Taking some time

 Some projects take some time.

Last year in April, the arch was barely covered. What a difference that year has made!

I'm still spinning my huge supply of home grown cotton. It's taking some time, but I'm enjoying it.

I've taken this knitting project out of time-out. Following a chart, each square in the grid has a bead threaded onto the silk. I'd gotten frustrated with some errors that were showing up and set it aside. With enough time apart, years, I made some repairs. Now, I'm back at it. Each and every stitch on the needle, when knitted, has a glass bead slipped through.   

I've been weaving some baby blankets. Weaving projects don't always go smoothly either. Do you see the error in the pattern? It's at the bottom of the last flower repeat. It was too obvious to me. At the top of the picture, you can see where I started cutting out the weft.

  By the time I'd stopped, about four inches and two hours later, it was error free and I had this pile of yarn to toss. 

I found a pattern on Pinterest (no designer named, I searched). On the original, the lower left quadrant of the picture didn't feel balanced to me.  The redesign took me three days.

Look what happens when I take my time! Here are four new baby blankets woven with my drawloom.

A flower in the flower garden.

This design was drawn by the dog's owner, who's also the baby daddy. 

Self soothing to keep calm

With all the goings on going on, I've been self soothing, doing things that make me feel calm.

I finished spinning and plying this 50/50 Silk/Camel blend from Redfish. It is so soft to the touch!

 And the 8oz of fiber I started with is now 800yds of two ply.

After such a long project, it felt good to do a shorter one (and to get something else out of my fiber stash). I spun up 2 oz of Milk fiber, called Casin. I haven't done the math to figure out how many yards it is. 

This pair of socks was from a yarn I picked up at last year's yarn crawl. I taught myself how to do a different kind of heel. It's called a short row heel. I'm definitely going to try it, again!

I'm finally down to just one box of fabric scraps and lengths. Don't ask me how tired I am of these same fabrics. Really. Don't! I went onto Youtube to see how to cut it into continuous strips for weaving.

Right now, I'm using some of it to weave a rug with Sophie. I haven't been completely pleased with my previous rug projects, but practice is how I learn.

When my LYS closed, I picked up a pack of five small skeins of Manos del Uruguay, Fino. It's extrafine merino and silk. I really enjoyed doing the colorwork with this fine yarn.

It was so much fun, that I went ahead and used the other set of colors I'd bought. I ran out of the white with about 10 stitches to go. Can you tell? 

The hat is from a free Ravelry pattern called, "Katie's Kep". Such a lovely crown on this hat!

I'm Still Here!

Hey, Everyone! I'm still here!

I haven't done any spinning or weaving for months. But since I'm finally feeling more myself, I've gone back under the loom.

I wove this towel months ago. The pattern and cone of bulky cotton chenille are from Halcyon Yarn. The 5/2 cotton is from my stash. I finally washed and hemmed the towel. 
Now, I've made many towels but, I've never been completely satisfied with their absorbency. Ever. This pattern called for the use of a product I'd never heard of, Soda Ash. It changed the towel from one that moves water from place to place to one that actually absorbs and dries!!

So, what have I been doing?

Well, I made this sweet koala, just because.

And, ta-da! I knit this sweater. The pattern is from the Wool Studio, The Norah Gaughan Collection magazine. I used Berroco's Ultra Wool Fine.

It's another style that I would never have thought was for me. And I adore it!

Now, on to my next knitting project. This is from Ann Budd's, Top Down Sweaters book.

It's California, so I can't exactly say I'm trying to get ahead of things for spring. Spring's about here.

For the first time in a couple of years, the wisteria is putting on a show!

Loose Ends

I've been cleaning up loose ends.

I made a Chanukah hat with pom poms (as requested) for my grandbaby.

While his Mama read a page in her book, he decided to check out his new hat.

I took care of that "loose end" by making tassels. They should be harder to pull apart.

Footnote. I finally got the numbers right for a basic sock pattern that fits.

I wove this color and weave (the weaving is simple "over/under", the design appears in the cloth, because of the color order or the threads), chenille scarf with Julia. It's been sitting unfinished for a while. After a few washings, chenille fringe tends to lose its fluff and look like a rat's tail. So, I decided to go ahead and just hem it.

One of my spare time, knitting projects has been this shawl.

With the left-over yarn, I'm weaving a scarf on Julia.

I didn't realize how long ago I dressed Sophie for these blankets on her drawloom. It was back in December of 2017! Here they are, finally off, December 2018!

When I take cloth off my looms, I almost always use my serger to protect the raw edges before putting the cloth in the washing machine. This is the first time I've ever had that stitching fail to hold. 

But I was able to get them all hemmed and laid out to photograph:

At which point, my daughter's cat promptly walked across them all and sat on...

You guessed it!

I found a lot of the designs I used on Pinterest. I'd post them with links, but unfortunately many of them don't have active links for me to cite where they originated.

the cats

an optical illusion

  transportation

the bees (Craftsy.com)

stars

 and the roses.

The others are just standard designs I've seen or drawn.

zig zag

plaid ish

and shapes.

This one's already found a new home.

More loose ends:

After cutting the blankets off of Sophie and taking down the drawloom pattern heddles (that gave me about 12 inches more of usable warp), I had something like 36-42 inches (I should have measured) of yarn per end left on the loom. I didn't want to just toss it, so by using a weaver's knot, I'm hoping that I'll have extended each warp end enough to squeeze out one more baby blanket.

Let's see how far I get with it.