Little Garth Lochmaben

8 Shaft Checked Tea Towels

2012-01-26T21:24:00.001Z

Hi there ! I promised a back to basics project and here it is ! Cotton tea towels.

I used a draft from Handwoven's Design Collection #16 called Checked Tea Towels. I saw these towels woven by Dawn MacFall on Ravelry and thought how nice they looked. I didn't do the stripes as I wanted to use up some cotton for weft without being tied to a specific colour.

The cotton warp is 2/8 natural unmercerised cotton sett at 24 ends per inch in a 12 dent reed. The red weft is 2/8 cottolin, the peach colour is 2/8 cotton and the pale green colour is a linen, not sure of the weight but similar to the 2/8 cotton.

There were three treading drafts to choose from. I did the first red one in a straight 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 repeat and it looked like this...................

I then tried out the more complex treadling as drawn in and it looked like this............

Here is the draft I used.........

I really preferred this design and so the five remaining towels were done using that method.

I started out with 12 ends on each side to follow Janet Phillips selvedge threading but when I did the sample the edges didn't look good at all. I took out all but two of the edge threads and used those two as floating selvedges. If I do these again I would add a straight draw at the edges as the floats close to the edge made it a bit too wavy for my liking !

I machine stitched the towels before separating them and here is the neat pile waiting for me to hand hem them ! Please not the sample on the top !

Here is how they looked after hemming and machine washing. The cloth is quite a loose weave but not so loose it will cause problems. The towels measure 22" x 19 " now they are finished and I think they will be very serviceable.

Thought that might have used up all of my 2/8 cotton but no, it looks as if I could do another run of 6. Would like to get it used up and then move onto tea towels done with 2/16 cotton and linen.

Thanks for visiting, hope you like the towels !

Second Undulating Twill

2012-01-16T20:38:00.000Z

Hi there - time to share my second undulating twill project with you !

I was so pleased with the winter sea scarf that I decided to do another run using the same draft. This time I used 50% merino 50% tencel in 16/2 weight. This yarn was hand dyed for me, in the north of Scotland, by Helen at Ripplescrafts and is in two shades of purple, sort of heather colours. I used the darker version for the warp and the lighter shade as weft.

This was how it looked on the loom, a lovely rich mixture of colours.

As you all know I am particularly fussy about having good selvedges ! When I was in Sweden for the exhibition, I bought Janet Phillips' book Designing Woven Fabrics. Janet uses a special selvedge threading for all of her projects. She uses 12 or 18 threads on either side of a scarf for the selvedge. If, for example, you thread at 24 ends per inch and sley 2 to a dent you would perhaps use 12 selvedge threads and thread them from the right edge, 2 in the first heddle, 1 in the second heddle and repeat for a straight draw until the 12 threads are used up. You would repeat that sequence on the left edge finishing with 2 threads in the last heddle.

When it comes to sleying the edge threads she recommends one and a half times the density of the main part of the cloth. For our example this would mean sleying 3 per dent for those 12 threads.

I liked the pictures of her finished scarves, they looked very professional so I decided to give the method a try. I was using 8 shafts for this project and so I threaded a straight draw for the first 8 heddles. Using the 2 and 1 threading I needed 12 threads for selvedges. I was sleying at 2 per dent in a 10 dent reed so sleyed the 12 edge threads at 3 per dent.

From the very beginning the selvedges looked great and for the whole project I didn't have a broken edge thread. Nor did I need to use my home made temples ! The next picture shows how neat the selvedge is. Please excuse the colour, not sure what happened to the lighting !!

Anyway, I am delighted with the result and may build that into my next projects to see how it goes.

I tried to take a picture of the finished scarf using a nice vase of silk sweet peas, not sure I have the artistic talent to pull that off !!!

So I reverted to my usual drape over a coat hanger technique ! Hope you like it. The colour is more as it should be. Think of a clump of heather on a Scottish hillside !

This has to be one of the nicest scarves I have woven, the edges are so good I don't need to hide any of it. Once it was washed the merino tencel is so soft and it drapes beautifully.

I need to concentrate on doing more weaving to this standard !

Next project is a back to basics one but with special selvedges !!

Diamond Twill and Undulating Twill

2012-01-08T20:18:00.000Z

Hi there - a very happy New Year to you all and may 2012 be a healthy and prosperous year.

First of all, my apologies for the absence of the draft from my previous post. When I looked at the preview it was there but once published it disappeared. Will try again ! Linda asked for the draft number from Handweaving.net it is draft number 26993.

Here is a reminder of how it looked on the loom.

And here is the finished scarf...........................

I have had these labels for some time, I'm not all that keen on them but decided I should really make a start and use them. I would prefer the lettering to be a bit smaller. Next time I have some made I will have to pay a bit more and have them more to my liking. They are also a bit of a fiddle to stitch in place !

The scarf is very soft and drapes well. The colours are very neutral but it is easy on the eye. I like the merino silk mixture very much. This particular yarn was very stretchy and although I wove to two meters, when I took it off the loom it must have retracted about six inches ! Fortunately it didn't shrink much in the wash and the scarf is still plenty long enough.

All in all, a nice weave and I would do it again.

So, what next ? I have long been an admirer of the undulating twill design, I think it makes a very classic looking scarf especially done in two quite similar shades. I hunted on Handwoven.net again and found an eight shaft draft number 61537. I set it up in Fibreworks PCW.......

As you can see all the work is in the threading and the tie up, the treadling is very very easy. For warp I used a 24/2 merino silk in a colour called winter sea from Helen at Ripplescrafts The sett was 24 dpi 2 per dent in a 12 dent reed.

For weft I used a cashmere wool mixture a surprise Christmas present sent to me by my friend Ellen Turner it was 28/2 and just a slightly different shade of green.

This picture shows it on the loom with the undulations growing nicely !

Here is a close up of the material.....................

And here is the finished scarf. Again, once it was washed and ironed it was very very soft and drapes nicely.

I am very pleased with this draft, it makes a very nice scarf and I will use it again probably on my next project !

My New Year weaving has got started on a positive note, long may that continue !

Thanks again for visiting and I will look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Take care......until next time..........................

Christmas

2011-12-28T22:09:00.001Z

Hi there,

I hope you are all enjoying a happy festive season and spending time with loved ones, family and friends. Just thought I would do a quick post to share a bit of our Christmas with you. First picture shows our Christmas tree with a good selection of decorations, all collected over years gone by and each with its own memory. Some perhaps getting a bit fragile !

One of the new additions this year was a pretty hand decorated bauble from the Christmas market in Prague...........................

Then, what about Christmas dinner ! Well, here is the table already for our meal. The placemats made it in time and I am actually quite pleased with them. I ended up with twelve and two went to each of my daughters. The bad news is though they do need to be hand washed ! I tried one on the gentle cycle in the machine but the warp thread parted and you could see too much of the thick black weft. That probably says something about my weaving ! They have a nice heavy feel to them and lie very flat on the table. the insulation will be good. The red and green colour scheme make them very christmassy although both daughters say they will be used all year. I guess mine will go away until next year. These placemats may well see me out !!! The colours in the photo are not great, I picked a bad time of the day to take the picture.

After the placemats I decided to do something a bit finer again. When I was in Sweden I bought some 28/2 merino silk in two shades of neutral. The yarn felt so soft and it just seemed like a nice change from the really thick weft of the placemats. I spent rather a lot of time on Handweaving.net looking at some of the antique twill drafts in their book list. I finally chose a 10 shaft diamond twill draft and put it into my Fibreworks PCW programme which now runs on my Mac !

I'm not sure that is the best way to post a copy of the draft but I hope you find it helpful. Now I have discovered how to do that I will do it more often maybe ! Apologies, that didn't work. you can see the draft on the next post though !!

I sett the warp at 36epi, 3 per dent in a 12 dent reed. The weave was balanced and I had no problems with broken edge threads or anything. The scarf looked like this on the loom...........

I am pleased with it so far but still have fringes to twist and to wash it and finish it off. It should be nice and soft and hopefully will drape nicely. I'll keep you posted.

It just remains for me to thank all my 'followers' for encouraging me throughout the year, your comments and helpful advice have been such an inspiration to me. I don't feel like a lonesome weaver anymore when I know you are all out there.

May 2012 be everything you wish it to be and bring you all good health and happiness in everything that you do. Hopefully there will be more weaving and knitting stories to share as the year unfolds.

Kindest best wishes

Dorothy

Trip to Prague

2011-12-20T22:42:00.000Z

Hi there - I promised to post some pictures from our visit to Prague. My daughter, Alison and I went to see the Christmas markets, just a short trip for three days. Here she is with her very fetching 'designer market' keep you warm hat ! Not one of my creations !

We flew from Edinburgh, leaving in very windy and cold conditions and expecting snow and worse in Prague. We were proved wrong as there was no snow just dry cold weather for all of our stay and not as cold as it was in Scotland !

Prague is very famous for its architecture but I'm afraid I do not have a very good eye for the details ! However, the astronomic clock in the old town square was a major landmark. Understanding the workings of the various dials on the clock required the purchase of a book on the subject. I have to confess to passing that on to husband Tony when we got home. Each hour on the hour, a huge crowd of people gathered in front of the clock to watch the animations happening as the clock struck......................

We did climb the tower, no we didn't use the lift !! What a wonderful view of the city we had from the top. So many red roofs on the houses and the Castle in the distance............

A lovely view of the Christmas market stalls and the tree in the Old Town Square........................

We found several groups of market stalls in different squares throughout the city but the main grouping was in the Old Town Square. Many of the stalls had Christmas decorations for sale often locally handmade. Others had a selection of local foodstuffs like Old Prague pork roasting on a spit !

We tried a sweet delicacy which was a sort of pastry wrapped around in a circle and cooked over a fire. Must admit it looked better than it tasted.............................

The good news was that everywhere you could buy hot mulled wine or hot cherry brandy just to keep the cold out !.......................

We walked out to the Charles Bridge, another famous Prague landmark and a venue for artists of all sorts. The bridge is lined on both sides with religious statues........................

Now, would you believe I found a weaver ! One of the market stalls had a small two shafted loom outside it with some plain weaving on it. The girl selling her weaving spoke very good English and was able to tell me that they have a bigger loom back at home and they weave plain weave by the yard. It then goes to somebody who converts it to bags and jackets and scarves.

I couldn't help thinking how fed up I would be just doing miles of plain weave all the time !!

We did buy our ration of Christmas decorations at the market stalls but Prague is well known for puppetry and we came across a very nice hand crafted puppet shop. This is what came home with me ! She has had a slight modification since arriving in Scotland, a stiff rod up her back and no strings attached anymore ! Alison thought this was a sign of things to come maybe ! She is still looking for a name by the way .......................

She is beautifully made and well dressed even down to the knickerbockers ! Her legs are amazing, well carved wooden knees and ankles and nicely fitting clogs.

Talking of knitting ! You will not be surprised to know that I had with me a small knitting project.

A 2 ply cashmere cowl or neck warmer. The pattern is Pretty Thing to be found on Ravelry. The design is by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. It was very easy to knit but I am looking for someone with a very long neck who could wear it ! I will make another one but reduce the length a bit as I am obviously a bit short in that department ! It is indeed a very pretty thing though and very cosy done in cashmere !

Well, I think that is the story of our trip to Prague. It was a good three days and really set us up for Christmas.

I think we are all organised now for the big day so all that remains for me to say is I hope you all will have a very Happy Christmas or Happy Holiday and enjoy the company of family and friends.

I have so appreciated your support and encouragement as I write this blog and it is great to have some wonderful friends out there.

I'll be back with more soon...............happy holiday weaving maybe !

Christmas Rep Weave Continued !

2011-12-05T20:42:00.001Z

Hi there,

I have been consumed by placemats for the last two weeks ! My difficult warp seems to have lasted for ages. However, the mats are off the loom I'm very glad to say. I have 12 place mats, 1 runner, 1 medium sized mat and a sample so not a bad result.

I didn't find the rep weave difficult but I did find the thick warp just a bit too thick for my liking. The mats will be well insulated though.

I wonder if I could enter the 'world's biggest ' dust bunny competition...........................

I completely clogged up the vacuum cleaning up the mess around the loom.............

Just as well I didn't have too much more to do as the cloth beam was just about full up !

Now for my least favourite activity ! I am not a keen needlewoman, in fact I have had this sewing machine for three years now and each time I need to get the instructions out just to thread it up so it doesn't get a lot of use. You can see what a pile I have and that was half way through. Nine yards is a lot when it is all spread out ! I just stitched at the edge of each piece to let me cut them apart without them fraying.

So now all that is left to do is to hemstitch them by hand and then get them washed and ready for the big day ! Two daughters may find they have placemats in their Christmas goodie bags ! A change from tea towels I hear them say !!

Won't be able to show you final pictures for a while. I am going with daughter Alison to the Christmas market in Prague ! We leave on Wednesday for three days so that should be fun. Hopefully will have some pictures to share next time.

Hope all your Christmas and Holiday preparations are going well with all projects nearing completion !!

Many thanks for all your comments last time. It is great to have such a supportive band of followers .

Christmas Rep Weave

2011-11-20T21:56:00.001Z

Hi there - this post is about some Christmas weaving and if I don't get a move on with it it won't be this Christmas !!

When I was in Sweden (how often have I said that !) I saw a table laid with these lovely Christmas placemats........................

That is actually a picture in a catalogue from Blomqvist/Nordiska.

I returned to their stand several times before making up my mind that yes, I would have Christmas this year and we would have new placemats !! I was able to buy all the yarns there so was all set.

Last week I hinted that all was not going well with the warp ! It was cottolin and I was having a hard time getting it through the raddle and onto the back beam. Husband was getting very fed up sitting behind the loom while I combed out 852 ends !! My thanks to Annie who commented last week ! She seems to have had the same problem with cottolin and no longer uses her fixed Louet raddle to beam cottolin. I think I must take heed if I use it again ! Here is a reminder of how things were ..........................

However, I am pleased to report some progress. Who's the boss now...........................

Threading and tieing on did take me a while although it was a straightforward 4 shaft draft.

Only two treadles to tie up so that was easy. The sleying was 48 ends per inch, 4 per dent in a 12 dent reed.

I have never done rep weave before so this was a new experience for me ! The thin weft was 16/2 black cotton and the thick weft seemed very thick to me. I did a sample and soon got the hang of the technique. However, I found that I couldn't get a shed with the close sett and had to use a stick after each pick to get the shed to open. This adds another step to the process but actually makes a nice tight weave. I should tell you that Susan did give me some advice when I said I was doing this weave and I should have paid attention ! She said the shed would be difficult and that I should spread the warp over 8 shafts instead of four. I have to confess to being a bit unsure of how to do this and so just threaded on four. So, apologies to Susan, I bow to your experience !!

Anyway, with stick in hand I am making progress ! Am on mat number three but I have enough warp for about 10 maybe !! Mind you, the thick weft is using up the warp at quite a rate so my calculations may be a bit suspect. Will wait and see. Hope you will agree things are looking quite good at the moment.....................................

This project will keep me out of mischief for a while ! We have a decorating project underway at home just now so weaving will have to take a back seat until that is all done !

Many thanks to all who commented last time and I look forward to hearing from you again this week !

Happy weaving .....................

8 Shaft Merino Tencel Scarves

2011-11-13T20:15:00.001Z

Hi there

As you know, I came back from my trip to Sweden with a wide selection of books from the exhibition mainly in Swedish ! However, I also returned with a very special book in Danish ! This was given to me by my friend, Ellen and is called Vaev i tiden. Ellen had been to a weaving exhibition by members of a weaving school and the items on display provided the basis for the book. She was inspired by almost everything she saw but particularly the tablecloths she has just been working on. As I couldn't be there in person at the exhibition she knew the book would be an inspiration to me !

There are household linens and scarves aplenty but I had some 16/2 Merino/Tencel looking for a project and so it was the scarves which drew my attention. One in particular had a small sort of 'medallion' motif which I really liked. You can see it in the picture below.........

The yarn I used came from Helen at Ripplescrafts. My stock of Tencel was sadly depleted and I was loathe to import more as it proved very expensive the last time. I asked Helen if she could find some fine merino/tencel for me and this she was able to do, a nice 16/2 weight, ideal for scarves. I asked her if she could dye it for me in shades of purple. I seem to be having a 'purple patch' just now. I thought I could combine the two colours or use each one on its own.

