Category Archives: craft

One Cull Leads to Another

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During my fabric, pattern and habby cull, I got to thinking about how different my attitude to fabric stash is to yarn stash. With sewing, I have a limited time I can spend on the machine before my back complains, so I don’t waste it on making items I don’t want or aren’t fun to make.My fabric collection isn’t overly large. It fits in four plastic filing boxes and one tub.

With weaving, I often make things I don’t particularly want to keep in order to use up stash or learn something new. The weaving yarn stash is seven or eight times larger than the fabric stash. Which is sobering, but not unexpected. It’s been my main hobby for quite a few years now, and until recently I was on quite a learning drive.

I’d like to weave with the same attitude as sewing, so having a weaving yarn stash as practical as the sewing stash appeals. However, to get to that point I’d have to cull quite a bit of yarn. The thought was rather intimidating, but on a free day recently, I girded my loins and got stuck in. What I found surprised me.

Since it was a large task, I broke it into smaller ones. My cones of yarn are stored separately to the skein, ball and hanks, and I left them for another time.

Out: a few cones I knew I’d never weave.

The balls, skeins and hanks of yarn made up about half the yarn. I was surprised to find they were mostly knitting and crochet yarn. Not that I don’t weave knitting yarn, just not as often these day. Some is intended for machine knitting projects, so it turns out this is also a machine knitting stash. And possibly hand knitting and crocheting, but I’ll get to that later.

Out: a bag of yarn I wasn’t keen on.

Below the knitting yarns were eight tubs of fabric for rag rugs. Am I going to weave more rag rugs? Probably not. While I like rag rugs, the oldest ones I have I made 13 years ago, and I plan to replace them with the flannelette ones I have in storage.

Out: ALL of the fabric for weaving.

When I’d estimated the amount of weaving yarn I had, I was waaaay out, because I forgot the wool rug stash.

Yikes.

Out: about half of it.

Having decided that this was also a machine knitting stash, I moved the circular knitting machines in from the craft room. In order to do that I had to move the embroidery and macramé yarn stash. You know what happened next.

Out: er, nothing. I meant to get rid of most of it, but there’s now plenty of room on the yarn stash shelves and I have a few ideas I’d like to try. At least removing it from the same cupboard as the sewing supplies gives me a some room for all that ex-fabric-for-weaving, which may become quilts and chair covers.

I’ve come up with a couple of crochet projects for the knitting yarn, too. All things I want and will be fun to make. Next time I have the urge to downsize, the cone yarns will be in the firing line. Hopefully before the next Guild bazaar.

New Approach

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The urge to cull and create fell upon the fabric stash, haberdashery and patterns last week. Culling was mostly for the same reasons I remove and refashion clothes: they feel dated, are not natural fibres, aren’t practical for my ageing bod, or I find myself thinking “why the heck did I buy THAT?”.

Then I spent one morning making two t-shirts patterns and an evening going through all my knits to work out if the leftovers from old projects were large enough to make anything. I matched up fabric and patterns, adding two new skirts to my to-do list, and at the end of the week I bought some fabric for the one of them.

I was looking forward to a weekend of sewing. On the Saturday, after a bit of mending to warm up, I tackled a bucket hat for Paul from an old shirt and pair of jeans.

Then I moved on to another familiar pattern: lounge shorts. The fabric was a leftover piece of a charcoal grey tablecloth I’d made into a pair of pants. Hopping around the internet for ideas the night before, I’d noted that Bermuda-length shorts were supposed to be in fashion this summer, so I decided to add as much length to the legs as the leftover allowed. That turned out to be a bit more than I really needed, but I just turned up the hems, pressed and slip stitched them in place

That filled the Saturday. On the Sunday I woke with a frozen shoulder and painful neck, so didn’t do much more than long to be well enough to tackle those skirts.

WIP Wipeout

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These dishcloths were on the loom for fourteen months. Fourteen.

And now they’re done.

They’re the last of the major WIPs I decided to finish a few months back. While not as old as the Pin Loom Blanket project, they had definitely fallen into a Black Hole of Mehness. They seemed like a good use of the supplemental warp beam – and they were – but I couldn’t help wondering why I was spending so many hours weaving and hemming an object that I can buy for around a dollar each and will toss in a year or so when they get too stained and threadbare.

