Finished projects !

Hi there again !
I mentioned last week that the eider ducks were at the nesting stage and this week we have ducklings !! It is interesting though that female eider ducks work together in a sort of co-operative creche to look after the young. You will see three or four 'mother' ducks with as many as 16 or 18 ducklings all in a group. I looked it up on the internet and seemingly the ducks socialise with one another and agree who does what to look after the creche. There is even a decision about whose ducklings get to be in the middle of the group and which ones on the outside ! The ones on the outside are more vulnerable to attacks by sea gulls. Unfortunately, as the days go by the number of ducklings diminishes quite considerably due to the predatory gulls and mink. The male ducks don't seem to play much part in the creche arrangement ! No surprise there then !! No pictures of the broods I'm afraid, just too far away to catch on camera.

Next, an update on the Leno Lace scarf. It is finished, washed and fringed and will make a pretty summer scarf but the second one is Brooke's Bouquet ! The leno took too long although I could just have done small areas of it or I could have added plain weave rows in between. This is how it looks.

The other finished project is the Classic Drall scarf and I am very pleased with it. The selvedges look good and the colours shimmer nicely. You can see in the picture how well it drapes. Sometime I must get a dummy, a coat hanger doesn't show things off very well !!

I am going to do scarf number two in the same colourway so no new weaving to write about for a while. The warp is for four scarves so this may take a while !

No new knitting to report, I am still working on the New Zealand wool scarf !

The week has passed all too quickly, too much time spent playing golf and working in the garden. The weather has been so good it was a shame not to take advantage of it. I came second in our local competition last week and my handicap came down to 19 !

So, a short blog this week. We have a long Bank Holiday next weekend so hoping for good weather.

Speak to you soon and thanks for visiting.

Quiet week !

Hi there - we have had a quiet week at Crail. the weather has been very good to us with lots of sunshine, warm at times but a cool breeze never far away. Tony played his first 18 holes of golf since his operation so now fully recovered ! I played three times altogether and really enjoyed the course.
Balcomie Links Golf Course  Beautiful views over the Firth of Forth with gannets diving into the water. and the eider ducks are at the nesting stage.

So not much weaving done ! I did thread up the rigid heddle though and started another summer scarf. I have enough warp on to do two scarves and I thought Leno Lace might be nice. I have a feeling the second scarf will be back to Brook's Bouquet. I am doing the lace pickup every second 'row' and it is taking ages ! It will certainly be lacy when it comes off the loom, a bit like a string vest !! The picture shows the pick up stick twisting the warp threads to make the shed for the lace throw. Then the shed is changed and a plain row is thrown.

Here is a close up of the lace;

I have been working quite a bit on my Fibreworks PCW Silver version computer drafting programme. Being as design and colour challenged as I am the blank page is a bit daunting ! Decided to try and enter one of the snowflake drafts from the Twill Thrills book. This took me quite a while but certainly improved my inputting skills. I learnt to zoom in and out easily which seems to need doing quite a bit ! I learnt how to do the tieup using + and -. I sent my finished work to my mentor and enabler  Susan and learnt something else ! I had warp and weft floats of 8 threads which of course would be a bit long on a scarf made with 2/8 Tencel !! I hadn't even thought about that and was grateful to know about the facility to check that under the tools menu. With more suggestions and explanations from Susan I was able to add diamonds between the snowflakes and a different border so that I only had a six thread float !! Suddenly the draft took on a new look and I felt I had almost designed something ! You may see this draft before too long ! We have a golden wedding coming up in the family later this year and I may just make a snowflake shawl as a gift. No promises though !!

My knitting has taken an unusual turn (for me anyway).  I have been doing mostly lace knitting of late with fine lace weight yarns. However, the last time I was at Twist Fibre Studio my eye was caught by some Ashford Tekapo New Zealand Wool. It is Double Knit 8 ply so much thicker than my usual lace weight. I decided on a scarf in Bramble stitch and it is knitting up nicely but it always seems to take forever to get to 72". Everytime I do a scarf I say it will be my last ! Anyway here are the pictures. I really liked the colours !

We are back home again so a chance to progress the Drall scarves that I had just started last week. I saw this pattern woven up on Linda's Home Page on her web site. Her choice of colours was stunning and she explained that the draft was in Carol Strickler's 8 Shaft Weaving Book.

I showed pictures of me getting started with this last time. I used lemongrass as the warp and thought eggplant was the choice for weft but I didn't like it a lot when I did the samples. So started the first scarf with aqua as the weft and it looks much better. Trendy colours my daughter tells me !

Might also try iris though ! Anyway, here is the aqua version, first scarf almost done only about 9" to go. I had to toss up will I finish the scarf or do the blog.......... you won !! I'll finish the scarf tomorrow !

Well, I think that is my story for this week. Looks as if summer is on the way to this southwest corner of Scotland. Fresh green leaves on the trees, flowers coming into bloom and gardening to be done !!  Have a good week everyone, talk again next week.

Bluebells of Scotland !

Hi there - Tony and I were out walking this weekend and saw the first of the bluebells ! It is lovely to see that beautiful blue colouring in amongst the trees. Here is a close up of some newly burst flowers.

Susan had lovely pictures last week,of a Mother's Day orchid she had bought as a treat. We had Mother's Day here way back in March, it is always before Easter. Funnily enough I also had an orchid ! I am not very good with indoor plants so not sure how long it will last. All the buds have flowered but what will happen next I'm not sure !  Happy Mother's Day to all of you out there celebrating this last weekend !