I chose the lighter shade of purple for these scarves and wound a warp for three of them. I sett at 24 epi but I think I should have been about 20epi. Most of the weaving in between the motifs was plain weave and I think it is a bit close. The material felt a bit stiff when I took it off the loom and even after washing it didn't drape as nicely as I would have liked. I tried 15 minutes in the drier and a few whacks on the worktop and it did soften a bit. Funnily enough the twisted fringes are very soft and that makes me think I have woven it a bit too tight ! This is not a criticism of Helen's yarn, it felt delightfully soft in the skein and behaved very well whilst I was weaving. No complaints and I will happily use it again. Just yet another weaving lesson learnt, and one you would think I should have already learnt !

There are three motifs across each scarf and I really like the way they stand out even in the self coloured yarn.

Just to tease you I will give you a picture of my next warp ! This is certainly out of control and I am a bit fed up with it. It is cottolin and very sticky ! Needing a very patient husband to help with the winding in very small bouts at a time !!! More to come...................

Looking slightly better and the end is in sight ! I have to confess to using a comb, not something I have ever done before...................

Many thanks for visiting ! More weaving soon I hope.

Fine Cotton Summer and Winter Scarf

2011-11-03T21:50:00.000Z

Hi there folks.

This post is about a weaving kit I brought back from my trip to the weaving exhibition in Borås, Sweden.

I made several visits to the stand of Venne Cotton . They had stunning displays of cotton and examples of their woven scarves. Here is a taster......................

I was very taken by their fine cotton woven scarf kits and ended up buying four !! So this is the story of the first one.

The kit contained three small cones of very fine thread. The warp was a variegated 40/2 cotton incorporating blues, purples and white. Two cones for weft, firstly, the pattern weft, 40/2 cotton in a nice shade of turquoise, a favourite with me. The second cone was for the tabby weft and it was 40/2 wool and cotton mixture to provide softness. Venne is a Dutch company so the instructions came in Dutch and English with warping and treading diagrams for both a floor loom and a table loom. The draft was described as a summer and winter technique.

I have never done summer and winter before and I haven't often used two shuttles so new territory for me.

Actually, I found the weaving to be very easy once I had got started and into a rhythm. The wool and cotton tabby weft was very fine and easy to break. I tried to hemstitch with it but had to change to the warp thread as it broke after just a few stitches.

I started both shuttles on the same side, I don't know if that is correct but the selvedges looked so good I decided that's what I would continue with.

Anyway here is how it looked on the loom. you can see how the variegations in the warp show through and provide the pattern.......................................

It did take a long time to grow being such fine thread, I would go as far as to say the weaving got a bit boring as there was no change just a tabby pick then a pattern pick. I only did small amounts at a time to avoid making mistakes.

I wove to about 75" and I am glad because when I washed it it shrank quite a lot and the scarf ended up about 67 ". There wasn't a lot of yarn left over, in particular very little warp ! Fortunately I made my samples very small or the scarf would have been even shorter.

As usual, for me, I probably was a bit firm with the beating. Once it was washed it didn't soften just as much as I would have liked although 15 minutes in the drier helped along with a few whacks on the work surface !! The final result looks like this..........................

I am undecided whether or not I really like it !! Maybe a 'quieter' warp would have been nicer.

However, technically it has turned out well and I will look forward to tackling the other three kits which are quite similar summer and winter designs but in different colours.

Arabella Shawl

2011-10-18T20:35:00.000+01:00

Hi there !

Today's post is mostly knitting related but a hint of weaving at the end !

I am very fond of this pattern Arabella on Ravelry in fact, I find it difficult to know if this is my new favourite or is Swallowtail by Evelyn Clark still in top position !

I did Arabella a few weeks back with some sock yarn I wasn't very keen on so decided to give it a go with lace weight yarn. Helen at Ripples Crafts tempted me with some hand dyed yarn with just a hint of sparkle in it. It was called 'plummy' and it had 800metres in 100gms. I actually only used half the skein for this shawl. The colours in my photos are a bit variable !

The first photo is a bit bright but it does show the beading nicely. I started beading around the edging and I think used about 500 beads. It has the effect of weighting the shawl quite nicely though.

You can also see that I used my blocking wires to get the points to stand out quite well. Much quicker than pins and makes a nice finish.

The pattern is all over lace and when it is on the pins it looks an awful mess but once it is blocked the pattern is revealed and you keep your fingers crossed you haven't missed a mistake ! This colour is perhaps more realistic ! The sparkle is very very subtle and hardly shows, just if the light catches it.

The shawl is not huge but sits nicely on the shoulders to keep you warm. It could be worn the other way round with the point at the front.

This is certainly a pattern I will return to and it looks great in lace weight yarn. The instructions are well written and I had no problems with the knitting.

So, what am I weaving ? I brought back from my trip to Sweden several scarf kits from the Venne company of Holland. A very fine cotton 2/40 is used to create the scarves. I decided to make a start on one of them. The warp is a variegated cotton and the draft is a summer and winter. The tabby is a wool cotton mixture in navy and the pattern weft is cotton in turquoise. 312 ends threaded 3 per dent in a 12 dent reed. I have just got started and getting a rhythm with the two shuttles but so far so good the fine cotton is weaving up very well. The patterning emerging from the variegated warp is very interesting and not something I have worked with before.

This is the first picture of the scarf so stand by for more coming soon I hope !

Well, that's what I've been up to this last week or so, hope you have enjoyed it. Thanks for visiting and for all your comments, I really look forward to hearing from you !

Chenille Scarves and Spring is in the Air Shawl

2011-10-08T16:52:00.001+01:00

Hi there - time for a weaving update I guess.

Back in the summer I bought some chenille thinking it would make nice winter scarves. I had four colours, a rich gold, pale blue, purple and a sort of rich terracotta shade. With our weather feeling decidedly autumnal I thought it was time for winter scarves ! I also wanted a quick easy to do project so the chenille seemed ideal.

I wound the warp using all four colours and then used each colour for the weft on one scarf ending up with four scarves. This is only the second time I have used chenille, the first time I made towels with cotton warp and chenille weft. I didn't have a problem with the warp, even although I had wound it four strands at a time it wound on through the raddle quite easily. I tried to thread in the same order across all 96 threads, you can tell I am uncomfortable with 'random' !! I sett at 12 epi, with one thread per dent in a 12 dent reed. Plain weave so only 2 of my 14 treadles in use !

This is how it looked on the loom with the gold weft.................................

The weaving was very quick and uneventful which meant I finished them in record time. I had already decided I would have a knotted fringe so I didn't hemstitch as I 'always' do ! That was a mistake ! When I took them off the loom I left them joined together and washed them on the wool cycle of the washing machine. When I took them out all was well and into the dryer they went. They came out 20 minutes later feeling delightfully soft but with totally tangled joined up fringes !! I think it took me longer to sort the mess out than it did to weave the scarves in the first place !

Tony had to quickly make me a gadget to pin down the edge of the scarf to let me remove the loose weft threads and sort out the tangles. A good Scottish word for this mess would be a 'fankle' !

Anyway, if I had only hemstitched the scarves there wouldn't have been any fankle. Hemstitching would have taken only minutes to do !

However, this is the pile of finished scarves, they are very soft and as you can see the chenille drapes nicely. just right for cold autumn mornings. I took the pictures in the evening with the light on and the colours are a bit bright !

Now for a knitting update.

I had some rather nice tonal cashmere which I had bought at Woolfest back in June just asking to be used ! It was a bit thicker than lace weight I thought but not as thick as sock yarn so what could I do with it. I looked at my list of favourites in Ravelry and chose Spring is in the Air a nicely shaped shawl. It was very straight forward to knit with good clear instructions. Here are some pictures of the result. I added beads to the fringe.

I would knit this again as it is so nicely shaped and sits well on the shoulders. The cashmere makes it very soft and warm.

Next up on the loom will be one of the fine cotton scarf kits I brought back from Sweden with instructions in Dutch !! Wish me luck with that !

Hope you have enjoyed the update. Until next time, happy weaving and knitting !

Trip to Sweden

2011-09-25T12:51:00.000+01:00

Last week I had a memorable trip to the Swedish Weaving Exhibition . This event is run by the publishers of the weaving magazine Våv and takes place every three years. This year it was in the town of Borås in Western Sweden.
I flew from Edinburgh to Copenhagen in Denmark where I was met by my friend, Ellen Turner. The next day we met up with a coach trip going to the exhibition. Ellen's sister-in -law Karin also joined us on this trip.
We crossed by ferry from Denmark to Sweden at Helsingør, a short trip of about 30 minutes. Shortly after that we stopped at Båstad to visit the Marta Maas-Fjetterstrøm Studio and Exhibition

We saw beautifully coloured carpets and examples of tapestry weaving. An enormous yarn store with 8 tons of yarn in every shade you could imagine. Here is a picture of a loom with a traditionally designed carpet in progress...............

The Scandic Plaza Hotel in Borås was our 'home' for three nights. The coach collected us on Friday morning and took us to the exhibition hall where more than 70 stall holders were ready and waiting.

There was so much to see and I really enjoyed the examples of Scandinavian designs on show on the various stands. The colours were inspirational and hopefully my large collection of pictures and catalogues will help me in the months to come ! Here are just a couple of examples........

There was plenty of cotton and linen on sale and both were on my shopping list ! I made several visits to the Venne stand as they had such a wide selection of colours and some very interesting scarf kits in very fine cotton. Here is how a small part of their stand looked.........

and here is the picture on the front of one of the scarf kits I bought.................

We spent all day at the exhibition and went back to the Hotel laden with parcels at the end of it !

On Saturday morning we spent an enjoyable time at the Textile Museum. On display were the garments in the Våv and Handwoven competition. It was very nice to see the items close up and appreciate the hard work that had gone into producing them. I particularly liked the colours in this jacket.....................

The ground floor of the museum housed a varied collection of cotton spinning machinery, damask looms and circular knitting machines. Upstairs though, we were treated to an extensive collection of specimen pieces of weaving.

A beautiful damask tablecloth caught my eye.......

Loads of other lovely items, too many to post but here are a couple of things..............

I am very fond of the classic Dråll design and I saw so many variations of it !

In the afternoon we returned to the exhibition to make our final purchases. I had decided I would like to make some Christmas place mats in a rep weave design I had seen on one of the stands.

That made quite a big parcel ! I bought quite a few books, all in Swedish but with help from Ellen and Karin I think I can just about make sense of the instructions for the various projects. I particularly liked the books produced by the Våv magazine people with projects from their previous magazines. They had one book published for the exhibition and all the projects were made up and on display on their stand.

One of the tea towel projects in this book looked like this..................

I purchased a good supply of 16/2 cotton, I only show one spool of natural but in fact there were four !

and linen also !

I probably have enough yarn now to keep me going for some considerable time and certainly enough pattern ideas for the rest of my days !!!

We left Borås on Sunday morning and headed back towards Denmark but two stops on the way. The first was to visit a commercial linen weaving factory shop called Ekelund . Beautiful table linens on display here and for sale ! A lot of photographs taken of the classic designs like this one................

One last stop to make and that was to visit a tapestry weaver called Inga Torselius. She is in her eighties and an active weaver. She had invited the whole bus load, all 64 of us to take coffee, cake and biscuits with her in her holiday house ! When we arrived I wondered how we would all fit in as the house looked tiny.........

However, once inside it opened up into a beautiful house absolutely filled with Inga's beautiful weaving. She is particularly well known for her tapestry weaving and here are a few pictures of the ones we saw...............

The coach headed for the ferry back to Denmark and the end of our trip. I know this has been a long post but I have only given you a taster of the things we saw, there was so much more ! It was a wonderful experience and my thanks to Ellen and Karin for inviting me to join them. I was in good hands and had a great time. Over the long winter ahead of us I am sure my mind will go back to the days of this trip and remember the fun and laughter we shared. That's while I am weaving all those cotton and linen tea towels !!

Hope you have enjoyed sharing the trip with me !

Bookmarks

2011-09-06T21:05:00.000+01:00

Hi there !

On the loom this week I have linen and silk bookmarks.

You may remember that Susan, aka, weeverwoman made beautiful bookmarks back in July. Susan very kindly sent me one of them and I just loved it. It was a very fine linen warp in a beautiful golden colour with a fine black weft. She also sent me the draft she used so I thought I would have a go and make some of my own.

I didn't seem to have such stunning colours but I was looking at our Buddleia plant with its lovely purple flowers and pale green leaves and it got me thinking ! I had some fine pale green linen and some purple 60/2 silk, I wonder if that would do ? I wound the linen warp and doubled up the silk for the edge threads and the weft. It was a 12 shaft draft and I followed it to the letter and got started with the weaving. The result was really very nice, the colours did well together and I had no problems...............................

However, when I compared my bookmark with Susan's bookmark I had a completely different result and neither of us really know why ! See what you think, Susan's lovely golden one on the right and my poorly coloured one on the left.............................

So, suddenly without trying, I have managed to design something different ! I like the different pattern and that's quite lucky as there may be ten of them by the time I'm finished.

Quite satisfying to do and quick enough not to get bored with them. They will make lovely small Christmas presents. When I need a quick to do project there maybe some more of these ! An excellent way to use up left over bits and pieces.

My thanks to Susan for her inspiration !

Tencel Huck Shawl

2011-08-29T21:31:00.000+01:00

Hi there - my post this week is a bit of a repeat really. A few weeks ago I did an aqua blue 8/2 Tencel scarf in a Huck Lace draft. That scarf went to the Maisie and Mac Gallery in Cupar where it was spotted by a gentleman looking for two shawls for Christmas presents for his daughters. He liked the blue colour and the Huck pattern but wanted it to be shawl width. So this is my very first commission !

This is the third time I have used this draft and it is so easy to set up and weave so I felt quite confident. It is very different having that bit of pressure though, this one had to be right ! I hadn't felt that before ! If I made a mistake it could always be mine or get lost somewhere but not this time ! This was also the last of my aqua Tencel so I couldn't afford to get it wrong !

Here it is on the loom, I just did straightforward diamonds this time without the bit in the middle

I did seem different at 25" wide on the loom. My sett was the same as the last one at 24 epi but somehow this seemed a much looser weave. I persuaded myself it would drape well if it was looser and carried on.

I didn't have any problems with the weaving and both ends were hemstitched and beaded as you can see in the first picture.

It did tighten up a bit in the washing but is still quite loose for my liking ! It does drape well as you can see in this picture of the finished shawl.

When I have done shawls before they have always been snowflake drafts and if I am honest I think I prefer the snowflake. The Huck looked ok as a scarf but 24" wide is a bit much maybe.

However, it was what the gentleman asked for and I hope he will like it. He does want a second one but hasn't decided on a colour just yet.

I think that's about all for this week. Happy weaving everyone !

A Knitting Week

2011-08-17T21:14:00.000+01:00

Hi there !

Thank you to everyone who posted comments after last week's blog. I found them very helpful and am now convinced I was beating too hard and should have checked that I had a balanced weave. I may have cured my broken edge thread problem but must now learn to stop beating everything to death !! I will have another go at Pinwheels before too long !

Last week I went to our holiday place in Crail in Fife. The idea was to have a leisurely week visiting the Pittenweem Arts Festival and playing golf. Tony was back at home playing golf for three days.

However, our Scottish weather had other ideas and I had picked the worst possible week for my stay. The Kingdom of Fife had exceptional rain, by the 10th of the month we had had three times the average expected for the whole month and everything and everywhere was awash. I did make it to the festival on two occasions but it was no fun tramping in and out of houses with wet clothes and shoes. It was very sad for those people exhibiting, they pay a lot of money to sign up for the festival and rent rooms and, of course, put an enormous amount of work into getting everything ready. The people I spoke to had noticed a marked drop in visitor numbers and in sales.

Golf was also a washout both at Crail and back home in Lochmaben. The competitions Tony had stayed at home to play in were all cancelled. On the plus side that meant a few odd jobs got done around the house !!

So, what did I do ? Well, I knitted most of the week, only venturing out to buy food !

I had one shawl already on the needles and about half finished. It was a pattern I had had in my 'queue' for a while from Blue Button Studios, called Pteryla. It was a very straightforward, well written pattern and I used a 4ply Merino from Helen at Ripples Crafts Yarns.

This first picture shows a close up of the texture of the shawl.................

The second picture shows how nice and warm this can be around the shoulders. In fact is was so cold one of the days I actually wore it !! I really liked the soft lavender colour and when it was washed and blocked the pattern loosened up and the yarn softened even more.

I had five days left so what next ? I had a ball of sock yarn, not my favourite but it needed to be used up. Luckily I had another pattern with me, again, one I had been meaning to try for a while.

Once again, a pattern from Ravelry, Arabella, from Knitting Kninja Design. Now this was a very lacey pattern and I wasn't sure how it would work out but decided to use the sock yarn as a trial.

The pattern was very well written and presented and easy to follow. having said that though, I couldn't have watched TV while doing it as missing a yarn over could have been a bit of a problem !

