A few days prior to the meeting Rosalie emailed a questionnaire to everyone asking them to pick out one or two exercises from the book and to figure out what was needed in the way of fibre, dyes etc to perform the exercise.At our first meeting in September the outline of the study group was set out – we would meet once a month – we even agreed on each date for the entire 9 months of the study – and we agreed to omit a meeting in December as everyone's frantic at that time.
Each person read the exercise out loud to the group and we had a short general discussion about what we felt the exercise entailed and we put a post-it note on the page. Surprising how often more than one of us had the same choice.
Since the book seemed to be set out sequentially, we decided to start at the first exercise chosen and give it to the month of October and so on through to the end of the book. Needless to say we are not coming anywhere close to covering every exercise in the book.
So my homework for the month of October was Chapter 1 exercises 17, 18 and 19.
Here is my take on exercise 17(a) Contrast of Saturation. Choose a colour and combine it with any of its tints, shades or tones in a single yarn. I chose periwinkle blue and blended it with black to create it's shade, then plied pure periwinkle with the shade.
Exercise 17(b) Contrast of Saturation. Choose a colour then find another colour to make it brighter, and another to make it duller. I chose green, then added yellow to make it brighter and then purple to make it duller.
Exercise 18 Contrast of Proportion. Choose several colours and combine them in Goethe’s proportions. Goethe assigned numbers to each colour and you combine proportionately. Yellow=3, Orange=4, Red=6, Violet=9, Blue=8, Green=6. My colours were violet, blue and green in the above proportions. This is a complete epiphany!
Exercise 19 Colour Harmonies. Create yarn using some of the colour harmonies. My first harmony was complementary , violet and green in equal proportions.
Then I did a split complementary harmony and chose violet, green and red in equal proportions. 
My last harmony was a triad and I chose yellow, blue and red in equal proportions.
On the triad, you can truly see why yellow should be used in small amounts when blending colours for spinning; overpowering or what! I'm really looking forward to next month when we explore painting colour on roving.
When the whole warp was dyed, we rolled it up jelly roll fashion and then overwrapped again. Then with trepidation, I popped it in the microwave on full power for 1-1/2 minutes per 100 grams….then turned it over and repeated.
I don’t have Lanaset dyes so I fell back onto my preferred dye Procion MX. I soaked the warps and wefts in soda ash for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile I mixed up the Procion, 1 teaspoon Procion, 1 tablespoon kosher salt, and 1 teaspoon urea to 1/2 cup of warm water.
We then painted the dye on with sponge brushes.
We are both thrilled with our 4 silk scarf warps and matching silk singles wefts although the orange weft I dyed for my purple and orange warp (above) looked much better with Ngaire’s raspberry and orange warp ( on the loom already!) and her rust weft looked better with mine!
This is Ngaire's, moss, plum and steel blue warp with the moss weft.
My periwinkle, turquoise,royal blue and purple warp with the royal blue and periwinkle weft.
Now we've added a lovely soft plum, turqouise and navy and steel blue cotton to the stash!
All in all it was a really successful dye session.
Every time I weave, I learn something new. It may be something about a weave structure or about a fibre; this time I learned that if your shuttle is three times larger than your project it is too large! I wasn’t letting the shuttle glide across the reed race; no it was more like I was passing a large and heavy block of wood hand to hand. I got a great arm work out though!
The finished scarf looks amazing! The interplay between the weft, a 2/16 mercerized cotton in ‘aubergine’ and the ladder ribbon is just remarkable. It takes a really simple weave structure and makes it into something special.
The bonus surprise from this scarf is the ikat look. This came out due to the fact that the ribbon yarn is dyed in a staggered manner. When I put the warp on the loom naturally some of these staggers line up and – instant ikat!
I twisted the fringe and it looks incredible. I was careful to not over twist because I wanted the blocks of colour from the ribbon to show through. The fringe looks like it has been studded with jewels.
The fringe twisting also went twice as fast because Mum just purchased a Leclerc quadruple fringe twister. It is totally the way to go, it is so versatile, two doubles, one triple or one quadruple – fantastic!
I love this scarf; I wish that it was mine! But I already have a similar one and I am sure that this scarf is going to find itself a nice new home at the Ponderosa Guild’s Christmas Sale which takes place at the Rotary Centre for the Arts in Kelowna November 13 and 14th.
