Here's the rug I showed you earlier. It started out with me thinking stripes and use up remnants and just do it. It's just a rag rug, so I didn't bother doing the math ahead of time. The problem is, remnants is "what's left".  I didn't have enough of the darker fabric, so to get it done, I just pulled strips out of the basket without looking . Clearly, I'm doing some serious pendulum swinging. My normal is to over plan (2-3 months being standard for designing a project). Now, if I could just find a happy medium! 

We were debating which picture to put up and decided not to decide. The rug's okay, but our doggies are just too cute. As soon as I put the rug on the floor, they claimed the space.

After I had taken the rug off of the loom, my hubby and I took her apart and moved Julia out of the dining room and into our bedroom. She's lovely, but I can't let her stand naked. I'm thinking that some nice cloth napkins might be a good 4 shaft project. I saw some lovely linen ones on Hey Dawn's blog. It reminded me that the only napkins I have are almost 30 yrs old and absorb Nothing. What's the point? And I have plenty of 10/2 pearl cotton in need of de-stashing. Hmmm.  Oh. And the picture on the wall is another of my mom's pastels.

 

 

The pattern said to use four strands of mop cotton. Yeah. No. After weaving about five inches, I could see that the rug would be way too Short. Unweave. Then, I started again with two strands. Looking back on it, I should have played with one strand, as well. I ran out of mop cotton before I ran out of warp.

Here's the tabby for the hem.

And since I had some warp left, I pulled twelve cones of blues and greens to use as weft in place of the mop cotton.

Finished!

And the sample done, too. I liked the feel of them both. I'd like to play with the warp rep some more. Next time, I won't use all of the colors for weft. And one of these days, I'm going to learn to sample in small bites, not big projects...or not.

Weekend Work

I had an unexpected long weekend come up and made plans to leave town on a road trip. I didn't want to leave Sophie naked, so I started dressing her for another rug. This will be pretty close to a copy of the the warp rep rug on p. 66 of the Jan/Feb 2012 Handwoven. These colors just happened to be what I had on hand.

Being rather new at warping the loom back to front, and being ridiculously stubborn about doing anything that seems like it'll be extra work, I've never bothered weighting the warp bouts. I finally broke down and gave it a try. Take my word for it. It makes the process So Much Easier!!! And it ends up being Less work. 

So while I was visiting my mom (and lovely model) in Phoenix, I finally finished putting together the sweater I'd knitted Months ago. It's the Habu, #77 silk stainless and cotton cardigan. Really! the silk yarn has a stainless steel core! I thought it was a pleasure to knit, but sewing it together was quite the challenge. Hence, the procrastination. Hint: Sew it together through the middle of the second stitch from the edge. If you try through the middle of the first stitch, the whole seam looks like it's got holes.

Here, you can see the silk/stainless. It's two skeins knit together. And you can see that we were just playing with and molding the shaping. Just give it a gentle tug in any direction and it stays until you pull, again!

Now my only knitting project is a shawl from Victorian Lace Today. I started this for a road trip back in June. I'm finally on the border.

My Mom is So Talented! She drew this pastel of me and gave it to me to bring home. I've proudly hung it in my studio.