With nobody to disturb me I found it knitted up very quickly. It didn't look much on the needles but I'm used to that ! Once it was washed and pinned out to shape the lace pattern really showed up as you can see in this photo........................

I really prefer to do my lace knitting with finer 2 ply yarn maybe in cashmere or silk but this certainly showed me how the lace worked out and I would certainly do it again as it is very effective.

here it is from the front............................

So, all in all I had a very productive week, two shawls completed and plenty of rest !

Back home again now and already there is a warp on the loom so more weaving to talk about next time.

Pinwheels maybe but maybe not !!

2011-08-07T15:49:00.000+01:00

Hi there folks ! This post is the story of my latest weaving project !

Back in June I bought some yarn from Helen of Ripples Yarns She is based away up in the north of Scotland near a place called Lochinver and she hand dyes a beautiful selection of yarns. The yarn I used for this project was 70% alpaca, 20% silk and 10% cashmere in lace weight with 1200 metres to 100gms. From the Interweave yarn chart that equates to a 24/2 yarn. You can see the colours below and they were chosen by my friend Joan who kindly took care of us last winter when we were stranded in the snow. This is going to be a scarf for her to wear while walking to work this coming winter.

I asked Joan to choose a design from a selection of books and drafts. The one she decided on was the Twill Stars by Vicki Tardy in the Handwoven Scarves book, page 96. A nice pinwheel draft which I had often thought of trying. Here is the picture from the book..................

Setting up the loom was uneventful, straight draw threading and an easy tie up for eight shafts. The warp was 8 grey alternating with 8 purple with doubled floating selvedges.

So the first thing to do is sample and the picture below shows the result. Not a pinwheel in sight just some rather dainty squares. Not what I wanted. Would it improve with washing ? No, this was after washing so no 'magic in my water ' !!

So, what do you do next ! Consult with two experienced weavers !! I knew Ellen on Ravelry had already used this draft so we Skyped and she showed me how it should look and I thought I must have the tie up wrong so down I went to check but no nothing untoward there, and I checked at least three times !!

I also new that Susan of Thrums had woven this draft so I asked her what she thought might be wrong.

She suggested that I try another tie up for pinwheels from the Carol Strickler book of 8 shaft patterns. I had sleyed at 28epi but decided to re-sley at 24epi just in case it was a bit too tight. Then I tied up as for the draft on page 20 number 61. This is what I got............................

Still not a pinwheel in sight ! I made this picture extra large so that those of you with experienced and keen eyes can maybe explain why I can't have pin wheels. This tie up did give me more pronounced floats in the corners but sadly no wheels !!

I didn't have enough warp left to play around anymore so this was how it was going to be. Weaving went well and not a broken thread in all 2 metres of it ! The usual fringe twisting took place on my trusty board !

It washed nicely but no pinwheels appeared. The finished scarf looks like this.................

I am sure Joan will like it but she won't get the nice pinwheels she thought she was getting !!

If anybody out there has had a similar experience I would love to know the answer. Was the yarn too fine or was the sett too tight or was it both ? Please add your thoughts in the comments section.

Hopefully I will try this again sometime as it is a very striking design and seems to be popular.

'Til next time, happy weaving !

Double Weave Silk Scarf

2011-07-25T22:43:00.000+01:00

Hi there - many thanks to all my visitors last week and for the lovely comments about my eight shaft Huck Scarves. It is such a thrill to have visitors from all over the world and I do enjoy the comments very much so please keep on visiting !

This week's weaving story is about 8 shaft Double Weave. Now my friend, Ellen on Ravelry, is 'the Queen' of double weave ! She has done so many beautiful and successful projects using this technique, her project page on Ravelry is worth a look ! Some of you may remember that I tried double weave once before using fine black and red cashmere. That project ended in disaster as the edge threads kept breaking. I have been working hard to be a little more gentle with my weaving, I don't tighten the warp just as far as I used to and I try hard not to pull the weft so tight. I am also learning to beat with my feet off the treadles to reduce the tension and I use my home made temple all the time. So, with all this under my belt I decided to have another go.

The draft I used is in The Best of Weaver's The Magic of Double Weave, on page 101. The scarf has offset edges to add interest. My yarn was a lace weight 100% silk. One colour was a golden shade and the other a pale green. In the book the yarns were navy blue and white and I was trying to be a bit softer and more subtle than that. You will see from the pictures that I have gone a bit too much the other way and it is actually quite hard to see the coloured boxes of the other layer of yarn. The result is very subtle indeed and understated !! The first picture shows you the two colours and one offset edge. If you look closely you can just make out the boxes of the green colour in the gold !

I was very careful with my weaving and I can report that I completed the scarf without a single broken thread ! Mind you the silk was very strong ! I had four selvedges to worry about, three I could see and one was hidden. I made two more temples so that I could clip one onto each edge. The hidden edge was no bother although I kept checking it, I'm sure there is a lesson in there ! I couldn't fiddle with it, it just worked away without me doing anything and the result was good ! In this next picture you can see the four bags of lentils and split peas hanging over the edges of the loom. I have 6ozs in each bag.......................

The scarf ended up a wee bit shorter than I would have liked because I only bought one skein of each colour of the silk and so it just about made 60". It is also an expensive project ! The two skeins of silk cost £40 in total from The Natural Dye Studio. I suppose, if I had bought four skeins and narrowed the scarf to two repeats instead of three I might have got two scarves. Even so that would have been £80 for two scarves, probably not a good basis for selling this kind of weaving. I guess this will be my winter scarf !

I wasn't able to do my usual hemstitching through the double layer and settled for a knotted finish. The original in the book just left the ends loose but by now you know I am not that relaxed about finishing ! I pinned it out on the board to cut the ends all the same length......................

Not my favourite edging but I will live with it !

The silk washed well and hardly shrank at all so the scarf is still 11" wide so I could have made it narrower. It has finished very nicely and I have tried to capture the drape and colour changes in these two pictures.................

This last picture is to show you the selvedges ! You know how fussy I am about selvedges, I can hardly believe how these turned out with very little effort on my part. The changes to my weaving technique seem to be working...........................

The scarf is folded so that you can see all four selvedges.

I am delighted with this scarf but am not sure I am totally converted to double weave. It is very greedy on yarn and even using lace weight at 36epi the two layers make quite a thick scarf.

Hopefully you will enjoy reading about this project and maybe tell me about your experience with double weave. Some of you may also have woven this particular scarf in different types of yarn, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks again for visiting.

Fine Tencel Huck Scarves

2011-07-18T21:53:00.000+01:00

Hi there - it seems ages since I had some weaving to share with you ! Been too busy on holiday !

I was so pleased with my blue tencel huck scarves that I decided to risk a finer version using the same draft. You will remember that I have struggled with finer yarns of late with breaking edge threads being a big problem.

I decided to try some 20/2 natural coloured Tencel for both warp and weft. It felt very fine, almost like sewing thread ! Threading up the loom was uneventful and I was keen to get going ! This picture makes it look as if all is well .....................................

The photo makes it look as if I have a ridge at the front but I am glad to report it is only the edge of the front beam making it look like that ! You can see I have my home made temple gadget attached to each side and those of you with a sharp eye will see a tell tale pin just above my measuring tape ! This marks the start of a repair thread for a broken edge thread. Been there, done all that before ! This next picture I am not proud of ! Five hanging canisters over the back !

This is perhaps not quite as bad as it looks ! I decided to double the edge threads through the heddles and the reed so that accounted for two of the canisters but yes, the others were broken warp threads.

I gave myself a serious talking to and made some changes to what I was doing. Firstly, I allowed the warp to be a little slacker, secondly, I didn't pull the weft quite as tight and thirdly and probably the most effective, I beat gently with feet off the treadles. That seemed to do the trick and I soon got into the way of it..........................

I just love this pattern ! The second scarf is much better than the first as I didn't have the same problems with breaking threads. Fringes are twisted, they are washed and ironed and looking like this.....................

I am pleased with the selvedges and actually the repairs in the first scarf hardly show at all. This is a great pattern and I am sure I will come back to it again before long.

Some knitting to share with you also. I have completed Evelyn Clark's Journeyman scarf in Manos lace weight yarn, baby alpaca, silk and cashmere. This was an easy knit and didn't take too long.

When I was at Woolfest I bought a skein of dk weight mulberry silk in a lovely colour mix. I knitted it up using the very lacy baktus pattern from ravelry and this is how it looks....................

I will enjoy wearing this in the winter to brighten up a polo neck. I am not really a scarfy person but I do like these small triangular neck scarves.

That's about it for this week, there is another warp on the loom and so far, touch wood, I have no canisters over the back ! That'll be a story for the next post.

Many thanks to all my visitors !

Woolfest Purchases

2011-07-11T17:59:00.000+01:00

Hi there ! Many thanks for your kind comments on last week's post on our holiday trip, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Each year, at the end of June, near to a town called Cockermouth in Cumbria, we have a big yarn festival called Woolfest. This is the only festival of its kind, that I know of, in the northwest of England and I have been able to go for the last three years. It brings a lot of people to the edge of the Lake District and many make a weekend of it with spouses and partners making the most of the walking opportunities whilst their other halves spend time at the festival.

This year, I went with quite a specific shopping list and didn't allow myself to be diverted too much !

Top of my list was to find some silk for weaving. I really want to master double weave and make some scarves for winter.

Here is a photo of my purchases.......................

The skeins slightly to the right of the picture that look like two shades of beige and gold, came from The Natural Dye Studio. Actually the one on the left is a mossy green colour. The yarns from this company are very nice indeed and I have knitted with this weight of silk but not woven with it. They tell me it is equivalent to 20/2.

The purple skeins, top right and the gold and green at the bottom and are a mixture of alpaca, silk and cashmere and they came from Ripples Crafts. Helen Lockhart lives in the northwest of Scotland amidst some stunning scenery at a place called Lochinver. She uses the gorgeous colours around her to influence her yarn dyeing and the results are spectacular. The yarn is 18/2.

I had to have a little bit of turquoise, my 'go to' colour, and so you will see a skein of that and another purpley/grey skein of silk next to it !!

Now this bundle should keep me out of mischief until my trip to Sweden in September with Ellen. On the agenda there will be cotton and linen !!

On a completely different subject, I have today bought new golf clubs ! Husband thinking I am seriously high maintenance right now ! As they say in advertising 'I'm worth it ' !!!

Summer holiday !

2011-07-04T22:05:00.000+01:00

Hi there folks - apologies for long period with no blog ! My daughter, Alison, has been giving me a hard time about no update to the blog and I have had a couple of messages on Ravelry saying where is it so at last I have got down to doing it !! No real excuse, we were away on holiday for a couple of weeks and since we have been back I don't know where the days have gone.

Anyway, we left home and flew to Rome where we spent a day before joining the cruise ship. The weather in Rome was very hot and sunny which suited us perfectly, having left a cold and wet Scotland ! We spent the day hopping on and off the 'topless bus' around the main sightseeing places in Rome. I think we got to see them all including the Vatican from the Square. Here is a picture of part of the walls of the Coliseum...........................

The queues to go inside were very lengthy and we just didn't have time. We walked to the Pantheon and up the Spanish steps, everywhere was very busy as you would expect and the Trevi Fountain was mobbed ! Reminder of the old film Three Coins in a Fountain..............................

We enjoyed being tourists for the day in the sunshine and then enjoyed a very nice Italian meal in the evening with some nice red Italian wine of course !!

Next day meant a train journey to the port about 36 miles away. I wasn't looking forward to this very much but it was much easier than I thought it would be ! Our ship the Holland America Noordam was waiting for us................

This was our third Holland America Cruise but this was the biggest ship so far, 1900 passengers, a bit too many for me and the ship a bit too big !! However, we were very comfortable, well fed and well entertained so no complaints !! We had a cabin with a balcony on the sixth deck on the Starboard side of the ship. Our first day was spent at sea sailing down the west coast of Italy and through between Italy and Scicily and then up into the Adriatic Sea with our first stop being the very beautiful UNESCO World heritage town of Dubrovnik in Croatia. Here is a view of it from the cable car on the hillside overlooking the bay..............

You can see the town is surrounded by a well maintained wall and is a maze of narrow streets and alleyways like this...................

We spent a lovely day there and said it was somewhere we would like to return to and spend a bit more time exploring.

Our next port of call was the island of Corfu where we spent another day and then on to Katakolon in Greece and then the volcanic island of Thira with it's town of Santorini 1,000 feet above sea level ! You could go up by cable car, on a mule or on foot ! Guess which way we went !! On foot of course, but the path was the same one used by the mules. There were hundreds of them and they new their way up and down the steep path and didn't take kindly to having pedestrians in their way. A few times we were pinned against the wall while they passed and had to keep our feet out of the way to avoid being trampled ! The picture doesn't give the impression of speed but these mules didn't hang about, their riders were hanging on tight !!

On our walk about in the town we came across a gallery called Art of the Loom so of course I had to pay a visit ! I met the owner and it turned out he built looms !! He was not a weaver but he made looms mainly for rug making using timber from Sweden ! He said not many people weave in Greece nowadays. He makes looms mainly for monasteries and schools for children with physical handicaps.

Anyway, I had had a small weaving 'fix' ! After that, back down the winding path to the ship and onwards to our next destination.

Next day was a visit to a town called Kusadasi in Turkey. Now this was my chance to see how they wove the Turkish carpets ! I was particularly interested in the fine silk weaving and visited three different shops during our short stay. They told me that Turkish silk is very strong, something to do with the type of Mulberry the worms get to eat ! It is produced around a place called Bursa. It is dyed using vegetable material and the colours were beautiful. the highest quality carpets come from a small town called Hereke about 60kms from Istanbul. The girls there often weave the fine silk carpets as their dowry. Turkish carpets are knotted with double knots whereas Persian carpets have single knots, I learnt. The next important thing I discovered was the number of knots per inch ! The first one I looked at had 650 knots per inch and was beautiful, it had taken a year to make and would have made a lovely small wall hanging ! Then in the next shop I discovered one that had 2,400 knots per inch which was just amazing. It had taken two years to make and I could have bought it for £5,000 maybe slightly less if I had haggled !!! I resisted the temptation to buy even the smallest example of this fine weaving but certainly enjoyed learning about the processes involved. The Turkish hospitality includes glasses of hot apple juice and we had two of these when we looked like potential customers !!

Anyway, a couple of photos, the first one shows a lady sitting at her loom doing the double knotting. They only work for 3 or 4 hours at a time because it is a strain on the eyes when it is so fine.

You can see the pattern at the top of her loom and this is what she is following. No Fibreworks PCW here !!! She doesn't look too comfortable either on that low bench.

Now here is a picture of one of those very expensive silk pieces........................

When you look at it from the other direction the colours are completely different ! Magic !

Our next day was a biggy ! This was to be our day in Athens. The ship docked at Piraeus and we had booked a tour to the Acropolis to see the Parthenon. Now there were 12 different cruise ships in that day so that was a lot of people to see this place ! Approx. 20,000 and we were just two of them ! The day was hot and the queues were awful. Our guide was very good and took us into the shade to tell the story and wait for the lines to subside a bit. For two pins I would have turned back and looked at it from a distance but no we had come this far and would just go with the crowds ! The path up the Acropolis hill was actually quite steep, rough and slippery in places so a bit of a struggle in the crowds. We saw a couple of people fall ! At the top there was a bit more space to see the magnificent Parthenon. Major reconstruction works are on-going here to preserve this amazing structure. We had only a short time to admire all the intricacies of the building and some of the beautiful sculptures and friezes. Then it was a climb back down to the coach amidst all the hundreds of people. To top it all the coach broke down on the way back to the ship !! A replacement arrived and we had a tour of the city of Athens where we saw the demonstrations outside the Parliament Buildings in connection with the financial problems Greece currently has. Not the best photo but you get the idea !!

A very tiring day but glad we have seen the Parthenon in all its glory even if it was a very short and crowded visit.

The next day was spent at sea, recovery time I guess ! The last day was spent in Messina in Sicily and then we returned to Civitaveccia, the port for Rome. We flew home that night after a long day in Rome airport !

Now, I did have a holiday project ! I knitted a shawl in lace weight yarn to the pattern called Karin by Evelyn Clark. I love her patterns, they are so well written and easy to follow and this one is really nice with hearts all over it ! It wasn't the one I meant to do though ! I liked Little Apples but I could not master the pattern ! I tried three times but failed each time once I had the first square of the pattern done. I couldn't get the little boxes to work out !! So back to Evelyn's pattern and here is the result.................