I was going through the stash looking for something to weave when I saw a cone of ladder ribbon and I knew what I wanted to weave . . .
The scarf looks like it is woven as undulating but that effect is from the interaction of the silk squares with the weft. And I am looking forward to experimenting with this effect, with the pink ladder ribbon.
Recently I have put back on the sectional warp beam and second back beam on the Minerva. So I had to remember how to beam a sectional again. I am using a modified version of the Louet method, because the ladder ribbon could be difficult in a tension box.
I placed a metal bar between the sectional sections to attach the extenders for the warp. The warp has been separated in a raddle at the top of the castle to help corral the ribbon and to place even tension on the warp. The warp is then pulled on slowly making sure that the ribbons stay in their designated sections.
In the very first photo is a pink cone of Orlec which I was going to use as weft, but it was too thick and obscured the ribbon. I don’t have a picture, of course, but I had to cut out about 5 inches because I was in denial. I do have one piece of advice about ladder ribbon which is when hemstitching do it during the day when you can see, I lost count of how many times I had to undo, lots of two steps forward, one step back!
I had to find a weft that was finer then 2/8. I spent a lot of time going through the stash looking for weft, the 2/20 black Tencel was too fine and looked like a spider web. The 2/20 pink cotton was too pale and too fine. The weft that worked turned out to be a purple 2/16 mercerized cotton!
It just disappears and lets the warp do its thing. I am being very careful to just tap the weft into position; I want the lumps and bumps. I really like the weaving of this scarf, in just a couple of hours this afternoon I have already woven 40 inches, only 30 inches left! I am really looking forward to seeing this scarf off the loom; I think that it is going to be amazing!
The first thing we decided to do was do a mock up of how we wanted the booth to look. Michael dragged his sawhorses onto the deck and we had a chance to try everything out.
We got to the Youth Centre in Summerland and saw that we had been assigned two tables against the wall. This was wonderful, we could really go to town and give all the scarves room to glow! We made a mistake on the tea towels by having the hang tags showing in front – they were soon turned over and the tags were put at the back. Most of the vendors were selling fleeces, roving, and dyed locks with some end products knitted and woven. We were the only booth with only hand woven accessories.
We dropped the four Chenille scarves onto the table and with a bit of creative rolling, I think they look wonderful! 
This was how we left the booth on Friday night after set up; I think it looks pretty good! 
On Saturday morning, after getting up at 5 a.m. and driving for 1-1/2 hours to make the 8 a.m. opening we moved the lights to the front of the table and everything came to life.
The weave structure is plain weave and the premise of the weave is that selected sections of warp are woven in plain weave in colour A and the weft skips behind the sections that are to be woven in colour B. I love the idea of this, but after 2 inches and masses of wool warp, the bell rung and I knew it was not the weave structure to use for my 4th “hand manipulated rug” sample! Well, more research is needed I guess. 
Lily Louet, my wonderful Spring loom has the old faithful spaced blocks on her. I’ve used a truly beautiful lavender 2/8 bamboo yarn for this scarf and so far, so good! 
My guild the Ponderosa Spinners and Weavers in Kelowna BC had our 15th annual Spinning Day on Saturday and we had a wonderful turnout. I managed to convince my friend 
Homespun Haven brought her Ashford looms and lots of yarn.
Susan and I managed to cram a lot into just 4 days and yesterday we drove up to her old stomping ground in The Shuswap. Don't you love the colour coordination?
The Adams River Sockeye Salmon run is the biggest in a century, so we knew it was something not to be missed. This is Ngaire and Susan at the Interpretation Centre.
To get to The Adams River the Sockeye have swum upriver some 350+ miles to get to their spawning grounds, to mate and die. They grow a wicked looking hump and beak and turn an amazingly brilliant red with a lime green head. Nature is astonishing in the colours she dresses her fellows – you just try getting the males in your life to wear that combination! 
The river breaks into slower running side streams and the salmon complete their four year life cycle by laying and fertilizing eggs only to then die by the millions. Yup, the smell is something special!
The Department of Fisheries was busy checking for salmon that had been tagged in the Pacific Ocean and keeping a count of the run. They were hauling very full nets so it was quite a sight.