Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Productive Day


Wool roving dyed in the crockpot -
crimson red, lilac, and chocolate

wool roving












Then spun into a single which was plied with
a single of carmel colored alpaca to make this pretty yarn.

wool and alpaca yarn












More wool roving dyed in the crockpot -
teal, brilliant blue and chocolate

more wool roving












Here it is as a singles yarnsingles wool yarn

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Christmas gifts

candied walnuts from hand picked by me local walnuts
spiced nuts
fabric coil basket
Not a present - Chocolate Frito Candy
fabric coil hot pads


Now that the celebration is over and the presents have all been opened, I can post photos.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Feline approved

contented cats on handwoven rugs

What you don't see in the picture is what they were doing just a few seconds before this photo was snapped. The camera never seems to be available when you need it, huh? Just seconds before they were acting as if the brown rug had catnip woven into it! They were rolling and stretching and rubbing their faces all over the nubby brown texture.

These are two more rugs for Christmas presents. I feel fairly safe posting these as the recipients are too little to be reading blogs. LOL

Friday, October 10, 2008

Recycle Weaving

A few months ago I was cleaning out closets with the intent to donate to Goodwill. A lot did go to Goodwill but some of the t-shirts and jeans were not Goodwill quality (rips, stains, spilled paint, etc) so I set them aside. I knew I could use them to make throw rugs. Around the same time I was creating my dye samples. I put aside the leftover dye for an upcoming guild dye day. When that day came, I grabbed a bunch of t-shirts and put the leftover dye to good use.

t-shirt pile after dyeing

The beauty of this was the lack of precision. A drip here, a dribble there, a splash of this color, a squeeze of that color. I used up all of the excess dyes. The above photo shows all of the dyed t-shirts stacked up ready to go home. I forgot to get in-process photos. Oops. Took them home, tossed them in the washer and dryer and they're ready to be prepared for weaving.

I cut off the sleeves and the bottom hem. Then I cut the shirts into strips parallel to the bottom hem. I cut these strips 2" wide. You get some pretty long strips until you get to the chest section where the sleeves were but even those strips are useable. When I joined the strips to make my weft, I alternated a long and short strip so that the knots were fairly evenly spaced apart.

For the jeans, I used the fabric from the legs. I could have saved the pockets and waistbands for another project but really, I have enough stuff in my house and need to start purging. Jeans are always getting worn out so if I ever do desire to make a project using jean pockets, I'll just start saving then. The jean fabric, because it's considerably thicker, was cut at 1" widths.

For the warp, I used a Pepto Bismal pink 8/4 carpet warp. It coordinates perfectly with the t-shirts and even looks nice on the jean side. The design is reversible by using a double-weave technique. I made some other rugs last year and really like how thick they come out. This rug is coming out even thicker - must be the jeans. It's going to be so cushy under tiny tootsies. This one is a gift for one of my nieces.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

How big is your stash?

In recent posts by Laura Fry, she talks about finishing projects that are using up her stash. If I was as prolific as she is, my stash would be gone after a few projects! Here's every piece of yarn I have:



In the bag: handpainted rayon silk; very fine alpaca.  In the box below: all of my handspun yarns



white bamboo cone, red and yellow cottolin cones, peach carpet warp cones



alpaca yarn from my animals except for the heathered cones which are a blend of alpaca and soy



mostly cottons; one cone of green bamboo; 2 handwound balls of handspun wool; white tencel on the floor and brown shetland wool next to those




Commercially spun Alpaca Merino blend - 32 4oz skeins


What does your weaving stash look like?

We have a name!

Our newest cria, the carmel colored one pictured in the previous post, shall be named Darby O'Missy but we'll call her Darby.

I'm still having to go to the ranch daily to give Bliss an antibiotic shot. We got the test results back yesterday and it showed she had a form of e-coli in her bladder causing an infection. So now she's on PenG (a form of Penicillian) and NuFlor. I sure hope this cures her. I feel so bad that she's having to get shots twice a day for the PenG. My fear is she's going to associate bad things with being haltered. I'm just going to have to work extra hard after this is done to keep haltering her and find something that she likes as a treat. She has eaten grain from my hand once so my plan is to give her some of that at the end of each round this week.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Newest, and last for the season, Cria

Here she is! We still haven't settled on a name.
newest cria

She's standing next to mom in this photo. You can see she's similar in coloring to mom. It'll be interesting to see how her coloring flushes out as she gets older.
newest cria under mom