Well, I think that's the story of our summer holiday ! We had a lovely time and really enjoyed the hot sunny weather. There has been some very good weather here in Scotland since we got back and we have had some nice games of golf. However, the forecast says it will break tomorrow and we have more rain on the way.

Hope you have enjoyed my ramblings and will maybe forgive me for the delay in posting this ! I will try and get back to my regular weaving and knitting diary !

As always, many thanks for visiting, it is such fun watching where you all are in the world !

Placemats

2011-06-02T21:21:00.000+01:00

I have been threatening to make placemats for some time but had too many other projects to work through first ! However, at last I decided they had to be done. These particular placemats appeared in Handwoven back in November/December 2009, page 60. The article was written by Suzie Liles. That issue of Handwoven has been lying out in my work room for months, open at the page as I was very taken with them when I first saw them.

In my stash I have a whole lot of 6/2 cotton in various colours. It is a bit thick for tea towels but was a bit thin for the last placemats I tried. This time I decided to try doubling it to get a thicker mat.

The draft is a four shaft huck and I have just recently become a big fan of huck ! The pattern allowed for three different treadlings and after sampling all three I chose the middle one called huck lace.

This is how it looked on the loom...............

It was very easy to weave and in no time I had five good sized, nice thick placemats. I hemstitched each one on the loom and then cut 1" fringes after I had washed them.

Here they are gracing the dining table at our holiday house at Crail.

This was such an easy project and I will repeat it to try and use up the cotton stash ! They would make ideal gifts for family and friends and I am even thinking Christmas !!!!!

I would recommend this pattern for anyone new to weaving who wants a satisfying project to give them some good experience with a positive outcome.

A short story from me this week but I hope it perhaps inspires you !

My next story will be in about three weeks so happy weaving to you all until them.

Easy Beading

2011-05-23T10:17:00.000+01:00

Hi there !
On my last post I showed some beading on the edge of the huck scarves and in the comments Susan suggested that I should perhaps explain how I did it. So, here goes, I will try and explain but if you can hemstitch you can do this kind of beading !

To make the pictures a bit clearer I changed the colour of the hemstitching thread so that you would see what was happening more clearly.

In this first picture I have already added two beads with the other colour to get us started. The five beads on the right hand side are 'work in progress' !

The next picture shows the start of a hemstitch. The orange thread is coming out of the fabric from below and two picks in from the fell. Staying in that same space between the threads I take the needle under four threads and out onto the surface at the fell line. I like to catch 8/2 Tencel in groups of four but you could do more depending on your yarn.

Now I thread a bead onto the needle. These are quite small beads which meant I had to use a fine needle. If I was just hemstitching I would use a tapestry or wool needle with less of a sharp point.

I then slide the bead down the thread until it is resting at the point where the thread comes up around the four threads.

The next step is to continue with the hemstitching. The needle goes back to the right over the group of four threads, down through the space and up through above the second pick to the left of the group of four threads.

Then you pull the thread and the bead snugly up to the fell line. Don't worry if the bead maybe looks a bit loose, it will tighten up with the next stitch.

Now you are ready to do the next bead. Sometimes I only place a bead on every second stitch and I am sure there are lots more variations you could try.

I find it to be a very simple and quick beading solution yet it just adds that little bit extra to the scarf or shawl. Hope you will give it a try and see if you like it also.

Next step is fringe twisting on my trusty board......................

Then wet finishing and pressing and the finished scarf looks like this.................

Please let me know if you have found this post helpful, I would love to know if you've given beading a try !

Until next time..................Happy weaving !!

Huck Lace Scarves and Balloons

2011-05-09T21:44:00.000+01:00

Hi there.
I am just back from two weeks at our holiday place in Crail on the east coast of Scotland. We had good weather and I did a bit of knitting ! No rigid heddle weaving for me anymore as I sold my knitters loom to a fellow student on the weaving course I posted about last time. I have worked away on it for eighteen months but never really 'bonded' with it ! It has gone to a very enthusiastic young person and I hope she will have a lot of enjoyment with it.

So what was I knitting, well on Ravelry I saw a pattern called Balloons which really appealed to me and when I was shopping in Edinburgh and just happened by a yarn shop, I fell for some pink cashmere laceweight yarn, 28/2, from Johnston's of Elgin. It was an easy lace pattern and this is how it looked when blocking....................

You can just see that I added tiny beads to the lace border.....................

The other day, I unearthed a box from the loft which I had almost forgotten I had ! This particular piece of equipment was boxed up about fifteen years ago and something jogged my memory and made me unpack it ! .....................

This beautiful spinning wheel was given to me more than forty years ago on a trip to the Isle of Harris in our Outer Hebrides. The elderly gentleman who gave it to me told me it had belonged to his mother and I reckon it will be more than one hundred years old. I have never used it to spin, but many years ago I used to ply Harris yarn on it and knit Aran sweaters ! Seeing it again did make me wonder if I should now learn to spin with it ! Anyway, I have packed it up again and will think about it !

Since being back home I have a new project on the Spring loom ! I am using 8/2 Tencel in Blue Ming, a lovely peacock blue. the draft is from the Handwoven book of Scarves. Pages 52 and 53, Huck Lace Scarf by Dagmar Klos. The picture shows it woven in 30/2 silk and I am sure it would look stunning in that fine yarn. However, I am still quite pleased with it in the thicker Tencel........................

I am trying very hard not to wind the tension up so tightly and also trying not to pull the weft tightly before I beat it. Seems to be working ok and my DIY temples are making a difference. I am on the third scarf and not a broken thread so far, touch wood ! I am even happy with my selvedges you will be pleased to hear !! In this next picture you can see that I have done some beading as I did the hem stitching. Quite taken with this method I thought but I need to take care when winding onto the front beam as it tends to make it lumpy and uneven, had to insert some packing.

This is my first experience with Huck and I really like it. If I was going to do it again I would use a finer yarn but these scarves will make very acceptable gifts.

So, two successful projects under my belt after my disasters so confidence returning !

I think that's my story for this time. What will I do next I wonder ! Something very practical.

Happy weaving to everyone and many thanks for visiting.

Colour & Texture Workshop

2011-04-27T17:52:00.000+01:00

Hi there - the first thing to show you in this post is one of the finished turned bronson scarves.

I am really pleased with this and will certainly make some more before too long. The Tencel is draping nicely and the colour is very summery.

This last weekend I attended a two day workshop led by Jan Shelley in her studio called The Weft in Pittenweem, a fishing village on the coast of Fife. Those of you who visit my blog regularly will know that I am a pretty structured person who happily weaves from some fairly prescriptive instructions. I often weave in self colours or neutral shades as I am 'colour challenged' ! I am also a bit of a perfectionist and like a very professional finish to the things I make. I am not naturally creative and have no artistic flair ! This workshop was to be all about colour and texture with an emphasis on the use of twill structures to create woven items. I knew from the start that this was going to take me out of my comfort zone but that it would be 'good for me' !!

There were only two other students on the course meaning that there was a lot of personal time with Jan, the tutor. From the introductions it was clear that I had probably the most weaving experience but the least artistic and creative ability ! We were introduced to our looms, and the first problem was that they were table looms. Now, I have never used a table loom and it took me a while to work out how the levers worked and that you could use more than one lever at a time !! Jan had warped the looms up and we were all set to start weaving some twill structures. My loom was set up for a goose-eye twill and I used the lever sequence for 2/2 twill. Here is a picture of one of the Harris table looms...................

My first learning point was about to happen !! Jan came to see how I was doing and immediately noticed several things. Firstly, I had the warp wound very tight and secondly and very significantly I had quite marked 'draw in'. Far more than on the sample she had already woven so it was very obvious. I was also beating the weft very firmly. Although the selvedges were looking good I could see that the edge threads were fraying. Where have you heard all this before !!

Jan watched while I wove a bit more and spotted that as I collect the shuttle as it comes out of the fabric I actually add some tension to it which neatens the selvedge but doesn't leave enough yarn to lie in the shed without drawing in the sides. A loom had been set up especially for me to work on with eight shafts and plain weave edges on shafts nine and ten to see if this would help my edge problems.

It was actually a sixteen shaft table loom and it had a frightening set of levers on both sides............

It was set up for an undulating twill with what I thought was quite a loose warp sett and very loose weaving ! That didn't last long ! Of course once I got going with my tight warp and firm beating the pattern had tightened up far too much. Once I had mastered the levers for the plain weave edge and then the levers for the weaving my brain was a bit frazzled but I did try to stop pulling the weft thread and beating more gently. Gradually it improved and the draw in reduced. I did like the plain weave idea for the selvedges and this could be used on my loom if I have spare shafts.

Well, that was enough learning for Saturday, I was exhausted but had a great insight to my weaving style and associated problems.

On Sunday, I didn't do any weaving. Jan was very kind and suggested that I was already very competent but that I might want to concentrate on colour and texture that day. Her studio was full of colour in the vast array of yarns on the shelves..........................

She started off by showing me a series of photographs on her computer. To start with they were photos from nature, interesting colours from her garden, sea side pictures and the like. This was to get me thinking about the colours I can see all around me and how to focus in on the various shades you can pick out from familiar scenes. Zooming in on plants or stones or trees can highlight amazing colour combinations. The next step was to look at pictures she had taken of things like drain covers, fences, railings and other strange objects ! She began to point out the twill patterns we can see all around us and how you can use these ideas to create designs. Now of course, I just thought the rusty railings needed to be painted ! The opportunity to look at colour and shapes and texture had completely passed me by ! So all of this was quite a revelation and when we went out to get sandwiches for lunch I found myself studying the gratings and fences !!

In the studio there was a set of enlarged, close up prints of things like fishing nets, tree bark, floats on fishing boats, stones, mosses etc. I was to choose one and then work out a suitable warp to represent the colours. That meant winding the colours on a long narrow piece of card to design the order for the colours. Of course I could only think of stripes and worked out a Fibonacci code sequence for my colours ! No Dorothy, this was much too structured, relax and just let the colours flow !!! That was really hard for me ! Next, how would I introduce texture ? From a pile of yarn samples I found some quite fine boucle and that seemed to be OK. Then I had to decide which twill would bring this design to life on the loom ! Should it be warp or weft faced ?

To further work on texture I had to look at Jan's display of scarves and work out what structures had been used.....................

Another tiring day for me ! However, I have learnt a lot and I will try to slow down a bit and do a bit of colour planning before I rush to wind the next warp ! I have since bought graph paper and coloured pencils to get me started !! When I am weaving my samples at the beginning I will try out different weft threads to try and improve my sense of textures and colours. Hopefully, I can loosen up a bit and learn to 'play' with things and become a little more creative.

So my thanks to Jan for a very interesting workshop which challenged me in a number of areas. The studio was very nice to work in, with the sun shining in the windows and the view out to the harbour with its fishing boats. Hopefully I can return for another workshop during her summer school in July and August.

Hope you have enjoyed sharing this with me, keep watching to see if I can improve !

Double Weave Demise & Turned Bronson

2011-04-19T22:27:00.000+01:00

Hi there - time for an update on my weaving ! Confession time I'm afraid.

My double weave project hit the buffers and had to be abandoned ! I had a feeling when I was winding the warp that maybe I was being a bit ambitious using 28/2 merino silk yarn for the warp but I just kept winding ! Then when it was going through the raddle I had a few breakages and that should have been enough to stop me but no I carried on determined to have a success after my plaited twill disaster. I threaded up the 784 ends, sleyed them in my new 15 dent reed and made a start. Very soon I had breaking warp threads at the edges, I tried my new temple but still they broke and not just at the edges and not just the black threads, the red ones began to break also.

This was just the sample ! Decided it just wasn't going to do so took the scissors to it and cut it off !

Disaster number two, things are not going well with my weaving right now ! I did wash the sample and I must say the pattern is very nice, I really like the way the colours alternate. I will certainly return to this draft although will use a more realistic warp thread !

So what now, confidence at an all time low, can I still weave a decent scarf or have I lost it for ever ?

I decided I had to go back to things I knew I could do and had been successful with previously. So 8/2 tencel in one colour and 24 epi, 2 per dent in a 12 dent reed was the starting point. I have had my eye on the turned bronson draft in 'The Best of Huck' book for a while. The basis is plain weave so no floating selvedges required, another good thing ! Surely I could do 8 shaft plain weave, mind you then I discovered 13 treadles in use. Only 253 ends though so I got winding !

All the set up went to plan and the 13 treadles all tied up, ready to go. I started out feeling quite anxious but the sample wove up beautifully and had lovely selvedges. I even played about with the treadling sequence to get a slightly finer result. Hooray, I'm weaving again !!

Here is the first picture to give you an idea of the pattern and the coral coloured tencel..............

Now have a look at my right hand selvedge, the one I have been struggling with for two projects !

This was much more the kind of thing I was used to..................................

I decided to add beads as I did the hem stitching and you can see how that looked here......................

I wove away quite happily for about 18" and then a right hand edge thread broke. Of course I immediately thought that's it, another disaster !! Pause for coffee and calming !! Thought I should try my temple, but guess what my temple was too wide for this scarf ! Now I remember reading somewhere on ravelry about a DIY type of temple. kitchen scales came out and I weighed 6 ounces of rice into two zip lock bags, attached a length of cord and an alligator clip to each one. Now I was in business. You can see the cord with the bag on the end hangs over the side of the loom like this......

Then the alligator clip fixes on to the edge of the weaving like this..............

Well, I wasn't very confident but I didn't have another broken thread for the rest of that scarf and the whole of the second one !! I was sure to move the clips about every inch and that was very easy to do. My selvedges are the best they have been for ages so I am converted to this home made temple and will use it forever !!!

The two scarves are off the loom and ready to have fringes twisted and be washed and finished off. I am delighted with them and they will make lovely gifts. Would certainly use this draft again.

Confidence boosted and maybe I can still weave after all !!

I promise I will post pictures of the scarves once there are completed. Now what will I do next ? I haven't decided but I won't go mad just yet, something else quite sensible I think. No warp wound yet which is unusual and there will be a bit of a 'lull' until after Easter.

So many thanks for visiting and sharing my anxieties ! Hopefully 'normal service' has been resumed !

I'll speak to you all again soon. Happy weaving !

Dyeing Workshop

2011-04-15T22:58:00.000+01:00

Hi there ! This week I have a story to tell about a workshop I attended.

I met Jan O'Donnell last year when a friend and I visited her studio about twenty five miles away. During that visit, we saw some very striking chenille scarves she had woven and then dyed and had asked how she did them. Jan contacted us a few weeks ago and asked if we would like to spend two afternoons with her learning to dye. We both agreed and so Tuesday and Thursday afternoons this week were spent with Jan in her studio on the Solway Coast in a village called Auchencairn. Her web site is oddesigns.

When we arrived we found that Jan had woven undyed chenille scarves for us to work on. Plain weave sett at 12 ends per inch. The fringe spaces were woven with scrap yarn. First job was to make up a mixture of soda ash and water and to soak the scarves for twenty minutes. This was to soften the chenille and would make the woven material ready to accept the dye.

While the scarves were soaking we started to sort out the dye colours. The dyes were Procion MX.

On the left in this picture is Jan O'Donnell and on the right my friend Charlotte, Doonhamer on Ravelry.

We made up a solution of urea to mix with the dye powder. This would help to increase the solubility of the dye powder and fix the colour.

Charlotte had chosen pinks, orange and scarlet with some yellow thrown in. I had gone for my usual turquoise, blue, green and yellow.

We had a chance to practise on an extra scarf before we tackled our own. Polythene was laid out on the worktop and the scarf wrung out from the soda ash solution and laid out on top of the polythene. Then we used foam brushes to paint on the dye, varying the colours as we went. Adding water to dilute the bright colours and using mountains of kitchen paper to press and merge the dye into the fabric.

Our practise scarf looked a bit like this.................................

We had to be careful to cover the fringe area carefully and I will show you why later. My colours were very similar to these but Charlotte's looked like this..................

The scarves were painted on both sides and wrapped in polythene and left for about an hour. Next step was to rinse each scarf in warm water before putting in the washing machine on wool wash.

That was the end of Tuesday afternoon. the scarves were to be dried slowly and be ready for us when we arrived on Thursday.

First job on Thursday was to unpick the scrap yarn from the fringe areas and knot the ends at the first row of weaving. The fringes were very nicely 'crimped' as a result of the scrap yarn................

Once the fringing was completed the scarves went into the dryer for fifteen minutes. When the scarves came out what a transformation !! They had suddenly become very soft and drapey having felt quite stiff beforehand.

My scarf looked like this when it was finished and stretched out.......................

The colours did seem a bit bright for me but after washing they had calmed down a bit but I wished I had watered them down a bit more ! However, once I had tried it on it didn't seem quite so bright.......