Eventually I decided I wasn’t allowed to start any new weaving project until they were off the loom. I suspect my dive into air dry clay was partly a subconscious rebellion against that decision. My brain was desperate for excitement. So it was kind of ironic that the gloss went off air dry clay so quickly, and that on the same day I packed away the clay supplies I also finished the last dishcloth.

I was seriously considering just cutting the warp off the loom to get it over with, but decided to finish the last cloth and see how much was left. Turns out, not enough for another cloth. Which means I don’t feel like I gave up on them, or that they defeated me.

But I sure as heck won’t be weaving dishcloths again!

Feat of Clay

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For the first few weeks after having Covid I didn’t feel any urge to paint. Instead I either tidied up or organised my art supplies. And then I had two of those dives into a craft I only occasionally dabble in. The first was jewellery-making, which led to ideas for making brooches, which led to me unearthing my small supply of air-dry clay.

Well, it’s been a long time. It turned out that the terracotta version I’d used to make some macrame beads years ago was now too solid and crumbly to use. After consulting the internet, I crumbled it up into a container, added water to soak in overnight, then spent an afternoon pushing it through a sieve then spreading the resulting paste out to dry on the shiny side of the glass slab I use to grind up pigments for ink.

That was going to take a few days, so I opened a pack of white clay and started to play. Even though it had to be over ten years old, it was still in good condition. The first pieces I made were simple flat shapes to paint later, so I could get a feel for how the clay worked. Then I made circles, a square and a heart with an edge, with the intention to make little mosaics.

I haven’t yet made anything from the flat shapes, but I had fun painting the ‘frames’ and filling them with tiles. They have brooch pins glued to the backs.

Having opened a pack of clay, I was worried it would dry out in the years that were likely to pass until I got the inclination again. I hadn’t used up much clay, so I tried making something bigger: a brush holder, which isn’t the most attractive thing I’ve ever knocked together but works.

Then I went even bigger and made a mug-sized candle lamp. Not something I’d normally use, but I thought I might be able to hang earrings on it. The mistake I made was to not let the side panel dry a bit before attaching it to the base. The holes reduced the integrity of the clay, too. The side slumped in on itself and the holes started closing up. Fortunately, the plastic cup I was using for water was exactly the same size as the vessel, so I wrapped it in baking paper and inserted it inside the piece, then turned everything upside down. Now gravity was in my favour, stretching it out again – though I still had to re-cut the holes. The next day the vessel was dry enough to remove the cup. When it was dry I painted it black on the outside and silver inside. The sides are too thick to get earring hooks into, so I guess it’s going to have to be a candle lamp after all.

In the meantime I’d had more brooch ideas, I made a paint tube and paint box…

… and a pair of abstract shapes with round hollows in them. I filled one with glitter and the other with scraps of wire and beads.

I also made some mushrooms and abstract flowers that were painted with some of the terracotta clay paste thinned a bit to make a slip. The stems are florist wire. No idea what I’m going to do with them.

When the terracotta paste had finally dried to the consistency of clay, I gave it a good knead. By then I didn’t have many ideas left to try, so I decided to use it up all in one project. To do this I made a a flat leaf shape and pressed that into a bowl covered in cling wrap. When it had dried enough to hold its shape I took it out of the bow. It took aaaages to dry.

This whole clay adventure took a lot longer than I had expected. Much longer than my enthusiasm lasted, unfortunately. On the day I sanded the white clay items I was really over the whole clay thing, but it got more interesting once I began painting things and glueing in mosaic tiles, glitter and jewellery scraps.

But I’m done. I’ve put the unused flat shapes in among my jewellery making supplies until I know what I want to do with them, and both clay and jewellery-making supplies have been put away. Now, with the craft table cleared, I’m free to dive into the next thing.

Lucy’s Honeycomb

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A little white ago a friend asked on FB if anyone wanted a ball of slubby, multicoloured yarn formerly a scarf that had unravelled. I put my hand up for it and offered to weave it into a new scarf. She accepted.

We had a couple of quick consultations, in which I showed her some examples of weaving using slubby yarn, she picked honeycomb weave with a green background as her favourite. I did a lot of math and worked out that I didn’t have enough of the green to make a shawl, but plenty for a wide scarf.

