Celtic Knots Silk Scarf

It has been a long time since I’ve blogged but summer is starting to wind down and there is more time for weaving.  It has been a busy summer with lots of guests and with that a lot of travelling up and down the island, showing off all the beauty and wonders.  This photo is one of the local beaches on the left is the mainland of BC and on the right is Hornby Island with Vancouver Island behind.  

To get back into the swing of things I put on one of my hand painted silk warps, they are always a favourite to weave.  This one is 2/22 silk and is half pink and half purple, the colours have variation of colour ranging from soft pinks and lavenders to dark purple and hot pink.

The pattern is a lovely plaited twill that looks like Celtic knots braid.  I went for a black 2/8 Tencel weft because I wanted the pattern to pop.

The weaving went quickly as the treadling is just a straight draw so very nice to do after being away from the loom for a while.  The finished scarf is fabulous.  For Sale.

The garden, like every year, has it heroes and its disasters.  The highlights this year are the ever bearing strawberries which means we get a harvest in the spring and a second larger harvest in the late summer.  They have been so prolific this year that we have froze some to make jam in the winter.

The raspberries have been wonderful this year.  We have eaten raspberries since June, this is a second flowering and the raspberries are as big as a thumb.  The bumblebees, honey bees and humming birds all really love the flowers the canes just hum from all the pollinators.

In the front garden we are changing the plantings to be more drought resistant and to have more shrubs.  The mass planting of the Rudbeckia is great and adds a cohesiveness to the garden and as a bonus they are a super low maintenance plant.

In the back garden the planting is also changing we are adding roses to give structure and elegance to the borders.  The favourite this year is the Waiheke rose, hidden behind the zinnias. 

Autumn Leaves Scarf Finished

I can’t believe its been a month since the last post!  I’ve finished weaving the autumn leaves silk scarf.  To remind you the warp of the scarf was hand dyed in orange, plum, moss, bronze brown and scarlet and the weft is eggplant purple Tencel.  The pattern is a personal favourite, it is a network twill that kind of looks like leaves.

The finished scarf is quite lovely, the bright hit of the orange really stands out.  I think that a scarf needs to be bright and cheerful against a dark winter coat.  For Sale.

We went on the first botany walk for the year and while there wasn’t much to see yet, we did some identifying of trees by their bark, there was some hints of spring.  These are fawn lilies (Erythronium oregonum) and they are probably blooming now, three weeks later!

In our garden, we’ve add a new raised bed into the vegetable patch.  We put it into a difficult corner where the land dips making it hard to plant, but, it is the hottest part of the garden so we don’t want to waste it.  We are doing Hügelkultur which is a layering technique for a raised bed.  You start with a layer of wood/logs, then compost-able leaves and debris, then compost and lastly top soil.  It helps to bulk out the new bed so you aren’t having to buy lots of soil.  It is also composting so there will be nutrients available for years as the layers break down.  We are still in the process of layering.

The forget me nots (Myosotis scorpioides) are blooming, they have such a pretty delicate bloom.  And the lilacs are starting to leaf out and the blooms are just starting to form.  It is hard to believe that it is only the beginning on April.  I think that we are almost two weeks earlier than normal for spring here on our part of Vancouver Island.

In one of the Japanese maple trees there are two branches that are crossing but they are both integral for the shape of the tree.  So we are pulling one branch down using a piece of string tied to a rock, it is working but it does look like the tree has a pet rock that it is taking for a very, very slow walk!  Every time I walk past this tree it makes me giggle.

And Again

I put away the 2/120 silk so I could think about what it wanted to be, if you have any ideas let me know!  I have wanted to do some table runner since January so I dipped into the cotton stash and found some 2/5 mercerized cotton in white and cream.

I like to put on a six yard warp for table runners, it is enough to do three runners at 70, 50 and 35 inches.  I pulled the first 100 threads out of 400 and found that it just ate up the white warp.  A quick trip to the scale and I saw that I didn’t have enough warp left for the runners that I had planned.