So, both Charlotte and I went home with carefully dyed scarves. I knew nothing about dyeing so I learnt a lot in the two afternoons. Charlotte thought she might now feel confident enough to tackle some of her handspun yarn. It was very enjoyable having the chance to do something a bit different and all the mess was in someone else's utility room !!

Double Weave and oddments !

2011-04-05T21:37:00.000+01:00

Hi there.

I will start todays post with a tidy up from the last project. My ill-fated 12 shaft plaited twill scarves. I did manage to get one more scarf out of the tencel warp before I cut it off and binned it !! What a waste but I was just getting so frustrated with my breaking threads I decided to cut my losses and make a fresh start. The second scarf had a lime green weft and it does shimmer and drape well now that it is finished, washed and pressed. However, you will see from this picture why it will have to stay with me as the selvedges are awful !..........................

My rigid heddle loom as been a bit of a disaster as well ! I tried to do houndstooth check on it using 14/2 alpaca silk in two colours. I should have stopped after a few inches as the weaving looked very loose, but I persuaded myself that when it was washed it would 'full' and the checks would appear by magic. So I completed the 72" of weaving and twisted the fringes then left it to soak for ages. Not a thing changed !! A 'holey' mess is how I would describe it and it doesn't even warrant a picture. Another item for the bin although I will admit the alpaca silk was very soft after washing, just a pity you could see daylight through the loose weaving !! Weaving confidence rating is pretty low at this point !!

In a moment of madness sometime ago, I had bought two balls of a sort of ribbon yarn with lovely purples and blues and turquoises in it. Seemed like a good time to use it up on the rigid heddle. I had some turquoise tencel which was an exact match so used the ribbon yarn as warp and planned to use the tencel as weft. Started out that way but didn't like the result so unpicked and did two ribbon yarn and two tencel picks. Probably looks a bit better and might make a fun scarf when it is done..........

Rigid heddle and I are not bonding well !! Have decided it should go to a more appreciative owner and so you will find it for sale under my 'for sale tab' with all its bits and pieces and books.

Last weekend, when we were away in Fife, I discovered a new weaving studio in the fishing village of Pittenweem. I had met the lady who runs it last summer and she did say she hoped to set up classes for interested weavers and she has been true to her word. Her name is Jan Shelley and you can read all about her on her web site. She is very interested in colour and texture, two areas I find particularly difficult. I may take one of her workshops over Easter weekend and see if I can get over some of my anxieties and become a little more creative! She has other experts who offer workshops in tapestry weaving and lace knitting. I hope they do well with the new venture, the studio is in a wonderful position looking out on the fishing boats in the harbour. The colours around the fishing port provide the inspiration for much of the colour work.

I think those are all of my oddments so now for the 'main event' ! After my tencel disaster am I going to do something easy and fail safe ? That would be the sensible thing to do to build up my confidence again but no ! I am going to tackle something I haven't done before, how stupid is that !! The warp was planned before the disaster set in so no room to 'chicken out'. I am going to do an 8 shaft double weave project with 28/2 fine merino yarn. You will find the project in the Best of Weavers Double Weave book on page 100. Not sure if I am allowed to post a picture of the picture but I will ! Please someone tell me if that is not allowed and I will take it out !!

My yarn is 28/2 fine merino, one colour red and the other black. I have 768 ends threaded 4 per dent in my new 15 dent reed. That will be 30 epi but doubled for the double weave. Winding the warp onto the back beam was a challenge as the black yarn in particular seems very sticky and you can see it looks a bit untidy in the lease sticks ....................

A bit better once I had started threading..........................

This afternoon, I have finished threading and sleying and tying on so tomorrow will be treadle tie up and maybe a sample woven we shall see. Hope the weavings gods will look kindly on me for this project and let me have trouble free selvedges if nothing else !!

I will keep you posted on progress but if all goes quiet you will guess I've bitten off more than I can chew !

Happy weaving and many thanks for visiting !

12 Shaft Plaited Twill Update

2011-03-22T20:45:00.000Z

Hi there - a very brief post this week and I am afraid no pictures !!

I managed to complete the first scarf in plaited twill but it was a struggle and the edges are a real disappointment to me. The thought of the next one was a bit daunting. For some reason I had a wakeful night last Thursday and occupied myself by thinking about my weaving problems ! Surprisingly, I came up with a possible answer to the edge thread problems.

The threading on the right hand edge went like this: 11-12-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 etc. I wondered if somehow the change from shaft 12 all the way to shaft 1 was causing excessive draw in and wearing the threads out. Next morning, I took the 11 and 12 threads out and wove a test piece. The resulting edge was absolutely fine and no bunching up of the threads.

The left hand edge threading was a bit different: 11-12-2-1-4-3-6-5-8-7-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

I started by just taking out the 11 and 12 but that didn't help much, so I took out the next 8 threads meaning that the threading started 10-9-8-7 etc. this worked OK for about 4 ins and then the edge threads on the left started to go again. I changed that sequence to start at 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10.
That seemed to be better.

So, after all of that I decided to start on scarf number 2 and that is where I am at now. The tencel warp threads do seem to fray a lot and I am wondering if it is a particularly soft twist in this particular colour. Anyway, I will persevere and see if I can manage to complete another scarf.

You will sense that I am a bit 'fed up' with this project !! The next warp is already winding !!

Sorry not to have anything more productive to report this week, I will be back soon though.
Thanks for visiting.

12 Shaft Plaited Twill - Frustrations !

2011-03-16T21:13:00.000Z

Hi there - I said last week that I had a new warp already on the back beam of the loom. It is 8/2 Tencel in quite a bright blue colour. I was quite excited about doing some tencel scarves after my runner experiences. Familiar ground I thought and loudly proclaimed that this was to be an easy weave and probably finished within the week. Well, I was wrong and in future will not say things will be easy !

I had 224 ends threaded at 28 epi 2-2-3 in a 12 dent reed. I had used 28epi on my last snowflake tencel shawl and it worked really well. I set out to do my sample and as this was going to be easy weaving I would use some different weft threads. I had some 2/16 cotton in a nice bright pink and some 28/2 cashmere in navy. I tried them out in the sample and things looked ok. I did take the sample off and wash it just in case anything nasty was going to happen in the wash but the sample came out quite well, even felt nice and soft. So here is the picture so far.........................

So all I had to do now was weave the first scarf. Pink I thought, that'll make a change and brighten up a rainy day. About six inches in the broken threads started. Mainly on the right hand side, not the selvedge thread but two threads in. Repairing one maybe two is good practise and doesn't look too bad but it started to happen every two inches. there is a limit to the number of film canisters you can hang over the back of a loom, when you get to six it gets a bit embarrassing ! I realised the edge threads were bunching up so when I added the new warp ends I tried to spread the last few ends out a bit but it was no use. Urgent consultation with my mentor on Vancouver Island, just round the corner !! Susan responded immediately with a range of suggestions, thank you so much for the rescue package !!

What did I do ? I took the scissors to the 24" of scarf and cut it off, I hated that ! Next I re-sleyd at 24 ends per inch, two to a dent in the twelve dent reed. Tied on again. Put the pink cotton and the cashmere away in the stash bin again and brought out some more 8/2 tencel. All set and ready to go again.

It lasted about 36" and then an edge thread on each side went. The selvedges had worried me all the way, I tried the trick of moving off centre but that didn't work, the right hand side was always the most difficult. Anyway more film canisters in place ! I have almost reached 60" so I am making slow progress but almost dreading every throw of the shuttle. Feeling like a novice weaver and very frustrated. This is the first time I have had this experience and I don't like it a lot !

I am sure the more you try to put things right the worse it gets, the more you try to get the selvedges to be good the worse you make them. Have given up for today and will tackle the last 12" of this scarf tomorrow. Maybe leaving it overnight will help in some way !

Anyway here is a picture of the weaving so far........................

Actually, the plaited twill draft is very nice, this has been on my 'to do' project list for a while.

Well, I think that's enough of my woes for this week ! Hopefully the scarves will be done by next week but I may have three scarves to be worn only by me !

I did cheer myself up by ordering a 15 dent reed so that I can do 30 epi at 2 per dent and no more 3 or 4 threads in a dent.

Once more, many thanks for visiting. Happy weaving everyone !

A Week Away !

2011-03-10T22:19:00.000Z

Hi there ! We have just had a week away to our holiday place at Crail in Fife. This was the first visit of the new season and it was just lovely to be by the sea again. The weather was good enough for me to play some golf, something I haven't done since last October. It was also an excuse for a bit of a celebration as it was a year last Tuesday since Tony had his heart valve replacement. As you have seen from the photographs he is fit and well with a new lease of life ! However, we had a lovely meal out in St Andrews on Tuesday evening.

Close to Crail is a 'stately home' called Cambo House, owned by Sir Peter Erskine and his wife Lady Erskine. The grounds of the house are famous for the display of snowdrops at this time of year. Last Sunday we went for a visit and a walk through the grounds. First of all here is the house itself.........

Then the carpet of snowdrops.............

Then the pigs !! I believe the pigs help to keep the ground clear to allow the bulbs to grow without ivy and weeds to restrict them. Of course there had to be cute small ones !!!.....................

Lastly, of course, there is the shop ! On the wall of the 'snowdrop shop' is a magnificent quilt with snowdrops as the motifs and the various greens in the colour scheme.................

There was a very cold wind that morning so we were glad to visit the local coffee shop on the way home !

I did set up my rigid heddle loom while we were away. I had been inspired by a project posted by Jeen on Ravelry. She had explained in detail how to weave houndstooth checks on a rigid heddle loom and I had decided to try it out. I used 14/2 alpaca and silk in a blue and a green. Two warp threads of each colour and then two weft picks of each colour repeated. My first attempt was disappointing, no checks to be seen. I realised that I was beating the yarn to death as usual. I took it out and started again trying to just place the weft threads without too much pressure. things improved and I began to get a suspicion of checks ! I think the design probably works better with a thicker yarn but hopefully when this is washed and fulled a bit the houndstooth check will appear. I have only woven 24" so still a long way to go before I know the answer but this is how it looks now........................

I was able to finish my Danish jacket and sew it together. Although the sleeves were a challenge to set in place I was quite pleased with the end result. I think it will be very wearable and I should get a lot of use out of it. The Shetland yarn certainly softened up after it was washed and the drape around the bottom improved a great deal. I laid it out to dry on a towel overnight and that worked well, no need to iron it.

So here we are modelled in our kitchen at Crail where the light was just right !..........................

Now Ellen will notice that her Drall linen tea towel is in use ! Susan, yours was in the wash !!

That is my story for this week I think. There is a new warp wound onto the back beam of my Spring but that can wait until next time !

Many thanks for visiting, hope you have enjoyed another instalment in my crafting journey !

This and That and a Touch of the Other !

2011-02-28T22:19:00.000Z

Hi there - a mixed bag for the post this week !

To start with, the conclusion of my twelve shaft table runners in the Gebrochene draft. The runners are off the loom and two have been hemmed and washed. I soaked them for thirty minutes in quite hot water and then was quite brave and washed them in the washing machine on the wool cycle. They have survived I'm relieved to say and waiting for me to press them. they have softened up nicely and the rough treatment has helped to even out some of the dent marks so I am pleased with that. Each one has trellis hem stitching at each end and although all that hemstitching was a bit tedious by the time I was on the fourth one I believe it was worthwhile doing it. Here is a close up picture of the hemming before washing.....................

Second thing to update is my 'Danish' jacket ! I finished the body a few weeks ago and then there was a bit of a delay ! The first sleeve is finished now and the second one has reached the half way stage. This is needing to be finished, I hate things not being completed so am determined not to be side tracked this time ! Actually, I am a bit worried about the sewing up and finishing. The final result will depend very much on setting in the sleeves and that is something I am not confident about ! I did find a utube video on how to do it, made it look really easy but I know it isn't. Anyway, with spring threatening to break out before long I need to have it ready to wear. The sleeves are knitted from side to side another new technique for me ! Then there is icord around the cuff, that was easier than I expected and gives a very nice finish to the sleeve.

The other thing to tell you about this week is a new gadget I have !! Whenever I have a skein of wool to wind Tony is always the one to hold the yarn for me. The last one was a large skein of very fine lace weight merino and it went on forever !! Tony decided there must be a mechanical way to do this ! I showed him some pictures of swifts and that got him thinking ! He has a workshop in the loft above our garage, ladder access only so I can't get up there ! Over the last couple of weeks he has been spending quite a few hours up there. Last week he appeared with a prototype of his swift design !!

It works on a 'lazy susan' mechanism and can be adjusted for different sizes of skeins. It did look a bit bulky but I had to admit it did the job ! We wound two skeins in record time and he didn't have sore arms !! Anyway, another few hours in the loft and today he appeared with the final version.

First picture shows it set for large skeins with its arms out as far as they will go.....................

The second picture (without his specs !!!) shows the gadget in compact mode for small skeins........

So, how lucky am I ? A made to measure swift which I am sure is absolutely unique and which I will enjoy using very much. Mind you, I think I may have to be supervised to be sure I am doing it correctly !

There is talk of another gadget and that involves an electric motor, may be a while to wait as he hasn't found one just yet but you can try guessing what he might be planning.

I do have another warp wound but that can wait for another post.

Hope you have enjoyed this, that and the other. have a good weaving week !

12 Shaft Gebrochene Table Runners

2011-02-22T10:47:00.000Z

Hi there everyone ! I have got started on my 12 shaft challenge ! You will remember that Susan had challenged me to my first 12 shaft project using her Gebrochene draft for table runners.

My warp is 16/2 natural cotton and 617 ends with 2 floating selvedges. I did find threading 12 shafts to be quite different, it is a long way back to shaft number 12. I soon learnt to take care and double check the order each time I tied up a bundle of threads. I threaded three ends to a dent in a twelve dent reed and this was quite straightforward as I had wound the warp three ends at a time.

Tying up the treadles took me a while ! I didn't have enough cords for all the slots in the lamms so I ordered some texsolv cord and added a lot of short and long cords, this was a fiddly job especially doing the upper lamms ! However, it is done and hopefully I won't have to do it again. I used more than thirty metres of cord !

I used a darker thread to check my threading and I couldn't spot any errors. having said that, the pattern is very complex and I could have missed something ! My weft for the first runner was to be the pale green linen I had used on the last runner project. The pirns were wound and wrapped in damp dishcloths and put in a ziplock bag in the fridge. This linen is quite fine although it has three strands, not exactly sure of the weight but it worked well on the last project.

So here goes with my first picture of the design. I have five repeats across the runner and it measures 17" in the reed.

I did a big sample and realised that I had quite serious dent marks where my three threads were clumping. You can see this in the picture above. Nothing for it but to take the sample off and wash it, hope you are listening Susan !! The clumping improved a bit but not altogether. I guess this means that if I am going to weave with finer threads I need a finer reed. maybe 15 or 18 dent. This warp is 36 epi so an 18 would have been ideal. It's a long time 'til Santa comes again, not sure I can wait that long ! So these table runners will be vertically challenged with some 'stripes' !!

I was very pleased with my ladder hemstitching on the last project so decided to have a go at Trellis hemstitching on this one. I wove two and a half inches of pattern for the hem allowance and then did my first row of hemstitching catching groups of six threads. Then I inserted two cords and started on the main weaving. Stopped at the end of a pattern and removed the spacer cords. then, I hemstitched groups of six but moved along by three threads so that the groups were off-set like this................ (the darker thread at the front is scarp yarn)

I used the linen weft to do the hemstitching and was very careful to watch for it fraying. I didn't have to do any joins on either trip across !! The result is very pleasing and it really didn't take long. The linen holds the groups in place very well.

I have finished the first of four table runners. the length on the loom is about 44" including hems.

The weaving process is going well, in fact I haven't really had to think too much about the 12 shafts it seems to fall into place alright. I thought I would struggle to reach from 1 to 12 but it seems quite easy. The shafts don't seem difficult to lift although just sometimes they seem to get a bit stuck. I just press the treadle before and the one after and that clears whatever the problem is.

Last picture for today is a close up of the pattern detail. The colours in the pictures have been poor today I'm afraid. We have had very grey weather and so the light has not been good ! Poor excuse I know, will try and do better for next time !

So far so good with the 12 shafts ! Just a bit disappointed with my clumping but otherwise project making good progress. Will have an update next week hopefully !

Runner Finishings

2011-02-14T17:19:00.000Z

Hi there - yes, I did have a productive week, thanks to some very wet and windy weather and a husband full of the cold !! Spent a lot of time at home and so the two runners are completed ! When I left you last week the runners looked liked this .....................

I will start with the easy finish ! The shorter runner is 21" wide and 45" long. I did a straightforward hem stitch on this one and a 1" fringe. Couldn't be easier. I did the hem stitching with the linen weft and I did learn that the linen thread frayed when I was about 10" into the hem. I carefully renewed the thread but my eye will always be drawn to that slightly thicker bit of the hem. I did use Thread Heaven but both ends have a join. You can't see them in this picture though !

The completed runner looked like this................

Now to the 'posher' version with the ladder hemstitching. If you remember, I had followed Susan's instructions from her blog to complete the two rows of hemstitching for the ladder finish. Now came the hemming and again there is an excellent tutorial on Susan's Blog Thrums. So, here goes, I am all set with my needle and thread and Thread Heaven........................

The raw edge was straight stitched on the sewing machine and then folded over twice and very heavily pressed into place and pinned just for good measure. I started at the very edge and this time, no 'sticky out bits', I must have done something right !

The edge looked good so here I am on my way across the runner doing blind hemming...................

I found the heavy pressing made the hemming much easier and I was very pleased with the way the hems looked after I had finished. Nothing drastic happened to them in the wash either although I will confess to hand washing both runners rather than risking all that hemming in the machine. Such care may not last when the next wash is due. The pain of all that hem stitching will have passed.

Anyway the finished article is looking good on the desktop in front of the window. It measures 21" by 75" so quite long. Husband seems pleased with it and at last I feel as if I have done something for the house. How long before he spills something on it !!

I really like this Drall pattern and I am sure I will come back to it in some form before too long. It would make nice tea towels I think.

My next warp is under way ! Susan has given me my first 12 shaft challenge ! If you check her blog you will see she has been weaving beautiful scraves using a 12 shaft Gebrochene Hind und Under draft. My challenge is to do table runners in the same draft ! I no Fibonacci stripes though, that sounded far too complicated for me ! My warp is a natural coloured 16/2 cotton purchased on my trip to Denmark back in November. The weft will vary but will be linen in a pale green and maybe a slightly darker neutral. So stand by, I'm off to wind the second half of a 618 end warp.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing these runners finished and maybe I have encouraged you to try out some fancy hemstitching, the extra effort is certainly worthwhile and I might even try something else on these new runners !

As always, many thanks for coming to visit, please stop by and say 'hello' in the comments section.

Gran Canaria Trip and Weaving Progress

2011-02-06T16:48:00.000Z

Hi there !
We have been on our travels again with a week in Gran Canaria to get warmed up after our cold winter here in Scotland. Newcastle airport is about an hour and a half from us at home and then a four hour flight to the island, so an easy journey. The temperature when we landed was about 20deg C so much warmer than home. Our hotel was about forty minutes from the airport and this is a view from our balcony..........

Gran Canaria is a good place for walking by the sea, they have very good promenade paths between the towns on the south coast. We walked ten miles each day in quite nice weather. The first day we dodged some rain showers, days two, three and four were nice and sunny and then days five and six were cloudy with rain threatening. It was nice to be out of the winter vest and polo neck and to not have to worry about warm coats etc.

The food in the hotel was very good and served in a buffet style. My ten mile walks meant I didn't need to worry too much about what I ate. I have been working hard to lose my Christmas pounds and had lost six pounds before we left home. I was able to choose lots of protein based meals so didn't undo the good work already done. I had freshly cooked fish or steak for dinner most evenings, just tried to give the dessert section a miss !! The dining room was decorated in my favourite colour, turquoise which looked lovely................

On one of our trips out we came across a team of rowers preparing to row across the Atlantic from Gran Canaria to Barbados. There would be a crew of fourteen on this tiny boat and they were hoping to cross the Atlantic in a record thirty days ! Rather them than me !

On the last day the walking reduced to five miles and then this ....................

I was in good company and this probably sums up a good week in the warmth.................

All too soon we were back home again with very wet and windy weather ! Winds up to seventy miles an hour and some structural damage to houses in Dumfries and a lorry blown over not far from us. Anyway, washing done and summer clothes put away again and time to do some weaving.

Before we went away I had threaded up the loom to weave a runner to cover a shelf where Tony has his computer. I tied up the treadles and got ready to do my sample piece. Before I started though, I checked out my favourite blog for linen tips Susan at Thrums. I followed her tips and wrapped the pirns in damp dish cloths, put them in a zip lock bag and into the 'fridge to keep the linen damp.

So I wove a good sample to work out the best way to treadle the pattern and felt quite pleased with the way it looked. However, when I looked at it in the daylight the next morning I found this..........

The colours are not good ! Meant to be terracotta and green ! However, it does show a clump of threads. I checked the threading but no errors, treadling tie up ok also but then I discovered I had ten threads in one dent instead of five !

This was about 4" in from the right hand edge and the only cure was to cut off the sample and re-sley the problem area then re-tie 1,000 ends back on !! Now this will make Susan laugh !! In a chat the previous evening Susan had asked me about dent marks in the sample and had I thought of taking it off to wash it and check they would disappear. My answer was, no I hadn't thought of doing that, the thought of 1,000 threads to retie seemed too much. I knew this was the wrong answer !! I'm sure she did something overnight to move those ends around and make it that I had to take the sample off ! Anyway, I did wash the sample and the dent marks did disappear I'm glad to say !!

So, having fixed the problem I got started on the runner. I do like a hemstitched finish so decided to follow Susan's ladder hemstitching tutorial . Here I am on the bottom row after weaving the hem allowance. I am going into the third row of weft on each group.

I promise this is the same project just different light when I took the picture. My loom is right beside a window and the light varies a lot ! The next picture shows my three strands of cord to act as the spacer for the 'ladder'.

And then, here I am on the top of the 'ladder'

I made the hem allowance all terracotta and the first half inch of the main part also terracotta, mainly to allow me to do the two rows of hemstitching with the same thread. I didn't fancy hemstitching with the linen weft.

I have woven about eighteen inches now and this is what it looks like...................

Hopefully I will have a productive week and next time be able to show you a finished runner or at least some pictures of me finishing of the hem. Many thanks Susan for an excellent tutorial, it worked very well !!

My thanks to all my visitors and as always I look forward to your comments, ideas or suggestions.

Bye for now

A finish, an in progress and a new start.

2011-01-18T21:17:00.000Z

This week I have three things to tell you about and I will start with a finished project.
My reversing hearts tea towels are finished, all nine of them and the small tray cloth. My thanks to all of you who offered help on my sticky out bits of hem ! My friend Susan has done the most wonderful blog on how to finish off towels and runners with great pictures of all the stages. I would urge you all to check it out !
Susan recommended using a 'presser' to get weight into the final process and I do have one ! I hadn't thought of using it but tried it out and what a difference in the finished article...........

Here is a picture of one of my best edges !

It took me quite a while to press the towels but the final stack looked like this...................

The towels were easy to weave but the finishing seems to take a long time I suppose because there are so many to do. I am very pleased with the result and they will make good gifts for people. I am not sure how well they would sell in the craft shop as they have to be so much more expensive than the tea towels you can buy in the supermarket or wherever. I know the quality is different and they will last forever but just not sure people would be prepared to pay the price.

The second thing to tell you about is my Danish jacket. You will remember that I bought the kit on my trip to Denmark back in November. I have finished the body of the jacket now so just have the sleeves to do. I found I had to concentrate on the instructions to do the second half of the body as it just says to reverse everything ! I have learnt how to do short rows to get all eight gussets done. There is also a gusset down the middle of the back and one under each armhole so I have done eleven altogether. It is looking good but I can see it will soften up after a wash and probably hang a bit better. I have never knitted anything all in one before nor side to side !

Here we are though ...................

Now to the third thing and a new project !

Tony has his computer in front of one of our sitting room windows on a wide wooden shelf. When we have sunshine it tends to fade the wood so I keep it covered with something. A few months ago he suggested that I could weave a runner for the shelf rather than have the rather tacky paper tablecloth thing you can see in this picture......................

I must admit I hadn't shown much enthusiasm for this idea until recently ! However, when I brought home the runner Ellen and I did on my trip to Denmark and saw how nice it looked on the coffee table I decided it was time I did something about the windowsill !

The shelf is quite wide so the runner is going on the loom at 24" and will be at least 72" long to stretch each side of the window. In the sitting room we have terracotta walls and dark green leather furniture so decided on a terracotta 16/2 cotton warp with a 2/16 pale green linen weft. the draft is the same as the one Ellen and I used. Next time I will try and post a picture of it from Fibreworks PCW.

The warp of 1200 ends was ready and now wound on to the loom....................

It is a classic Drall design and I am using ten shafts and ten treadles. Threading is underway but I am short of heddles so need to order some more. I have 1,000 but need 1200 ! It is such a pain adding heddles, I will order plenty so that I don't have to do it again !

It is maybe not quite so orangy as the picture makes it look ! A much softer colour.

I think that is all for this week. Might be a couple of weeks before the next update !

Many thanks for visiting.

Happy New Year

2011-01-09T21:07:00.001Z

Hi there everybody - a very Happy New Year to you all and good wishes for a healthy, peaceful and productive 2011 ! Time to get back to normal after the festive season and certainly time I updated this blog !

When I left you last year I was having a dilemma about spotty selvedges on my reversing hearts tea towels. Would I change the floating selvedges everytime I changed weft colours or would I add pink or purple threads and floaters to the warp ? Well, neither was the answer, I did something much simpler !
I had three natural coloured threads at each end of the warp and I just took them out leaving the darker shade of pink and the floating selvedges in the purple shade. I made this change in my sampling phase and I was much happier with the result.

I found the treadling very straightforward and soon got used to having ten treadles to work with.

It took me about two and a half hours to weave a 32" length of tea towel and I did 1" hems at each end in a finer yarn. In total I was able to make nine full sized tea towels and one half sized one !!

I used up the 250gms of 8/2 purple cotton quite quickly and had to hunt for more cotton weft in my not very large stash ! Anyway here is a picture of the tea towels just as they came off the loom.

The piece at the front of the picture with the different colours in is my sample ! Next job was to zig zag stitch in between each towel so that I could cut them apart without a lot of unravelling. Sewing is not my favourite occupation but it had to be done !

Once I had cut the towels apart I had to press the hems in place.

So far so good, but now as usual I have a question ! When I do this bit of folding over the thinner hem and then folding over again to make the hem I always get a bit that sticks out like this.........

This drives me mad ! If I poke it inside when I stitch the hem it makes a lump and spoils the whole thing. Even using a finer thread I still get this problem. So, please give me suggestions when you post your comments. Is it a common thing or just peculiar to me ?

However, now I have a pile of tea towels ready to be hand hemmed. That will be a job for next week, hope there is something good on the television to take my mind of it !!

Rest assured though, there is another warp already wound and ready to go onto the loom. All I will say is, it has 1200 ends and is 16/2 cotton and will use ten shafts and ten treadles again !

Please help me out with my problem ends !

Bye for now

10 Shaft Experiment

2010-12-21T20:36:00.001Z

Last week I told you about my loom upgrade to twelve shafts. I decided to adjust gradually to the full set and so have started with a ten shaft project.

I had been thinking for a while about a tea towel warp and have looked enviously for quite a long time at the reversing hearts draft but it needed ten shafts. This was my chance to try it out. Now this draft came to me courtesy of Susan Harvey from Thrums. I think she used it as her first warp on her Louet Spring when it was new. I am grateful to her for encouraging me to give it a go, thank you Susan !

I chose to use 8/2 unmercerised cotton in a mixture of natural, two shades of pink and a pale yellow. This was the first time I had wound a warp with many changes of colour. I concentrated on having the right order in the cross but just stopped and changed colour as required letting the thread hang loose until I needed it next time. Here is the ten yard warp finished, tied up and ready to come off the warping board.............

Putting it onto the raddle wasn't the easiest job. I found the cotton to be very sticky and the threads hard to separate even with the lease sticks in the cross. This picture shows it almost done. You can see the piece of white non-stick shelf lining stuff I use to put the loose threads on until I need them...........

Winding the warp on took a while ! Tony sat on the beam side and I tried to control the sticky threads. They didn't even seem to want to lie in the right order and some bits seemed looser than others. I think I need more practise at winding a multi coloured warp ! The width on the loom is twenty two inches and I struggled to keep an even tension on all of the warp threads. When we got to the end of the warp the thread lengths were very different which wasn't a good sign. All in all not very happy at this stage ! Not much I could do really so fingers crossed I carried on.

Threading was much easier! The three yellow threads were always on shaft s 9,10 & 9 and the naturals on 3,2,1,2 & 3. this made checking the threading very quick and easy to do....................

Now for another 'go' at my sleying technique from Ellen in Denmark. Last time I posted about this I hadn't taken many pictures and may have confused people ! I'll have another go ! Step one, I put the front bar back onto the loom and laid two pieces of wood through from front to back then laid the reed on top lying flat, as you can see here............

I start to work at the left hand side, that's the opposite to the way I used to do it. Here I want to sley two ends per dent. In this picture you can see my left hand is palm upwards and I put the first pair between my pinky and ring finger, the second between my ring finger and middle finger and so on until I am holding four pairs of threads......................

Holding the threads firmly between my fingers I then turn my hand over in a clockwise direction so that the palm is down. the first two ends are then on the left hand side...................

All I need to do now is push my sleying hook up through the dent, catch the left hand threads and pull them through, repeat for all four pairs of threads and then start again. I didn't have enough hands to take a picture of me pulling the threads through but managed this one !

I find this to be a much easier way of sleying and I get faster at it the more I do it ! I should say that I do this having warped from back to front so the threading is already done and now all I have to do is put the reed into the beater and then tie onto the front stick. For safety I do tie the threads in bundles under the reed as I go just in case of any mishap putting the reed into the beater.

Anyway, I hope these pictures maybe make the whole thing a bit clearer !

Next the tie up. I tied up ten treadles without any difficulty, it just took a wee bit longer than doing eight. I have a question though............ what do you all do with the tie up cords not in use, do you leave them hanging or move them all out of the way ? It just looks a bit untidy to me !!

So, ready to go ! I managed to weave a sample using some scrap yarn and I think the threading is good, the pattern looks great anyway. Sorry about the toes of my slippers in the picture !!

I am not sure what to do with the edges though. I will be using some purple weft and some dark green weft and my floating selvedges and edge ends are natural coloured. This means I have spotty edges ! Can't decide whether to live with them, these are tea towels after all, or whether to add coloured floaters or even coloured edge threads. Trouble is I will use more than one colour of weft.

Well, you will have to wait until next time to see what I decide to do !!

All that remains is for me to thank you all for your support and encouragement over the year. It is just wonderful to know that I have a network of friends from all over the world keeping an eye on my weaving. I know help is at hand whenever I need it. Thank you for all the comments you have left, I find them very motivating.

I hope you will have a very Happy Holiday Season and enjoy being with family, friends and those special to us.

Both Tony and I send you our kindest best wishes for a peaceful and happy year in 2011.

I will look forward to updating my weaving journey for you in the New Year.

Dorothy

Loom Upgrade !

2010-12-14T20:44:00.000Z

Hi there - you may remember back in February that I went to Holland to collect my new Louet Spring Loom. At that time I decided that eight shafts would be quite enough to keep me going forever ! I was OK with that for a while but back in the summer I began to think that maybe I should have gone for twelve shafts after all. I realised that I could buy a four shaft extension kit especially for the Spring so have been quietly saving up !! I recently sold a few scarves and the egg plant shawls and so was able to justify (to myself I suppose) the purchase of the kit.

The package containing the four shafts arrived last week and Tony was volunteered to put it together !

The kit was made up of four treadles, four harnesses and eight lamms as well as all the cords and screws to make it happen.

First step, read the instructions !!!

The first step was quite tedious ! Each of the new treadles had to have fourteen screws screwed into guide holes so that was a lot of screws ! Then the ten existing treadles each had to have four additional screws added. This did take a while !

Then the loom had to be laid flat on the floor before having the new treadles fitted.

Here I am with fourteen treadles, looks a bit scary !

Tony added one of the long cords at a time fixing it at the top with the plastic clip................

Each of the four new cords had to have a harness and two lamms attached. To make this happen there were plastic clips to be attached to each end of the harnesses.............

The kit didn't include any new heddles but luckily I had ordered extra ones so before the clips were added I added the new heddles.

I seemed to make heavy weather of getting these into place ! In the end I had to do each one individually, 200 in total !! Once the clips were fixed the cords snapped into place like this........

So, four clips on each harness and a clip on each end of each lamm, that's a lot of clips !! There was some comment about sore fingers !!

Once each set of lamms was in place I added the cords, short ones for the lower lamms and longer ones for the upper lamms. I had a cord for each slot on the new lamms. My existing lamms didn't have a full set and I often had to borrow from another lamm ! Here I am looping a cord over the lower lamm..................

