the day after

Thanks for your sympathy and comments. I did look up stashes in Ravelry (that method saved my butt on another project) but the yarn with the same dye lot is in Norway. The wedding is this Sat and there's no way it can get here in time for me to knit it up, and wash'n block. So the shrug is in serious timeout. I doubt that I'll wear the red dress again so I'll probably frog the shrug and use the yarn for something else.


Pattern: Lovely Lace Shrug by LanaKnits
Yarn: allhemp6 in Raspberry; 2 skeins; about 3 ft of yarn leftover
Needles: 6mm addi turbos
Notes: Ran out of yarn one row short of finishing the second sleeve. Knit an extra row on the first sleeve and grafted the 2 pieces together. Shrug does not fit across the back. Cannot put my arms down. I have a 43.5" chest and the shrug is sized to fit up to 42" so it should've been close but not this tight. I don't have obscenely wide shoulders or anything. This is such a bummer because I love this pattern and I love hemp.

I got the loom warped and I started weaving my scarf.


As you can see, I went with the Quartette yarn because it's so soft. The selvedges at the beginning look like crap but I'm more careful now so it's a lot more even.

I spent yesterday shopping (instead of doing chores - bad, Dotty!). Got lots of clothes and a new rug for the kitchen. I also bought some fabric for the ugly fabric challenge.

"That fat quarter under my butt feels pretty good" - Phoebe

Is this her way of helping or is she trying to tell me something about the ugly fabric?

woo wee

It's hot out there. Two days of 28C/83F temps. I'm ready to wilt. But hot weather means fresh fruit! We hit the farmers market this morning and scored some local strawberries (3 weeks behind schedule - that's how cold it's been) and local cherries. So lunch was a handful of cherries and strawberries and a yummy butter tart for dessert. We were late to the market so we missed out on the sticky cinnamon buns but hubby insisted that we buy something baked. The tarts were his choosing.

The sooper seekrit project is finished. One of the coolest places in the house is my sewing room so I sat down in front of the sewing machine and finished it up. If you have a Ravelry account, here is a link.

And I pulled the linen off the loom and hemmed up the ends.


Yarn: 6/24NM 100% linen from Colourmart; used up almost an entire cone (150g and 660yds)
Loom: Dorothy Leclerc 4 harness
Loom details: plain weave, 12 dent heddle, 184 ends
Finished dimensions (pre-wash): 15" x 36" before hemming
Notes: I warped up 5ft lengths hoping for a 4ft finished but obviously, there was more wastage than I anticipated. Took forever to get the loom set up but only a few hours to weave the whole thing.

I want to weave one more thing before I return the loom. I would like to try weaving with wool. A quilting friend (who also used to weave - not the one I borrowed the loom from) suggested that if I wanted to use hand dyed/painted yarn, I should use black as the other colour. So I've been shopping around and I have my eye on Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in black (warp) and Noro Kureyon Sock (weft) in this colour. I think the combo would look stunning. But I'm also in love with some new Colourmart yarn - 30% silk and 70% cotton in a sky blue. After knitting with the Misti Pima/silk, I've been looking for more silk/cotton. Too many choices. I need to think on this some more.

The cats are really feeling the heat. Phoebe spent a lot of time lying on the cool wood floor yesterday. But today, she's glued to the upstairs window.


I'm heading back to the sewing room. I was fabric shopping yesterday and I treated myself to an Amy Butler bag pattern and fabric to make the bag with. I've got all the bits cut out and I'm ready to start sewing. I hope the buckram behaves itself.

weaving 101

(You can start laughing, Bea)

I stayed up 2 hours past my bedtime. I can't count to 184. And when I can count to 184, I only needed to count to 92 (cuz when you cut a loop, you get 2 ends - duh!). I should've gone to bed instead of doing simple math. Several times, there was a near catastrophe when I dropped my 92 strand, 10 foot, figure 8 loop of yarn. Ricky was camped out under the dining table hoping for linen bits to play with. The instruction that I was given yesterday didn't work (you can't tie linen and wool into a square knot and expect it to hold under strain) so I ended up ripping out all the existing warp (Sorry, Nancy). And then, I screwed up threading the heddle (see, I'm even using weaving lingo today). Up to this point, Ronnie was right - it is a torture device.

But this morning, I tied up the warp ends to the front thingy, cranked the yarn into place, wound a bobbin, and voila:




There are a coupla places where the warp goes over-over rather than over-under, it's really uneven (although, I hear a good wash and block will do wonders - just like knitting), and the selvedge looks like crap but I don't care. I'm having fun (even if it is killing me).

ummm...

Now what? Guess I should read the book. I thought I was just picking up the loom. But I also ended up with a wooden frame for measuring out the lengths of yarn, bobbins, things that hold the bobbins (shuttles?), a bobbin winder, and a huge batch of long thin sticks (for ?). It's already got some yarn wound onto it so I was told to (ignore the instructions in the book and) tie my linen to the ends and wind it onto the back. I was also told that when I wind the yarn off the cone and onto the wooden frame thingy that I need to put in a figure 8. So does the figure 8 go in front or behind?

"whatever you do, don't wake me" - Ricky