Weaving honeycomb was rather pleasant, and similar to the deflected doubleweave I’ve been weaving in that it pairs smooth wool with a textured yarn, and is fast and engaging to weave.

My calculations were way out, though, since I still had plenty of both the slubby and background yarns left when the scarf was done. I considered making another scarf. Then memories of this friend wearing a beret/tam had me digging out a device I made years ago for weaving tams, and I got to work. The body was woven from the old scarf yarn, then fulled a little. The brim was knit separately out of a natural coloured 8ply yarn then sewn on.

The pom pom was made from the thrums, making this a very frugal project. I still have a ball of the slubby yarn left, but I’m going to offer it to my friend to save in case of moth damage.

When I embarked on the band knitting, I looked up beret patterns to see how many stitches were cast on and realised that berets seem to be in fashion again. It has me eyeing the yarn stash.

The Pin Loom Blanket

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This project has taken me over half a decade. It started as a small weaving thing to do while travelling then, when I had accumulated enough squares to start thinking about what to make out of them, something bigger. Eventually I hit on the idea of a double-thickness blanket of stuffed squares. Since then, however, I decided not to stuff them because the weave isn’t dense enough for the filler not to show through.

After I did the pin loom workshop a few years ago I bought the double size square loom to get a little variety into the blanket and speed up the process, though it didn’t really speed up the process much. It didn’t help that, no matter what size square I wove, if I worked on it too much my back would complain. So progress was made in small bouts of enthusiasm and abandonment.

Early this year I decided it was time to finish it off. Using safety pins, I connected the squares together in an appealing sequence and used a board to carry it all from room to room when I needed the kitchen table for something else. Slowly I wove the remaining squares. Gradually I crocheted around the edges. Doggedly I sewed it all together, then crocheted a border. When I think about the hours I must have spent on it, I’m sure it has to have taken hundreds. I wonder if it was all worth it. If the journey is more important than the destination, then yes, it being an epic trek that I was totally over by the time it was done definitely overshadows the relief of having it done.

Not all wanderers are lost? Yeah, I’d totally lost all will to live by the end of this one. But I survived.

Left Dangling

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During the first few days after we returned from Norfolk Island, I had that feeling of inevitably slipping back into the old routine but quietly railing against it. Yet also acknowledging that remaining unsettled would be quite unpleasant, so I ought to embrace the return to normality.

Then we caught Covid 19 for the first time.

Well, that wasn’t fun but we got over it and, more importantly, didn’t pass it on to anyone vulnerable. I didn’t need being stuck at home for ten days to tell me normal life, post Mum’s decline and joining an artist society, involves quite a bit more going out than it did even pre-pandemic. Though I’d had no trouble staying at home during the long lockdowns, by day seven of isolation I was going a bit stir-crazy. A big part of that was not feeling alert enough to do anything mentally challenging. There’s only so much Project Runway I can watch in one sitting, or books I can read, before I get a bit bored.

So when I did regain some energy, I culled my jewellery collection. I’d done a major clothing cull just before Covid hit, and it turns out I was still in that frame of mind a week later. It had been a loooong time since I’d looked at my jewellery, and I hadn’t worn much for a while, mainly because it’s almost all necklaces and I now have what I call ‘old lady spots’ on my neck that get irritated if something rubs against them.

Out went lots of necklaces, most of my rings, a few bracelets and most of my hair clips. Usually when this happens I take some of the old pieces and attempt to make something new. I tried to resist that, but once I’d done a bit of mending and tweaking of things I was keeping I found myself converting some necklaces to bracelets and earrings.

I have very few earrings. I haven’t worn them on a regular basis since my 20s, because my hairstyle hid them. But my new hairdresser keeps cutting my hair quite short and I kinda like it. I even bought two pairs of earrings on Norfolk Island, in a kind of holiday fling with earringness.

As for bracelets, I do rather like wearing them in warmer months when they don’t get caught up in long sleeves. Brooches used to leave me cold, but I’m starting to appreciate the fact that they don’t touch my skin therefore no itchiness. And there are so many modern, stylish pieces out there. They need to go on robust fabric, however, so maybe more suited to cooler months.