I will confess that we did this job over two days, it was surprising how long it took and after two of the four shafts we needed a break. However, at last I had a full set of cords, you can see all twelve from this top view...................

And here is the side view.................

And lastly the view of all twelve shafts in place....................

I am delighted with the result and can't wait to get started ! I was trying to think how I was going to know which treadle was which now I have fourteen ! I didn't want to put stick on numbers on as sometimes I might only use eight. After a short absence in his attic workshop Tony appeared with odd looking bits of plastic ! He had cut small pieces from some electrical conduit plastic and they just fitted over the treadles as if made to measure. He added my sticky numbers and this is how they looked.........

And on the treadles..................

They can be moved around and I can use a few or all of them - how cool is that !!

Husband in the good books after all that and I am ready to go with a twelve shaft loom ! It has been pointed out that I have no more room, twelve shafts is as good as it gets !!!

I am going to start with ten shafts but more of that next time !

Just in closing, I thought I should share a couple of pictures of the finished snowflake shawl, hope you like it.

That's all from me for this post, I'm off to look at twelve shaft drafts ! Bye for now.

Snow Experience and Weaving Update !

2010-12-07T20:57:00.000Z

Hi folks - my apologies for missing last week's blog ! We were having an unexpected snow experience !
We went to our little holiday place at Crail the weekend before last to check on pipes and things as low temperatures and snow were forecast. The weekend was very pleasant although we did have a bit of a snow shower on the Sunday. Being close to the sea it wasn't too bad and after draining the pipes etc we set off for home on Monday morning. The country roads seemed not too bad for about twenty miles but then we joined a main dual carriageway and found it to be almost completely snow covered with traffic moving very slowly and some cars skidding all over the place. With another 100 miles to go I was more than a little anxious so we decided to stop and assess our options !! We have friends who live in the nearby town of Dunfermline so I phoned to ask if they knew what the motorway was like. They kindly suggested we go to their house for a coffee. This we did and stayed for four days !! Level snow fall of about 17" and not much happening to clear the roads. In fact the Forth Road Bridge was closed because of snow for the first time in its 45 year history ! Our friends made us very welcome and we were safe and warm and comfortable. The weather took a short breather on Friday and it allowed us to make it home using motorways and avoiding our usual cross country route ! The moral of the story is......... don't ask the Stewarts for coffee, they will stay for four days !! It will take us a while to live that down. We are now the best of friends though so every cloud has a silver lining. This is the view from the house last Thursday............

Luckily I had a knitting project with me ! Why are you not surprised by that ! When I was in Denmark I bought a beautiful kit for a jacket designed by Hanne Falkenberg, a Danish designer. the jacket is called Mermaid and will look like this when it is finished.......

The pattern is knitted from the left hand side all the way around and finishes at the right hand side, a method I have never done before. It starts with a strip of icord from which you pick up stitches and then has eight gussets all the way around formed using short rows. All of these are new techniques for me so the project is a bit of a challenge. Our snow stranded week gave me a good chance to get started and this is how it looks so far................

The big hole is the armhole with another gusset. The actual knitting is easy garter stitch but I just love the colours, a turquoisey mix, green and sea blue for the icord edge and gussets. You can find Hanne's designs here on Ravelry. I'll keep you posted on progress ! Would you believe I went all the way to Denmark to buy Shetland yarn !!

Once we were safely home and settled in it was time to catch up on weaving ! Gillian my younger daughter has asked for a shawl woven by Mum for Christmas ! The loom is threaded up with 8/2 tencel in iris with my favourite Swedish Snowflake pattern by Ruth Morrison in Twill Thrills page 55. I have said before that I am not comfortable with sleying the reed and when I was with Ellen she showed me a different way of doing it ! I will try and explain, this picture shows that I have the reed lying flat rather than being fixed into the beater. It is actually lying on two pieces of wood going front to back on the loom...........

Now to try and describe what happens next ! I started at the left hand side and turned my left hand palm upwards. using my right hand I picked out the threads I needed, two, two then three in this case. The first group went in the slot between my pinky and my ring finger, then the next group in the next slot and so on until four slots lay between my fingers. Then I turned my left hand over to be palm down. This put the groups in the right order to be sleyed. All I had to do was push the sleying hook up through the dent and catch the group in my pinky/ring finger slot and pull it down through the reed followed by the other three. I got faster as I went along once I had got the hang of it and you can see in the picture I am about half way along. Belt and braces approach, I did tie a knot after each handful just in case the reed slipped off the wooden blocks ! All I had to do when I had finished was re-insert the reed in the beater bar and hey presto sleying done and no aching back ! So my thanks to Ellen for introducing me to that technique.

When I am ready to do the treadling, Tony helps me to lift the loom onto two wooden stands and then I can sit right in at the treadles with my legs under the front bar. This makes the job of tying on the treadles very easy to do and again no backache !

I have worked hard at the weaving this week, not much attention to the house or husband for that matter ! I had lost a week and this was urgent. There was enough warp for two shawls and I have just taken them off the loom this evening. The second one has a weft of 10/2 tencel in a slightly different shade. I do like weaving with that 10/2 weight ! First shawl is on the fringe twisting board so it looks as if it will make it for Christmas. This first picture gives a view of the snowflakes on the loom but is completely the wrong colour, sun was shining in the window .............

There will be at least one set of keen eyes out there who will notice that my up and down snowflake arms are taller and thinner than my left to right snowflake arms ! Is that something I have done or is it just part of the design ? Anyway, this picture is a truer colour perhaps.....

So, I think I have brought you up to date with my weaving, knitting and weather experiences, hope you have enjoyed them and I will look forward to your comments.

I will leave you with the view from our front window here at home ! The large expanse of white beyond the trees is the Castle Loch !

Bye for now !

Exciting Trip !

2010-11-20T22:43:00.002Z

Hi there everyone !

Last time I promised there would be an interesting blog to come, well here goes !

You may remember that way back in early summer we had a visit from Ellen Turner and her husband Jan. Ellen and I shared our thoughts on weaving and discovered that we both enjoyed finer yarns and had worked on similar drafts and so we were well matched. Ellen is edt on Ravelry and Ellen on Weavolution. Since she returned home she has been tempting me to join her for some yarn buying and some weaving time together. Nothing unusual in that you might think ! Well, Ellen lives in Denmark so a visit required a bit of planning !

Dates were agreed and flights booked and so a week past Monday Tony dropped me off at Edinburgh airport for the lunchtime weekly flight to Copenhagen. The first excitement came when there was a technical difficulty with the aircraft before it left Copenhagen and some doubt as to whether we would actually make the trip that day. A few of us were presented with the idea of flying to Oslo in Norway, staying overnight there and then flying to Copenhagen the next morning. Seemed like a good alternative so I volunteered ! Didn't realise it would be 1.00am when I got to the hotel in Oslo and that Danish Kroner would be of no use in Norway ! Up again at 5.00am to get the flight to Copenhagen. So I arrived a little travel worn but was warmly welcomed by Ellen and Jan who had been patiently waiting for me.

Poor jan was sent off home on the train and Ellen and I set off on the 200 mile journey to their holiday house in Jutland. About halfway in this journey we had a stop at a yarn store in a place called Kolding BC Garn . I had been tempted by the idea of fine cottons and fine linens and I was not disappointed.
This first picture shows Ellen considering the selection of silks in all thicknesses and colours.

Then there was a whole section with linens in all weights.

After about an hour we had both gathered together a good pile of purchases. I have to admit mine was the biggest and had silk, 2/16 cotton, 2/8 cotton both plain and mercerised and several shades of linen. It looked like this.......

We arrived at the holiday house in late afternoon and Ellen got busy heating us up.....

We spent the evening deciding on a project we could weave together. Ellen had brought all her weaving books including several Scandinavian books. I am very fond of the designs, soft colours and structures to be found in Scandinavia and am particularly drawn to classic Drall patterns with a satin tie up. We settled on one and I didn't discover until we had finished our project that Ellen had already woven this draft into an heirloom quality tablecloth. You can see it here.......Tablecloth

I was pretty tired after my journey and so had an early night to recover.

The next morning we took a walk over the sand dunes behind the holiday house and we were greeted by this view............

That was it, I was quite at home, this was the North Sea and I love it ! So back to the house to make a start and introduce me to Ellen's loom. The studio is a large room upstairs in the house and the loom fills it !! It is a 60" wide Swedish Glimakra Countermarche Loom with 10 shafts so a very serious piece of furniture. I have never woven on a loom of this size before and felt a bit daunted by the prospect !

We needed 880 ends of 2/16 natural cotton for the project, more of that a bit later, but here is Ellen using her large warp winding wheel.

We added the raddle to the back of the loom and wound on the warp. My job was to tension from the front and I found it strange as I couldn't reach through and touch the back beam !

We took it in turns to thread up the repeats in the draft and you would expect that two weavers with a bit of experience could manage that without any errors, but not so ! We had ten ends left over at the end so it took a while to discover where they belonged ! That was when I learnt how to add texsolv heddles when you have made a mistake ! Would you believe that when we added those ten threads we made another mistake in the order we threaded them, yes I suppose you would believe that ! Next up was sleying, now I have said before that sleying is not my favourite part of threading up but I was about to learn a different way of doing it. Ellen placed the reed down flat and showed me how to use my fingers to gather up the four threads for each dent in my fingers and then turn my hand over and pull them through with the hook. I will certainly try this out on my Spring. Sorry about the moving hand in this picture !

So we were now tied up onto the front beam and I was feeling quite pleased I had managed to keep up with what was happening and even make a bit of a contribution ! Things were about to go badly downhill for me in the next part of the process. I think it might have been Thursday afternoon when Ellen said she would be spending the afternoon under her loom ! I didn't really believe her but then I discovered there was a complicated set of upper and lower lamms to be attached to ten harnesses using the texsolv cords and some very 'fiddly looking plastic thingys'. Now on my Spring my lamms stay put so I have never had to think about rising and sinking stuff, it just happens. After several cups of coffee and a lot of time she emerged only to tell me that now we had treadles to tie up !

All I could do to help was to read the tie up out to her from the draft while she did the fiddly plastic thingy bit !! My knitting grew quite a lot that afternoon but so did my respect for this very professional loom and an experienced weaver !

So, after all this we were ready to weave ! The weft was to be a pale green linen, it had three strands but was much the same grist as the 2/16 cotton used for the warp. I have never woven with linen so I had to learn about keeping the bobbin wrapped in a damp cloth until we needed it. Also, I learnt we had to beat the linen very hard to set it in place. No 'give' with linen, where you put it is where it stays so you have to get it right. Now you have a chance of a first glimpse of the design !

This was just the sample to let me get used to the weaving movements. I quite quickly adjusted to the overhead beater and to throwing a strange to me shuttle but the thing I never mastered was the treadling. My Spring treadles are fixed at the front and stay down when pressed, all very easy ! Ellen's treadles were fixed at the back and I found the action so very different. I couldn't keep them still and seemed to be always chasing a moving treadle.We decided I looked OK from the waist up but underneath anything could be happening. The action was so different it really went for my knees and I struggled with the stairs !! The other thing I discovered about myself is that Ellen holds the shuttle underhand and I hold it and catch it overhand !

Anyway, the project grew but there is another side to this story which must be shared ! In the yarn store they had large cones of natural 2/16 cotton on special offer, a very special offer ! It was labelled as being slightly over twisted. we studied it carefully and couldn't see any reason why it shouldn't weave perfectly well. We each bought some and of course the obvious thing to do was to use it for the warp on this joint project. All went well until we had the warp threaded through the heddles and tied in bundles ready for sleying. This picture is scary !

What a mess ! The warp was very elastic, however, once it was tied onto the front beam it didn't look too bad. At the end of the sample we decided that perhaps floating selvedges would be a good idea, maybe help to keep the 'elastic' under control. So we added double floaters using good quality non- elastic cotton ! Bad mistake but we didn't know that !

We happily took it in turns to weave the pattern repeats and completed two 90cm (I had been converted to metric by this time !) table runners in this fabulous pattern. When they came off the loom they didn't look too bad and we thought we had got away with the elastic yarn.

Hand hemming was the next step, not a favourite occupation for either of us........

Next thing was to wet finish them. They were left to soak and off we went for a walk in a very strong wind but lovely to get some fresh air and see the water. Returning about an hour later we washed and rinsed the runners and discovered they were a bit wavy at the edges. Undaunted we wrapped them in towels and put them to dry a bit beside the fire..........

After lunch it was time to have a look ! things were worse, the edges were a bit of a disaster. I thought about my lace knitting and suggested we might pin them out to shape and leave them to dry thinking that once the linen dried it would keep the edges in place. here we are pinning, a new experience for Ellen !

We kept stretching them every half an hour or so and then decided to leave them overnight and see what they looked like in the morning ! That was a bottle of wine evening !!

Well, the pins were slowly removed in the morning and a hot iron applied. We persuaded ourselves that they didn't look too bad and declared the whole thing a success.

On Sunday we drove back to Ellen's home near Copenhagen where I discovered she has a smaller version of the same loom !

On Monday morning Ellen's husband Jan took me on a whistle stop tour of Copenhagen before taking me to the airport. The city has many beautiful buildings and a very impressive Government building. It would be lovely to return and have more time to spend exploring.

Now you may be thinking that is the end of this story but no hang in there, more to come !

I arrived in Edinburgh without having to make a detour which was good. Tony picked me up and we drove home to Lochmaben. I proudly produced my table runner and said it would take its place on the coffee table. Its a bit wavy on the edges I think was the response ! You'd be a bit wavy if you'd been wrapped up in my yarn bag in the hold of the plane was my reply or words to that effect ! How could he, I had just spent a week making this masterpiece !

Anyway, two days later, I get this question, remember Tony is a non-weaver ! "Did you use a different thread to do the edges ?" Of course said I defensively, you often do that for floating selvedges. Well, said he, " that's your problem the edge threads are not elastic". Reluctant to admit that he might have a point, I e-mailed Ellen to see what she thought about it. The next thing I know she has taken out her selvedge threads and guess what the table runner lies flat ! Nothing for it but to do the same here, so, this afternoon I pulled the selvedge threads right out and no more wavy edges. I did concede that he might have been right and had probably been quite helpful ! I guess that's why his nickname is 'the oracle' !!

So at last I can show you the finished article.........

I really had a wonderful week and enjoyed Ellen's company very much and we shared a very special time setting up her beautiful loom and weaving a joint project. I learnt a huge amount from her about many aspects of planning projects, choosing yarns and much much more. I have returned home with a list of ideas for projects and several drafts from the Swedish books and also an interest in double weaving so watch this space !

So, my thanks to Ellen and Jan for a very enjoyable time, I am hoping they might come to Scotland again and spend time with us here. There is no doubt that a real weaving friendship has been confirmed.

Hope you have enjoyed the story. Many thanks for visiting and I will look forward to your comments !

Birthday Treats and weaving update

2010-11-04T21:58:00.000Z

Hi everybody ! I have had a very nice week beginning with yet another birthday on Monday past.

Thought I would share with you some of the lovely things that came my way !! I'll start with a wonderful present from my husband ! I am well known for being a bit of a gadget freak and always had to have the latest computer going with Tony getting any cast offs. I have been quite well behaved of late having been extravagant in buying my new loom and a lot of yarn. So it was a lovely surprise to find Tony had bought me an iPad. A lot of time has been spent these last few days getting it set up and ready to use, it is great for internet access and e-mailing when I am on the move.

I have two new books in my weaving library, this one from daughter Gillian.....

and this one from daughter Alison......

We went out for supper with Alison and her husband on Monday night and another surprise was in store ! As I have said previously, Alison has taken up cake decoration as a 'hobby' and she had made this for me.........

The whole cake is edible ! The balls of wool have chocolate cake at their centre and the 'yarn' was made by extruding the icing and forming the balls of wool. The basket is also filled with moist chocolate cake. Alison says this is her best yet and I would have to agree. It was a shame to cut it but Tony and I have been enjoying chocolate cake all week. I am in trouble for spending too much time on the iPad and being late with this blog as Alison has been desperate to see her cake on the web !!

I had another surprise parcel which arrived from Canada from my very special friend Susan ! Inside I had a lovely card and one of Susan's very special tea towels in lovely soft colours. The draft is 'Heart to Heart' and she blogged about weaving these while all her kitchen renovations were in progress. The picture I am going to post here will hopefully show the very professional hand sewn hem ! I am so impressed with the finish it has set a new standard for me to live up to ! The hem is hardly any thicker than the tea towel and just sits so beautifully I hope you can see what I mean.....

Although this picture shows the hem it doesn't do the colours justice. the colours are very neutral and soothing, maybe this is slightly better......

Along with the tea towel came these handmade stitch markers. they are just the kind I like, they stay on the needle and don't fall off making you lose the place !! They are much more 'sparkly' than the pictures shows.

So, very many thanks to Susan and to everyone who made my birthday such a special occasion !!

With all that excitement, what else have I managed to be doing ?

The Drall scarves are progressing, many thanks for all your comments last week about colour choices.

I did as you all suggested and tried out a few different things and in the end settled on eggplant or aubergine for the third scarf. The photo doesn't really show it off very well but I am pleased with it. If only I would remember to take pictures in the daylight I would get better results !

That is the third scarf so only one more to go ! Next on the loom will be a snowflake shawl for daughter Gillian for her Christmas so watch this space !

The rigid heddle has another warp on it using the same lacey draft as the one I had to cut off. I liked the result when I washed the piece I cut off so thought it was worth another go. This time I am using Manos del Uruquay Lace in baby alpaca, silk and cashmere. No problems with the warp this time but I am not happy with the selvedges. I find it quite difficult to do good selvedges particularly on the left side. Hoping the washing will help a bit, otherwise I will have to learn how to do a crocheted edging !! Anyway, here is what it looks like on the loom............

I have another swallowtail shawl on the pins and decided to try placing a bead instead of doing the 'nupps' Thinking I knew how to do that I threaded about 250 beads onto the yarn before I started and have been carefully sliding them down as I knitted, all a bit tedious I was thinking ! When I had placed two rows of beads I decided I didn't like the result ! Inspiration came to me, ask on Ravelry Now, why I didn't do that first I don't know ! The answer was not to thread the beads onto the yarn but to use a crochet hook to add a bead to a stitch exactly where you want it to sit. First thing was to buy a 0.6mm crochet hook, now that is fine ! I soon got the hang of it so decided to undo the two rows done previously and start again with the crochet hook. The result is much better and now I am quite a fan of beading on lace.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed this update and thank you again for visiting ! There won't be a blog next week but I should have a good story to tell you the week after with lots of good pictures too !

Quick projects I hope !

2010-10-27T21:40:00.000+01:00

Hi there folks ! Many thanks for your comments on last week's post. I'm glad you enjoyed the 'Go Ape' experience ! Alison's bruises are recovering she says and Tony was neither up nor down after the experience, not even a twinge ! However, would you believe, hanging wallpaper may have given him sore shoulders !

The living room is progressing, new wallpaper, emulsioned, new wall lights and new carpet due at the end of this week so soon be back to 'normal'. Loom is still banished to the dining room but is in business !!
I said last time that I needed a quick project and had threaded up eleven yards of 8/2 Tencel in Mineral Green to make four 'Drall' scarves. here I am all ready to go..................

And the back view with floating selvedges.................

That was on Monday and today I have one 72" scarf woven already !

Now, I am not so sure I want all four scarves to be self coloured but as you know I am a bit colour challenged ! So for those of you with Tencel in your stash, could I put 'eggplant' or 'mauve' or even 'sea coral' with mineral green ? Or, what other colour would do well with this soft green ?

Moving the loom may have upset it somehow as it is now quite noisy when I treadle, especially the treadles on the right. It is a wooden squeak not coming from the treadle but more in the harnesses somewhere and I am wondering if I should be doing anything with it ? Is it needing some 'tender loving care' ?

A couple of posts back I showed a picture of a rather sad warp on my rigid heddle loom. Here is a reminder............

This was a lace weight singles merino yarn which proved just too soft for this rigid heddle lacey project. I had a very helpful comment after my original post from workingyarn. She suggested that I only used the heddle to change the shed and used a pick up stick as a beater and so save the yarn. What a great tip and I would never have thought of it ! I did persevere and managed about 12" of weaving but then the edge warp threads began to break and the whole thing was a mess. For the second time in a week I took the scissors to a project and cut it off !! I still have half of the skein left so I can use it as weft with a stronger warp.

I think that is my story for this week, good to be weaving again after all the excitement of the 70th birthday celebrations !!

Many thanks again for visiting.

A Confession and 'Go Ape' !!

2010-10-18T21:50:00.000+01:00

Hi there everyone !

I must start this post with a confession ! About three posts ago I said I had threaded my Spring loom with 140/2 silk to weave bookmarks from the pattern by Syne Mitchell in Handwoven March/April 2007. I even posted a picture of the sample ! I realised very quickly that these bookmarks were going to take me several weeks if not longer to complete and that I had promised scarves for a November sale not to mention tea towels before Christmas. I knew the bookmarks would have to go but I hate not finishing something once I have started. With other things happening here I have not been able to weave but at the back of my mind I have been thinking about these bookmarks ! I can now confess that I took the scissors and cut them off the loom last weekend, I hated doing it but it's done and a new warp is already through the raddle and waiting to be wound on.

I need to make some scarves quite quickly so brought out my Classic drall draft again as I know it is easy to do and I have all the details in my notes. Mineral Green 8/2 Tencel and the scarves will be self coloured maybe. Eleven yards in the warp so enough for four scarves.

We have embarked on a re-decorating project in our living room/kitchen area and my loom has been re-located in the dining room. This could take us a while to complete so I may be in there for a while !

Here is the room stripped for action, my loom usually sits to the left of the window. I'll post pictures once the room is finished !

I promised you some more pictures of 70th birthday celebrations ! This Sunday my two daughters took Tony to a place called Go Ape near Aberfoyle. This is a 'high wire forest adventure' in the Queen Elizabeth Forest park. Also described as 'zip wire heaven'. Alison, my older daughter and Tony took part in the adventure while Gillian, my younger daughter and I watched from below. Thought you might enjoy some of the pictures of this very strenuous day out. The pictures were taken on 'zoom' mainly and both parties were on the move all of the time so the pictures are not always the best but you will get the idea.

The two of them started with a hearty breakfast !

Then to meet the 'Ape'.................

Signing their lives away with the disclaimer !!!!

45 minutes of safety training and harness fitting !!

Then they were let loose to swing through the trees ....................

This is Alison entering a set of three tunnels and crawling through

They had thirty of these crossings to do covering over 1,000 metres interspersed by five zip lines of varying lengths. The platforms in the trees were between 50 and 60 feet high.

The way back to the start was by zip line 460 metres long and 150 feet above the ground !

Here they are, happy warriors or should I say 'apes'......................

At the end the instructor asked Tony if he would be back for his eightieth !!!

Now all of that was yesterday, this morning Tony got out of bed and hardly had an ache, he went off to play golf and has been wallpapering all afternoon. Word has it that Alison can only move from the neck upwards !! Tomorrow things may get even worse. It was a great day out and as you can see Tony had a wonderful time.

Who knows maybe some weaving to talk about next time !!

Thanks for visiting.

Golf Scoring and Finishings !

2010-10-11T21:35:00.000+01:00

Hi there everyone ! Time for an update on what I have been up to this last week or so.

The beginning of October sees the Alfred Dunhill Pro-Am golf tournament at St Andrews. This is a four day competition played over the Old Course at St Andrews, Kingsbarns and Carnoustie and then the best players and teams play on Sunday at St Andrews to decide on the winning professional and winning team. The amateurs pay huge amounts of money to play with a professional over the four days and I am talking many, many thousands of pounds !! There are always lots of well known people and many people from the USA and from South Africa.

The weather on Scotland's east coast in October can be challenging and this year was no exception ! On Thursday it was a beautiful day with warm sunshine and hardly any wind however Friday dawned grey and damp and with a very chilly east wind. This lasted right through until Sunday so all the winter woolies came out !

It takes each game about five and a half hours to get around the eighteen holes so a lot of time standing around in the wind and each day I walked between seven and eight miles according to the GPS in my pocket !! I scored for a different set of four players each of the four days and was lucky on Friday to be out with Padraig Harrington and Retief Goosen, both well known professional golfers and their amateur partners. It was a delight to see their golf at such close quarters and watch how they coped with the rigours of the famous Old Course. Padraig gave me an autographed golf ball when we were finished !!

Sorry I have no pictures but cameras are not allowed during the competition ! However here is a link to a web site with lovely photos of The Old Course St Andrews

Needless to say I have been quite tired at the end of each day so not a lot of activity to report ! I have done a bit of finishing off though so thought I would show you some pictures.

You may remember I did a scarf on the rigid heddle using eyelash yarn on a black warp and I felt it was a bit flat. I tried adding some beads and I think it helped to brighten it a bit. My thanks to
Susan for suggesting this !!

I have become quite taken with triangular neck scarves of late, they seem to be 'trendy' as my daughter would say. I knitted a small one using the lace weight Manos del Uruquay that has been in my stash for a while. It is very fine and quite small but still very usable. I didn't do too much to it, just small dragonflies at the points.

I had knitted the same neckerchief using the thicker weight Manos del Uruquay and I added silver hearts to complete it.

These two scarves were knitted using a pattern called 22.5 degrees with a very nice scalloped edge border. The pattern is by Martina Behm who is Maltina on Ravelry.

My last piece of finishing was on a fine alapca and mohair neckerchief in turquoise......

The colour has gone a bit wonky on that picture, we haven't really got an orange carpet !!

I had a couple of days before the golf started so there was time to get out the rigid heddle and warp it up. I found a nice pattern on the Schacht web site in their summer newsletter. It was a nice lacy pattern in a fine laceweight yarn using the 12 dent reed and two pickup sticks. I had recently bought a skein of Filigran Lace yarn in a lovely shade so thought this would be a good project for it. It is a singles yarn in 100% Merino from Germany. Here is a picture of it on the loom just started, the lace will show better once it is off the loom and wet finished.

The colour is gorgeous and I am trying not to pack the weft as if my life depended on it as I usually do !! I keep telling myself, this has to be lacy !! Anyway, all is maybe not well as you will see in the next picture. I haven't got very far but look at how this yarn is suffering with the abrasion from the reed.......

So, I will have to wait and see if this will survive 72" of weaving - watch this space !

The pick up sticks do not slide past each other in this design which is a bit of a pain ! In the Schacht newsletter it does explain very clearly how to make string heddles attached to a heddle rod to solve this problem. I couldn't get that to work for some reason, probably because I couldn't get the heddles to slide back and forth on this yarn without them sticking. Maybe I need to make heddles out of different material when I get back to it. If this project turns out well I have some other yarns that may also work quite well in this design.

It is good to have a few more things finished off and it is certainly weather now for warmer things and I have quite a good selection !

Well, I think those are my ramblings from last week, hope you enjoyed the pictures and many thanks again for visiting my blog. More to come before too long !

70th Birthday Trip !!

2010-10-02T23:20:00.000+01:00

Hi there - this will be another non-weaving post as we have been away from home for ten days ! Tony, my husband has celebrated his 70th birthday and as a surprise I arranged a trip on a working ship. He knew nothing about it until two days before we left and was completely surprised by the plan I had hatched !! He has been interested in all things shipping ever since we have had our wee holiday lodge on the River Forth. He watches the ships through a scope and looks up their details on the internet to discover where they are going, who built them etc etc. He has created a sophisticated Access database of all these details !

We often see a ship leaving the Forth to service lighthouses and navigational buoys and he has said how interesting it would be to see what it does. The Scottish lighthouses are serviced by the Northern Lighthouse Board but they do not take passengers on their ships. However, in England & Wales and the Channel Islands the lighthouses are serviced by an organisation called Trinity House.
When I enquired they told me that their ship The Patricia takes up to 12 passengers and you can travel with them for a week to watch them working. They do not guarantee where you will embark or disembark nor where the ship will go during that week, so all a bit of a mystery !! Anyway, I decided that would be the very thing for us to do to mark the birthday !

A week before we were due to leave they notified me that we would leave from Harwich. Now, Harwich is in the south of England and a long way from us in Scotland so I decided we would go by train to London, change stations and continue to Harwich. This meant that if we didn't return to Harwich we wouldn't be stranded without a car ! We left on Tuesday morning and stayed in Harwich overnight before arriving at the Trinity House Headquarters on Wednesday afternoon.

We were escorted to the Patricia and here Tony gets his first view of our home for a week. It looked a bit small to me !!

Once onboard, a tour of our facilities.......... First of all the sitting room

Now the dining room...... The table is laid for eight, the number of passengers for the week.

Then our cabin........

The crew were busy loading the ship for the week's activity. We had research data buoys to lay out in the North Sea for future wind farm development.

We also had to mark a gas rigg with cardinal buoys at north, south, east and west. Here you can see two with black bases and two with yellow bases either side of the data bouys !

The weather forecast was suggesting high winds from the north which was not good news. The Captain said we would need to take shelter close to shore if the wind got up ! As Passengers we had 'open access' to the Bridge and Officers and we took full advantage of that opportunity. Here you can see the Captain furthest away in the photo and his second officer with the pony tail !! She was very good at explaining to us what all the 'gadgets' were and showing us on the charts where we were.

And here is 'Captain' Tony !!!

On our first day at sea we managed to lay one of the research buoys but then the sea became too rough and we headed for shelter, returning the next morning to lay the other two. They collect data about currents, tides and wind direction and they have to be lifted every two months to download the data from the instruments on the sea bed. A piece of equipment called a 'lander' was wired to a one ton 'sinker' which in turn had a chain to the buoy. Assembling this took some time and several attempts to get the lander to lie flat on the sea bed. The first data buoy took about three hours but they got faster and the last one took about an hour and a half ! This picture shows one of the research buoys all finished and ready for action. You can see one of the four solar panels just above the white ring and the radio antennae and flashing warning light on the top.

Next day we started to lay the Cardinal buoys around the gas rigg. The rigg was to be de-commissioned and the buoys were to warn shipping of an unlighted installation. This job took two days as the weather got worse again with 35 miles per hour winds and a 4 metre swell ! This meant the Captain could not hold the ship close enough to the target to lay all the buoys. Here is the rigg about 50 miles out in the North Sea.

Each buoy was laid at 500 metres from the rigg. It took the crew about an hour to prepare the boys before they could be unloaded. Here you can see them climbing onto one to set the light going and arrange the top discs in the correct configuration. We started with the marker for south.

The ship had a twenty ton crane to lift the two ton sinkers, chains and buoys over the side of the ship into the water.

Here goes the first buoy marked S for south............

After laying all four over two days we sailed back to Harwich to collect more buoys ! Then it was time for maintenance ! Each of the 600 or so navigation aids is taken out of the water and cleaned up once every twelve months so we had our share to do ! There is a marked channel called the Sunk somewhere off the east coast of England and that was to be our destination for our maintenance activity. It was very close to a huge wind farm under construction and we saw a barge with wind farm pillars on it being towed into position........

When we reached the first buoy two crew members jumped over onto it and attached the crane

When it came aboard you could see the heavy growth of barnacles on the buoy and on the chain. most of this was removed by pressure washing, the chain was checked for worn links and the red and white paint was touched up before it was replaced in the sea. Here is a series of photos showing those steps....

We did three of these, each taking about two hours to do.

All this time we were being taken care of by a chef and two stewards ! Breakfast was at 8.30am, lunch at 1.00pm and dinner at 7.30pm with coffee and tea breaks thrown in ! The food was very good and extremely plentiful and with no exercise to speak of there has been a significant weight gain !! We were told it was 17 laps round the deck to make a mile so that didn't happen a lot !

On Sunday morning we had a tour of the engine room, guess who really enjoyed that and was in his element !!

On Saturday night, instead of dessert with dinner we had birthday cake in Tony's honour, prepared by the chef as a surprise ! Then when we got back to our cabin there was a bottle of Champagne organised by my two daughters by phone to the ship !!

I did manage a small project whilst on board ! We did do a lot of shelering and a lot of travelling between jobs so I had loads of time. It is a Swallowtail shawl by Evelyn Clark and I have done several already. This one was in lace weight silk though so was quite small. I wanted it as a sort of neck scarf like this.......

And here is the birthday boy on the last morning just before we left the ship, looks not too bad for 70 don't you think !!!

Luckily, the ship returned to Harwich so we came back home on the train via London.

The day after we got home was Tony's actual birthday and we had a meal out with Alison and her husband. Alison has recently started a new 'hobby' of icing cakes !! She had made Tony this 'Over the Hill' cake with a hill walker on it which gave us all a good laugh !

So you can see we have had an interesting ten days and now to try and get rid of the extra pounds in weight ! Nothing to do with weaving only a small knitting project but I hope you have enjoyed sharing our 'experience' There will be more to come later in October as my two daughters are taking Tony on yet another 'experience' !! I will be the one taking pictures !

Many thanks for visiting, I will get back to weaving sometime soon I promise