

Every now and then I’ll follow a link to something wonderful, and I’ll have to bookmark the site and (if available) subscribe to the RSS feed so I can stalk it.

When I stumbled upon Tinctory, I was fascinated by the combination of naturally dyed, delicately pleated silk, beads and metal in Eva’s jewellery. My favourite design is the feather, and when she started dying with indigo I knew that if she ever produced a feather in blue I would not be able to resist.

In one of those little moment of happy coincidence, a blue feather appeared in the shop a few days before my birthday, when the Aussie dollar was at a rare high against the pound.

So I bought myself a present. A week and a half later a little package arrived from the other side of the world. In it was this: