New projects and panties

My dear friend and fellow weaver, Kathleen, advised me to get a proper design book for up coming COE projects. I had previously been using any old lined notebook, but she was right. Large and unlined is visually clearer. Luckily Michael's is having a 2 for 1 sale right now. So I'm breaking in the new book with this design for a rigid heddle piece I'd like to start, (not for COE... but for me) using some gorgeous chunky teal/dark green yarn I've had around for a while. I'd like to make a shawl.

And even as I write this I've figured out what has been bothering me about this sample. The reason I want to use this yarn is because it is gorgeous... to me. And here I've been trying to force this bulky gray and silver yarn into the pattern because at first I thought it looked good. Then for some coo-coo reason, I tried to add a warm color that just isn't doing it for me. Sigh. So I'm going to try another little swatch using the teal chunk and a little of the sparkly Moonlight Mohair (love that stuff) along with a silver Paton's Grace cotton, which is a really nice mercerized cotton. I'll post a pic in the next installment.

My youngest, who is a crocheter, came by the other night to take that next step forward into the land of knitting. She brought with her this little hat that she crocheted for me in a mere couple of hours.

This child literally got the knit and purl stitch figured out in 5 minutes... ok, maybe 7 minutes. Reminded me of when I potty trained her. I showed her a pair of Little Mermaid panties and said, "You want these? You go in there." And that was it. Kid potty trained. Fast learner.

Not to rub it in or anything but...

... this is what winter in Florida is all about. Land of Flowers. We had the day off this past week, so decided to do some shopping for the pollinator garden. Flamingo Gardens Nursery is one of my favorite places. It's huge and they have a really nice fruit/veg stand with smoothies and candy shop. I just love going there. See the humongous wind chime behind me? Awesome! I would love to have that in our backyard! Of course our neighbors would probably kill us.

It was actually a gorgeous day in the low 70's with a wonderful breeze. It's going down into the 40's tonight, so that's sort of cold for us. Hope all the little flowers will be ok.

The New Year approacheth

The new year is here and of course I'm sitting here thinking of what I want to do differently this year. Everything! Well, not exactly everything but one thing I want to do differently is have a bit more control over how I spend my time and what I let into my life.

I've been re-evaluating social media. I found that FB and Twitter were eating up way too much of my time. Also, you may be friends with someone on either one, who is perfectly lovely, but they may be friends with total wacko's. This started me thinking... what am I exposing myself to? Who am I exposing myself to? And more importantly, why?

So now I do a quick scan of both, keeping it down to no more than 20 min. and that's it, once per day. I can't tell you how much time I've bought back for myself just doing this. And frankly, I have to say, I feel a lot calmer. I think social media feeds into the culture of fear and angst that we've created for ourselves, and too much time spent there is not good.

Another thing that feeds the fear is TV which seems to promote, and even revere, a very stupid and violent popular culture. So I'm watching less and getting more reading and knitting done as a result. ... and again, feeling calmer. There is too much noise and always from the wrong people.

All that being said and done, I have started work on the Handweaver's Guild of America's certificate of excellence, or the COE. I've pretty much put everything else aside for this. So far, I have gotten my binder in order and started collecting the articles and books I'll have to read. There is a whole lot of reading involved.

I started warping the inkle loom for a Finnish band, following directions from Mary Meigs Atwater's book, Byways in Handweaving. I began to feel like the pattern seemed like it was going to be way too wide for my Schacht loom and then I just wasn't "feeling it" at all. I've decided on a narrower Baltic style band, and so have taken on the tedious task of un-winding the warp. Luckily, you warp the same for Baltic pieces so this warp won't be wasted, just narrowed.  

Not quite the hot mess it looks like. It will be fine... keep repeating... fine, just fine. 

After I started this band, I saw an article on the Sami people's band weaving and would like to learn more about Scandinavian weaving (being as I'm of Laplander descent) and the article is from Handwoven, March/April 2013. 

Look at the reindeer's lovely handwoven bands. She is quite the classy lady. Coco Chanel would be proud of her accessorizing savvy. 

I got this nifty little beginner loom for Christmas and am hoping I can use it for card weaving. It's really a child's beginner rigid heddle loom, but I think it will work for cards. Beka makes this model.

The warp is measured out and I am going to see if this draft will work. It is a modified draft from one I found in Candace Crockett's card weaving book.