Done, Done and Done!

Surprisingly this week has been a good one for getting things completed! Usually the summer months are a complete bust for weaving and blogging because I’m working in the veggie garden. Sadly, we didn’t have time to get the veggie garden developed in this new house, so I’ve had time to spare in the past few days.

The first project I’ve completed is the hand dyed cotton scarf that was woven in the spring. The scarf was lovely, but it just lacked something….and it was pizzazz!

I hauled it out and started beading and shirring it following the pattern blocks ~ the time was well spent because I think it looks wonderful!

The beads are studded along the selvedges and when the scarf is worn they pop up and glint in the sun….really special.

Last night as ‘Maillot Jaune’ powered past the finish line on the second to last leg of the Tour, I completed the actual knitting on my Tour de France cardigan.

I’ve just pinned it together and will do the final seaming tonight while I watch ‘The Boys’ sail down the Champs Elysées and complete the race. This project has taken me 21 stages to complete and even though I’m not thrilled with the wool quality ~ I love the cardigan. Fingers crossed that it fits once it’s blocked!

My husbands’ sister will be flying in from Australia in a few weeks. I’ve been working at relocating the stuff stored in the closet and making the room really pretty for her. I’ve been on the hunt for night tables that will bracket the bed but it’s been a difficult search. If I liked them they were either the wrong colour, too dark, too heavy or too big….isn’t that always the way!

Ngaire found these two plant stands and from there a project began. The scale, the price and the airiness were perfect ~ now to make them personalized and unique.
I wanted to bring some bold colour into the room, but to keep it in small amounts; so we decided to cover the triangular plant pots with a printed fabric.

This is the fabric we chose – boldly graphic, but still keeping it traditional for my French yellow and white room.

I made templates and cut out the fabric, then the fun part began ~ we used Modge Podge to affix the fabric to the metal pots. I couldn’t believe how easy and fun it was. We used two coats and it was all dry in one day.

Now my husband Michael stepped up to the plate and he made the table tops out of white wood planks. This was his first try at beveling edges and he did a fantastic job! We chose to make the table tops 14 inches by 14 inches. Michael made wood frames on the bottoms that fit into the plant stand openings, keeping the tops in place. He then sanded like mad and then two coats of pale green paint and one coat of polish and ~TA-DA, they are done.

They are completely fun and do the job without making the room feel too full of furniture and came in at just $40.00 each!  I took this photo in my foyer, it's the only place the light was right.

Unexpected Echo

We’ve changed the name of our Etsy shop today and have chosen to call it Woven Beauty to better describe our scarves. Today we were featured in our ninth Treasury so that means that we are finally being found on that humongous site!  Still waiting for our first sale though....sigh....

Here’s the link if you want to check out our Woven Shibori Scarf in the latest.
www.etsy.com/treasury/MTgwNTE5MDl8MjcyMDUwMTY4NQ/cool-summer-blues

The final scarf to come off the blue and green Echo Weave warp and it is not at all what I expected.
I rarely, hmmmm that would be never ~ choose to weave a scarf with a white weft, but this time the white 2/8 Tencel seemed to beckon.

I was more than a little amazed at the result! This scarf was treadled exactly the same as the last one, just the colour of the weft has changed from coral to white, but the result is astonishingly different.
The Tencel and the rather close sett that Echo Weave needs brings a high lustrous sheen to the scarf. The missing piece to the weave structure is the split complementary weft colour; so there are no unexpected colours coming through as the warp and weft interact. On the last scarf I got turquoise from the blue/green/coral combination!

What I do have ~ besides a whole bunch of pretty! ~ is a scarf that is predominately white on one side with a green motif at each selvedge and a larger blue motif running down the centre. These strong motifs were not really noticeable on the other two scarves, but are front and centre on this one!

The other side of the scarf appears more azure blue with white motifs running down the selvedges and a darker blue/green centre panel. As I said, it was a completely unexpected bonus feature!

I’ve been glued to the PVR every evening watching Le Tour de France and I’ve been knitting madly as they race over the flats and slog up the mountains.

This is the pattern I’m weaving. I chose something pretty simple because frankly, my attention has been on the screen not on my knitting!

I purchased the wool in New Zealand on my last visit and thought it was time to use it. Unfortunately I’ve been plucking all sorts of short cuts of wool from between the ply as I’ve been knitting. Ending up with a ¼ cup at the end of a session is not unusual…..and a real pain in the butt!

I have finished the back and both front sides…..

The cardigan is basically plain stocking stitch with these funky little rows at the collar to add interest.
We’ve still got a week of watching ‘The Boys’ and I started the sleeves tonight!

Echo de France

I’m absolutely addicted to watching the Tour de France, so the next three weeks I’ll be knitting a sweater as I watch ‘The Boys’. Thank heaven for the P.V.R. so at least I can watch the ‘Boys in Spandex’ at a time that works!  

I’m being very Canadian this year and I’m cheering them on in an ‘anybody but’ fashion; which is a little bit passive aggressive but as long as it’s not Cavendish I’m golden!  I love the art that surrounds the tour.  The photo above was taken by iaianclaridge.co.uk.

Now back to weaving!

This is the second scarf in my Echo Weave series and this beauty does follow all of the rules and so it really delivers. I’ve use a split complimentary colour pallet – soft green and soft blue alternate in the warp and I’ve used a soft coral in the weft. At first I didn’t like the look of the coral, but as soon as I could see a whole pattern repeat I was sold.  The two sides are amazingly different.

I treadled the scarf using a parallel treadling and although it’s an odd sequence at first, I soon got used to it. Basically every shaft has a complimentary shaft and they always work in pairs , for example 7-1, 8-2, 9-3,10-4, 11-5, 12-6, needless to say my look while weaving it was not always ladylike as there is always a large space between the treadles.  The motif on the coral side has a centre of blue diamonds and green diamonds on the edges.

There is iridescence in abundance and quite magically other colours appear, in this case turquoise gleams on the dark side and dusty mauve shimmers on the light side.

This is why Echo Weave is magical!

And Now For Something Completely Different

I’ve been very diligent at choosing projects to weave from my stash and frankly I’m due for a reward because I really have been stash busting! Webs online, was having their anniversary sale, so I broke down and placed an order a few weeks ago. Some of my colour choices were back ordered, so it took awhile, but here they are!

 I ordered large cones of aqua marine, black, blue ming, mineral green, natural, navy, pompeii and taupe. My photo just doesn’t do it justice!

As a reward to myself for using up all the hand dyed cotton, I’ve put on a 3 scarf warp in tencel. My plan is to weave three variations of my original Echo weave that I did back in 2009. There are a few things that make a weave Echo Weave work:
*parallel threading
*alternating warp colours - two or more
*high sett density
*split complementary colour scheme
*parallel treadling
*no more than a 3 thread float

This scarf was woven with navy blue weft and so this is an analogous colour scheme. This means that the scarf isn’t a true Echo Weave because the colour-way should be a split complementary, but hey, rules are ment to be broken.

I’ve deviated yet again from a true Echo Weave by treadling this scarf point twill as you can clearly see on the selvedge. 

The scarf reads differently on each side, one side is dark blue and the other seems to be washed denim, which makes sense due to the similarity of the blue and green warp threads.

 The surprising thing is that there is also a taupe colour in the iridescence on the light side. On the dark side I swear I see khaki! Everything about this weave structure is amazing!

This is such a pretty scarf that I’ve decided it will be mine, mine, mine! I do love to wear what we call the ‘Canadian Tuxedo’ a denim jacket with jeans…..and this will jazz mine up considerably.  OK, I really don't wear two denims exactly the same colour!

Warp Rep or Ripsmatta

I am still on a stash busting mission and Rep Weave uses a lot of yarn, so it seemed like a natural choice for me. I haven’t woven Rep Weave since 2004, when I was doing the Guild of Canadian Weavers Master Program, so I thought I’d have another look at the whole weave structure.  I found that Lila Lundells book Rep Weave to be really good.

Rep Weave gets its name from its strong horizontal ribbing; rep and rib have the same root word in French.

“Rep Weave is a derivate of Tabby with warp set so closely that it covers the weft. Two wefts are used alternately; one very heavy and another very fine. The fabric has ridges parallel to the weft. If the warp has all uneven numbered ends of one kind of yarn; and all even ends of other the fabric will have two sides woven in two different yarns. The same applies to the warp made of two alternating colours; the fabric will have one colour on one side and the second colour on the other”. Excerpt from Encyclopedia of Hand-Weaving by Stanislaw A Zielinski published by Funk & Wagnalls New York.

I decided to use two different colours of the same yarn rather than two different yarns, although that sounds pretty exciting and I may try it in the future. I found exactly the pattern that I was looking for in Handwoven Magazine September/October 1988. The article is entitled Warp Rep by Lynne Giles. The actual design is called ‘Lace’ and was designed by Catharina Carlstedt and published by Glimakra.

This is the draft that I got from the magazine and it took me forever to key it into PCW!

Ngaire had a look and noticed that I didn’t have enough heddles on 8 shafts for the pattern, so she took it to PCW and stretched it over 12 shafts for me. I still ended up making 20 extra heddles…..painfully slow! I can see an order for a few hundred more heddles will be in my future.
Pulling the 808 threads seemed to take forever, but thankfully it pulled onto the loom really easily. I’ve sett the Rep Weave at 40 ends per inch ~ 4 per dent in a 10 dent reed, so that part went quickly.

I found that the origianl draft in the magazine was just too big for my purposes, so I reduced the pattern overall to make a runner the width 20 inches. I’ve chosen to use 2/8 Orlec for the warp in mid-green and light green alternately for the warp.

Threading was pretty straightforward, but I had to really keep my mind on the colour sequence as it changes on a frequent basis and there are plenty of times where two light or two dark colours lie next to each other.  The pattern looks like it has some texture but that is an optical illusion caused when the warp colours change.

