Fall planting

I've spent the last two days doing a little fall planting.

These are all decorative grasses.

And they'll be drought tolerant once they've had a chance to get comfy.

And in case you think I've only been playing outside, look again. This is the back of the sweater I've been working on for my youngest. I started designing it on paper. Then, I did the gauge. Then, I redesigned it. Over and over and... I've ripped it out so many times, that I probably could have been done knitting it by now. And as I look at it, I think that maybe the outer pattern should have been the middle. Hmmm.

It's done!

I finally finished the lace shawl I've been knitting! It's so soft! It's made from Scrumptious Lace, a blend of 45% silk and 55% merino. Yum!

Now, I can cuddle in this while I focus on my son's cable knit sweater.

I need to finish the tie up for the place mats I'm going to make with Sophie.

And I've been spending some time weeding amongst the plants in our backyard. Not a year ago, this was all bare. I can't wait to see it in the spring!

I'm still here.

I'm still here. I just haven't finished anything, lately. Along with all of my many projects, my day job raised our hourly cap by an additional seven hours per week. That means less play time for me. So, what have I been doing when I'm not at work or working out or puttering in the garden?

After days of stressing over what I want to weave next, I decided to make a functional sample. No matter how these turn out, I should be able to use them. These are the first two of my sample napkins on Julia. They're so pretty now, I wonder what they'll look and feel like when they're finished. These are four shaft "M and W", 17.5 epi with 10/2 pearl cotton. The pattern is the second threading on p.88 of The Handweaver's Pattern Directory.                                                                                                                               And after making myself crazy over how to get what I wanted, I've started warping Sophie for rep weave place mats. I realized that the reason the design part of weaving is so hard, is that I never learned more than the basics. I learned how to warp a loom and weave and read a pattern. I never learned anything more than that. Maybe one day I'll have a chance to take a class or three.                                                                                                                       I'm still spinning the fake cashmere. It feels so yummy and keeps me sane. Spinning is soothing for me.                               And in the meantime, I'm half way done with the knitted border on my blue lace shawl. I've started designing a cable knit sweater for my younger son. And I'm in the planning stages for a knit angel coat for my daughter. Why an "angel coat"? Well, she sent me an e-mail with a link to a coat she would like for Chanukah along with the comment: "and if you don't make it for me I'll have to buy it and when people buy sweaters that their mommy could make them, an angel dies". 

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.

CANNONBALL!!!

I did it! I finished the blankies! This was not an easy project, all my fault. If I had listened to Joanne at Glimakra USA, this would have been a 6 or 8 shaft pattern. But me? I jump right in to the 12. Cannonball!!! Quite the splash. At least it's not a belly flop. It turned out okay. The randomly placed colors in the warp give it a stripey look. I'd like to see the pattern done with a thicker yarn, like a 3/2.  

Here's front and back.