Thought I would start with knitting this week ! A couple of weeks back I said I had started another of Evelyn Clark's shawl designs. This one is called Huckleberry and is the kind of scarf you put on back to front and wind the tails back round. My final result after washing and blocking is perhaps a bit bigger than expected ! I don't wear scarves well as I have a short neck but if someone has a long neck and is used to wearing scarves this will be fine and very soft and cosy. It was the same stitch all the way through and if I am truthful I got a bit fed up with it. May not do another unless by special request !!

Next piece of news is that the third iridescent scarf has found a new home. It was aqua and iris and went to a lady celebrating her 60th birthday, I hope she will enjoy wearing it.

Back in January I was asked by a  Gallery near Edinburgh to let them display some of my scarves in an exhibition they were having. I was very flattered to be asked and gave them my two white Tencel scarves and the black and red silk one. I was quite taken aback to discover that they added 40 % and 17.5% VAT to the price. This made the scarves far too expensive so of course they didn't sell. I called in last week and collected the items and brought them home. That was my first experience of galleries and have learnt to ask about pricing before I do anything like that again !

We have a place locally where artists and craft people can display their work and I believe they also add 40% to the price but at least that includes VAT. Maybe I will take some items in to them and see what happens. Isn't it difficult to know about pricing and I am just so uncomfortable with the whole selling thing ! I don't want to make a living with my weaving but it would be good to 'fund the habit' as someone said !!

OK now to weaving. My Spring is threaded up again after the iridescent scarves were finished. I have chosen a pattern from Carol Strickler's 8 shaft pattern book. It is number 228 on page 55, a Classic Drall. I put the draft into Fibreworks PCW and will try to post the draft here.

Well you get the idea but I think I need to go back to the drawing board as that doesn't look right !!

Anyway I can come back and edit it maybe ! Here is a picture of the real thing on the loom, just the sample not the actual scarf.

The warp is 11 yards long so enough for four scarves 72" long plus fringes. The warp is 8/2 Tencel in Lemongrass. I will use Eggplant Tencel 8/2 for weft on two scarves Aqua Tencel 8/2 for the other two scarves. I have floating selvedges and so far the edges are OK but I am still sitting slightly off centre just to be on the safe side ! Four scarves may take me a while !

It is nine weeks today since Tony had his operation and he has started to play golf again, just 9 or 10 holes. So things are back to normal thank goodness and time for me to get back to my usual Pilates classes and gym sessions. I started today and am already regretting missing almost three months of exercise. Was very rusty, out of breath and stiff so some remedial work to be done. How easy it is to lose your fitness and how tempting to think I won't bother any more I'll stay at home and weave !! 

Must resist that at all costs !

Many thanks to everyone for their comments last week. I have had undulating twill and huck lace suggested for my lace weight yarn. Might make it the next project ! 

Bye for now and have a good weaving or knitting week.

More Spring, Yarn buying and not a lot of Weaving !

Hi there - it is Monday evening again and blogging time ! I am amazed at how easily this has become a habit for me already ! I didn't think I would take to this blogging thing at all but when I see how many of you from all over the world are kindly visiting and commenting it makes me want to keep in touch with you !
I feel as if I don't have a whole lot of interesting weaving stuff for this week but hope you will still enjoy the 'ramblings' from Scotland !

We were out walking on the Fife Coastal pathway between Crail and Anstruther and I was amazed by the huge number of primroses in bloom so close to the sea and in a very exposed area. I really love primroses, maybe even more than daffodils ! Now spring is surely here !

I like to play golf and have just joined Crail Golfing Society, the seventh oldest golf club in the world, established in 1786 !! Anyway I played one evening last week starting out in lovely weather but before I was half way round there was thunder and lightening and the most awful hail storm. So much for spring being here ! The greens were completely white and I was soaked to the skin, it was a long walk in to the clubhouse ! I think that was my initiation ceremony ! 

I did have a local yarn store fix this week. I went back to Twist Fibre Craft in Newburgh in Fife.

So what came home with me ? I found that Manos del Uruquay have produced kettle dyed lace weight yarn in a lovely mixture of alpaca, silk and cashmere. There were several colourways to choose from and although I was tempted by yet more turquoise I resisted and went for this:

Although I took the photo with my phone the colours are quite true ! Although I could knit a lovely shawl with this yarn I think I might like to weave with it. I am not sure what would be best though and am open to suggestions ! Am I right in thinking I shouldn't do a complicated draft that would take away from the colours so this is not for snowflakes or anything like that ? I don't want to do plain weave though so should I do some kind of advancing twill or what ? I haven't yet done wpi but there are 439 yards in a 50gm skein so it is quite fine. Ideas welcomed !

The rigid heddle has been working again this week. I was going to do another table runner as I was really pleased with it and people who have seen it seemed to think it would be popular. However, I had black cotton but forgot to bring with me the turquoise i was going to use with it. This may be an old age problem ! If I don't make lists these days a lot of things seem to slip the mind !

I did have some pink bamboo and viscose yarn though asking to be a scarf so thought that would do. the weather was good the day I did this so there I was outside ! I feel like an advert !!

I used a pattern from Textures and Patterns for the Rigid Heddle Loom by Betty Davenport.

I think it was a Bronson lace using one pick up stick. A close up looked like this.

The end result is Ok but nothing outstanding ! The scarf is soft because of the bamboo yarn but doesn't have a lot of drape probably the weaving is too tight. Even after wet finishing I am not thrilled with it !

One piece of good news is that my tencel scarf with the coral weft from last week, may go to a new home next week ! How good is that ! Hope to have another one finished next week ! Next warp already planning in my head !

Until next time - happy weaving !