I’ve used the same 2/8 Orlec for the fine weft and thought I’d use a DK weight Acrylic Knitting Yarn for my heavy weft. It was cheap and cheerful and I thought it would wash very well.

Well that didn’t work out well at all– can you see the fluffy knitting yarn popping out between the warp threads? It's just too fluffy and poofy and it makes the pattern appear a bit fuzzy.

I went to my local yarn shop and found a skein of Butterfly Mercerized Cotton from Greece! This is a 6 ply cable yarn and it works much, much better. The cotton is very firm and it behaves itself and allows the warp to cover it completely.

This is my runner so far.

This is the runner from underneath. I took this photo lying on the floor looking up and it was much more difficult than I thought it would be!  This runner will be completely reversable.

I'd forgotten how much fun Rep Weave is ~ I'm really enjoying this simple, graphic pattern and I can't wait to see the finished result!

The Last of the Hand Dyed Warps Part 2

This warp has been trouble from the start - I have had to unweave, re thread and re tie up twice and now I don’t have enough soft green Orlec for the weft!  I knew that it was going to be close but the scarf is just a little more than halfway done and this is all the weft I have left, it's just a little too short!

In the warp I used the soft green and a soft blue to lighten up the slate grey cotton and there is a tiny ball of the blue Orlec left that I ended up using to extend the scarf.  I wasn’t sure how I was going to add the blue to the scarf but Mum came up with a great idea to weave bands of colour in a Fibonacci sequence.

I was just able to finish the scarf to the length that we like, which is the aviator length of 70 inches.   There was barely anything left on the pirns when I was finished ~ talk about cutting it close!

The colour blocking of the Fibonacci sequence really added interest to the scarf.  It is a lovely spring weight scarf and it is really, really beautiful in both feel and colour.

The second scarf wove up really fast; there were no issues which made it a nice relief to weave.  It is a completely different treadling that looks like interlocking diamonds climbing up the scarf.  The weft is a soft lilac Orlec.  And that little nest of  slate grey cotton on the side is all that I have left of the hand dyed skein.

The two scarves look really different from each other and I really like adding Orlec to cotton for scarves; it adds a lovely shine and it isn’t too heavy weight wise.

I am happy to say that we have used up all the hand dyed cotton warps, they were a little intimidating to work with but the end most of the results are just fantastic.  I think that we will be dyeing some more warps in the summer, maybe some silk. 

Doing It Ourselves

My family are dyed in the wool 'Do It Yourselfers'; or sometimes known as ‘too dumb to know better’. We do know our limits in some respects ~ no messing around with electricity or plumbing, but everything else is pretty much fair game.

We are now almost five months into our new home and as much as living on the ‘Wet Coast’ will allow we’ve managed to get a quite a few projects done outside.

Ngaire and I landscaped the large front gardens including adding a masonry patio, Michael built a garden shed that looks like a wee doll house in the back garden, Ngaire and I oil stained the fence and now Michael is adding on 32 feet of additional fence!  Never a dull moment!

The not so nice spring weather has made weaving everyday an easy goal to meet and we have set up our Etsy shop (NyreeLynn). So we thought today was a good day to tackle something new that falls into the 'why the heck not' category!

Our friends had a couple of small wing back chairs that were destined for recycling. The chairs were being stored where their cat had access ~ that pretty much says it all! These are really sweet chairs and I thought they had potential.  We decided that having them professionally upholstered was out right now as all the other projects have left the wallet a bit slim, but I knew that we could make them pretty!

First we cut off all of the shredded fabric; this showed that all of the damage was on the sides and backs of the chairs and it was deep, this is just a small sample of what we cut off!

The front of the chairs was fine and so we decided to just cover over the backs and sides of the chairs.

A quick trip to the discount bin at Fabricland and $29.00 later Ngaire had found the perfect fabric. I was really happy with the fabric, it lightens up the all over green chairs, it was a simple pattern to match and the green colour was a match.

I made a paper template and cut the fabric a few inches larger than the chairs and we took special care to make sure that the pattern on the fabric landed in the same place for all four sides of the chairs.  The pattern runs down the centre on the back of the chairs, who doesn't like matchy, matchy?

Before we started I pinned the pieces onto the chairs to make sure I had done it right, looks pretty good!

Michael loved this project because he got to buy a new tool...the pneumatic staple gun made the whole thing possible.  Ngaire go to do the actual shooting, I'm the fold and hold gal!  We stapled the fabric over the top of the old fabric, making sure that the staples fell into the ditch behind the original trim.

I can’t believe how cute these look! It took about six hours from start to finish, but I think it was well worth it! You really can’t see the staples too much, but I think I’ll hunt up some kind of trim to cover them later on. 

From the front the chairs still look the same, but now that I look at things I think the next project will be to refinish the tops of those nesting tables.  Including the purchase of the staple gun, the project price ended up being $40.00 per chair!