I pulled the white warp off the warping board and decided to pull another warp at four yards, it is enough to do two runners at 50 inches each.  I also made the runners a little smaller width wise so I pulled the first 90 threads out of 360 and again it didn’t look like I had enough.  I weighed what was left and nope not enough left.  So I finally did some math!  And there isn’t enough for a warp with just the white and if I use the cream there may not be enough for the weft.  So at this point I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

But onto a bit of a garden update there are signs of Spring everywhere, the strawberries are starting to flower.

The daffodils and the rhubarb are marching along.  The rhubarb is almost big enough to harvest.

The daffodils in the pots outside of the greenhouse seem to be cheering on the seedlings of 72 tomatoes, 4 types of peppers, and eggplants.  There are also some flowers growing in there.

The peas are going outside to start to harden off, there are sweet peas and eating peas.  They are growing up some sticks of corkscrew hazelnut.  Just a couple days until they get planted out into the garden.

The lilac is a haze of lime green of the new leaves and the promising blush of purple flowers.  It seems that Spring is almost here just a couple more warm days that the flowers will be bursting out.

Waiting

There are empty looms in the studio waiting for the next project.  I know what the next project is going to be - I was asked to redo some tea towels but I don’t have the colours needed so I’m waiting for the yarn order to arrive from Quebec.

While I’m waiting I decided to get started with the next project.  I spied some lovely mercerized pima cotton in golden beige, in the stash, that is just begging to be made into table runners.  I’ve even started pulling the warp; here are the first 100 threads of the 5.5 yard warp.

As I finished one cone and started the next I noticed that one cone is a little lighter than the other.  Before I started pulling the warp I wondered if I should pull the cones together and I should have.  So I’m going to carefully undo the first warp chain and then pull the warp correctly.

We are waiting for the garden soil to warm up so spring cleanup can begin in the main gardens, meanwhile I’ve spent days sieving the soil in the Vegepod, a raised garden bed from Australia.  Last winter we planted some winter vegetables, kale and collard greens, but some stealthy critter ate them all.   I was hoping that I could find the culprit by sieving the soil but, after days of sifting I didn’t find anything.  I’ve finished sieving and adding nutrients to the soil so the Vegepod is waiting for some spring greens like lettuces, mache and spinach to be planted.

We are still waiting for Spring to finally kick in.  It has been cold, grey and wet but the daffodils are looking sunny and hopeful.  The new leaves on the Japanese maple trees are still waiting for some warmer and sunnier weather.

In the Garden

That’s where I’ve been for the last month!  Spring is a busy time for the garden, our garden beds are perennial flower beds so there is winter die back to tidy up, plants to split and move around and as always new plants to add.

This year the flower border that lines the back garden fence was in desperate need of an overhaul.  Whatever flower plan was there in the border had dissolved into an unruly mass of plants.

The best thing to do is to be brave and take everything out, well almost everything, the grapes and trumpet vine on the pergola stayed.  We leveled the garden beds, amended the soil by adding azomite, which adds trace minerals and heaps of Gaia Green.  We also made the beds a little larger too. 

The original plants were heeled into part of the veg patch just for short term storage.  We then looked up each plants needs and added them back to the border in the correct place.  Some of them were moved to another part of the garden and new plants from other areas of the garden moved into the prepared beds.    

The bones of the new border are in but we grew a lot of annuals that need to be added yet, like nicotiana, calendula and alyssum.  So it is still a work in progress but it is looking hopeful.

Here is a little peek into the greenhouse, the shelves are groaning under the weight of all the plants.  Some plants are ready to be planted out and some are ready to pot on.

The tomatoes are looking good, nice and sturdy.  They are the same size as the ones at the local nursery! The advantage of growing tomatoes from seed is the sheer variety of types out there, much better than the dozen or so varieties that our local nursery carries.  This year we are trying twelve new varieties and four oldies but goodies.

We have a new neighbour move in, a white crowned sparrow.  It has made a nest nearby and always seems to be in the back garden cruising for bugs.  When we first moved here, there wasn't even an ant, so finally getting bird life is a real miracle!

Greenhouse and Back Garden

This is the first year that we’ve had the greenhouse and it’s already much loved.  The benches have been added and the first of the seeds have been planted.  There’s still room for a bistro set which is a lovely place to have lunch.