So here’s a few photos of what I made:

Bracelet and earrings from old necklace
Earring using beads from old necklaces
Bracelet from old necklace + bracelet combo
Bracelet from old necklace section

Longer Slinky Ribs

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Way back over a decade ago I knit this jumper.

“Slinky Ribs” by Wendy Bernard.

Well, time changes things and not the least body shape. In this case, the length of the jumper just didn’t look or feel right any more. Too short – causing the hemline to sit right at the widest part of my belly. I was tempted to send it off to an op shop, but decided instead to see if my hands could cope with a bit of knitting again. Seems they can, but my neck complains louder so I listened to it and stuck to doing a few rows at a time, knowing I would eventually get it finished.

I didn’t have any more of the yarn, which is discontinued, and the only people on Ravelry who were selling it had colours that wouldn’t suit. Instead, I opted for adding stripes of navy and light blue yarns in my stash. I didn’t have enough of the navy, and Spotlight had sold out of it, but a friend came to the rescue with a spare ball.

The new yarns were slightly thicker, but any change of tension this created would be better hidden with ribbing than plain knitting, so I frogged back to where the ribs started changing to plain knit and started adding ribbed stripes from there.

A few months later I had this:

A ‘new’ jumper. And an itch to knit that I am trying hard to ignore.

Copper Roses

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When digging around the stash, matching bouclé yarns with smooth, I stumbled upon a trio that looked really nice together. What seemed like fairly bland reddish-brown and orange bouclé yarns somehow gained a sumptuous metallic gleam next to a purple (blackberry nip) Bendigo Classic 3ply. How could I not weave something with the combo?

A while back I made a draft I called “roses” because of the bright reds I’d chosen for it, but it took only a few tweaks to adapt it to the new colours. It looked great, so I started planning for a scarf, conscious that I didn’t have enough of the orange bouclé for anything larger.

To ensure the orange wouldn’t run out, I wound it onto the warping board set to the length of the scarf, then counted the number of ends. Since that included loom waste, I knew I could plan to warp a little bit over half of the number of ends in orange, since the spacing of it in the weft was the same as the warp. Factoring in these limitations, I knew I’d have a narrower scarf than the ones I’ve been weaving, but still a good size. So warped up the loom and got weaving.

Since I’m weaving almost only on weekends now, and July to October seems like birthday season, the scarf came together at a leisurely pace. I was happy to find these bouclé yarns worked as well as the grey I’ve used in the last three projects. There’s less than a bobbin of orange left, but plenty of the reddish-brown, which wove up nicely and I’d like to use in another DDW scarf.

The last third was woven a bit faster due to wanting to start the next project. A friend gave me some interesting slubby yarn from a scarf that had unravelled. I offered to weave it into a shawl for her, and when I showed her a few examples of items that make a feature of a fancy yarn she was instantly attracted to honeycomb. I’m thinking of weaving a test shawl with some slubby in the stash. Which means my next projects aren’t going to be more bouclé Deflected Doubleweave, but I do hope to get back to it.

Electricity

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When I was nearing the end of the Baroque scarf, I knew I wanted to do more bouclé deflected doubleweave, but I wanted to try using some other other bouclé yarns in the stash. That wasn’t as easy as I hoped. The grey bouclé I’ve been using matched well with Bendigo Classic 3ply, but the other bouclés came in many different weights and it was hard to find nice colour matches.

Then a bright green slubby yarn caught my eye. Not a bouclé but the same WPI as the grey. Being an almost fluorescent shade, it reminded me of electrical wires, which put me in mind of draft I designed after I did the deflected doubleweave Zoom class in 2020. If I recall correctly, I used the snail trails and cats paws overshot profile draft as a DDW profile draft, and electrical plug shapes appeared in the pattern.

So I dug up that pattern and tweaked the colours until I had a trio of yarns that suited… which included the grey bouclé after all. The slubby yarn was a bit thin, but it’s only used for a few stripes in the pattern so I gambled on it not mattering, and that paid off. There was a time I wouldn’t mix yarns that weren’t the same brand and weight. Thanks to the 4 and 8 shaft courses, those days are long gone.

I love how this came out. It’s unisex, cosy and striking. And I’ve wound a warp for another DDW scarf, this time using two other bouclé yarns from my stash.