Time for a Road Trip

My husband said it was time for a road trip.

So Suzie, my Majacraft, and I finished spinning and plying the wool/silk I'd been playing with.

And I finally blocked the cowl I'd knitted of my handspun (yellow to green) and store bought (charcoal).

Then, I headed to my LYS (local yarn store) for an afghan in the making. I found the pattern on Ravelry. Instead of knitting it in strips, I planned to drop a few edge stitches from the pattern and make it all in one piece.

Gingie (as I've said) is a Pocket Wheel. She was made on a nice, humid island in Washington state. The dry air during that trip we made in the spring to Death Valley was a bit too much of a shock for her and, not a common occurrence, it split her wood. Jon McCoy (Mr. PW) said he'd fix her up and send her back to me. We put her in the car and off we went!

This time around, we pretty much visited all of the volcanoes in the Cascades range from Lassen in California, all the way up to Mt. Baker, just below Canada. This photo was taken at MacArthur-Burney State Park.

At Maryhill Museum in Washington, right on the Columbia River, there was an exhibit of Trade Blankets.

Are you drooling, yet?!

As we drove, Gingie and I finished spinning and then Navajo plying this silk from Anzula. Then, we dropped her off with her personal Geppetto on

Whidbey Island.

This was taken at Picture Lake. We'll have to work on our selfie skills. This looks more like photo bombing.

In Oregon, we followed a sign to an alpaca farm and store.

I'm going to have to quit my day job in order to have enough time to play with all of the wonderful fibers I just couldn't do without!

A road trip plus a month, and I completed the afghan and

gifted it to my daughter and son-in-law.

And I finally finished the sample towels I've been making on my drawloom!

Cotton/linen warp with cotton weft. The patterns are from books, pinterest and my doodles. If you can draw them on a grid, they can be woven. It's been a good summer!

Trees

I just noticed the "kind of" theme of my latest busy-ness. Trees. Mostly. Sort of.
My brother has a huge volunteer of a climbing rose. I decided to try a nifty trick for propagating roses I'd heard about to see if it would work.

Cut potatoes in half. Puncture them in the middle. Then, sprinkle the potatoes with cinnamon and put the end of the rose cutting in the potato. Cover with soil and keep moist for a couple of months. ...We'll see. And I'll let you know what happens!

On a lovely spring day, I went outside with my warping reel to prepare for my next weaving project. All of these "ends" (pieces of yarn) follow the same path over and over. That way each is the same length as the others. Then, onto the loom.

 

More specifically, onto Sophie's drawloom! What fun! Trees!!! I just copied this pattern from the teaching video by Becky Ashenden. Then, I took about three days, with the help of the Ravelry weaving community (it's kind of like Facebook for fiber nerds), to work the kinks out.  

Almost. I've been told that weaving with the drawloom is slow going, but the only thing slowing me down is this. Note to self. Don't use newspaper for "quills" (like bobbins, they're what you wrap the yarn around). Way too fragile.  Using the drawloom is  like weaving a simple piece of [ground] cloth while overlaying it with a woven design...all at the same time. It's kind of like two layers, only not.

 

There is no "kind of" about this. I taught myself to double knit. Here, I'm actually knitting a separate front and back of this afghan at the same time! In this picture, you can see white for the front and black for the back. Those yarn colors are switched for the pattern.

My youngest son chose this tree design from an old pattern book. It looks like an inkblot of trees to me. The original was only knit as a single layer with a crocheted border. To make the afghan longer, I added more rows in the center area. And I knit the border as I went along.

Trees!