We started some flower seeds and tomatoes in early March and now the tomatoes are just starting to come up.  It is always an exciting time going into the greenhouse and seeing what is up.

We watch Gardeners World with Monty Don, a TV show from Britain, which showed us a different way of starting seeds.  He uses half seed trays and once the seeds have their first true leaves he then pricks them out into larger pots.  We are trying this method this year, although we can’t buy half seed trays for love nor money so we’re using supermarket mushroom containers, as they are about the right size.  To maximize the use of the containers we use a piece of milk jugs to separate the container into two sections, the milk jug is made from food safe waxed paper.

Some other things that are in the greenhouse are some soft wood cuttings that were taken in the fall which have survived the winter and are starting to leaf out.  They are Weigela, a lovely flowering shrub, in the back and Enkianthus 'campanulatus', a wonderful flowering tree also a bee magnet, in the front.  They are a bit of an experiment and we have no idea how long they will take to become big enough to plant out, nor where they will be planted out to!

The garden is still in the winter clean up stage, as it has been a lot colder than in previous years but some things are starting to show.  In the back the Clematis is about 6 inches tall and the black pot is full of Crocosmia but the tips have been touched by frost.  In the front are some pansy’s, why do they always bloom away from you?!  This garden along the fence is going to get a makeover this year so it will soon look very different.

The 60+ heads of garlic are up and are a very promising start to spring.  We are already looking forward to making garlic scape pesto in early summer!

In the front garden the daffodils are showing their sunny faces and wonderful calling card for spring.

Weaving an Oldie and Not So Goodie

 Sometimes a project just doesn’t live up to expectations and this scarf is one of them. 

 I wove this scarf way back in 2009 and it had major problems right from the get go.  You can read about them here:

https://dustbunniesundermyloom.blogspot.com/2009/01/not-what-i-expected.html

Even with all the problems there was something about this scarf which appealed to me and I wore if often and no one but me noticed all the weft threads moving about!  What people did notice was the lovely beading I put on the fringe ends.

The centre checker board area has stood the test of time well and the weft threads kept in place.

However the long portions when I didn’t alternate the treadling is a different story, the weft yarns slip and slide with complete abandon!

I decided to give this glorious pattern another chance, surely I can fix the problem.  I was determined to make a scarf that used these wonderful colours.  The warp is made from two different reds, orange, gold, lemongrass green and silver.  A true explosion of colour.  The blue is shown as the proposed weft.

I have pulled enough warp for two scarves, each 177 cm (70 inches) long with 25.4 cm (10 inches) fringes and it weighs only 118 grams, so this pattern is a perfect use for the last few metres on a cone.

My weft of choice was 22/2 bombyx silk in a mid blue tone.  I decided to weave the pattern in 5 cm blocks for stability.  Well, this weft proved to be a mistake. It was nicely sticky, but too lofty.  The silk beat in very densely.  I was not double beating or beating hard by any means and I was still getting a board like web as well as that problem, the blue silk completely masked the wonderful weft colours.  So out it came.

 I was not enamoured of the selvedges either, but before I addressed that issue I decided to audition a few potential weft colours.  These are from bottom to top, burgundy, Pompeii and spice tencel, all from Webs.  The hot colours are a complete about face from the blue, but they are what I had.

I decided at this point that I didn’t like the width of the scarf or the selvedges in general.  The original width was at 15 cm (5.9 inches) and I felt that was a tad small, so I went back to the computer draft and did some additions.

I added twelve ends to the left side of the original draft and fourteen to the right side.  This allowed me to balance the selvedges. 

To add the new selvedges I wound the warp onto the breast beam and then threaded additional ends through the reed and then then heddles before tying onto the back beam.  I re-wound the warp and here it is ready to go.

I have only just begun the weave, but already I am happy with it. The weft colour is spice and I think this one may be a winner!  I will keep one of these two scarves and I will move the beading over from the old iteration to mine. 

I thought I’d keep you up to date on the progress of my Flying Dragon Orange.  It is the size of a ping pong ball and now it is beginning to turn into a lovely yellow colour.  Fingers crossed it will hold on until it’s ripe as the weather turns mighty cool at night!