Tuesday, February 9, 2010

I AINTN'T DEAD1


... I just had a really crappy day on Friday and didn't weave at all (details to follow), then had a really great day today (more details, more following) and wove so much and so hard that I wound up with a back spasm that hurt so bad that I got so faint & dizzy & passing-out-hot that the friends I was with insisted on taking me to the hospital. :P

Five hours later, I have a clean bill of health but no scarf for the day. Tomorrow's not looking terribly promising either as I have a meeting at 10 that will last 2.5 hrs, another at 2:30 that will last Some Time, a weaving date at 6:30 and a guild meeting at 7:30 for which I need to prepare a short program, a list of possible workshop teachers, a selection of suggestions for the next project on the guild's 90" loom... oh yes, and also lunch.

So. Kinda busy. Hopefully there will be some scarfing in there somewhere, perhaps ... over lunch?

I do at least have a scarf On Thee Go. As mentioned, I wasn't up for weaving on Friday but I did manage to ball up some yarn that I frogged and kool-aid dyed (in the micro, no less!) last summer and then dress my rigid heddle with it, using my spanky new 10 dpi heddle. I got a little weaving done over the weekend but had hoped to finish it up today. Ha.
Maybe even This Scarf:


Here's a close up: It is Very Very Green. Lime green, in fact, with a splash of orange and... Moonberry, perhaps?



Project February

Now, I may not have been weaving much the past couple days, but there's still a whole lot of Project February going on! A bunch of people posted stuff on Friday and there was more today. Please be sure to check out the sidebar for the many folks who've made PF posts over the past few days!

I fully intend to put links to each of these posts in a post sometime soon but it's 1:30 aye em and I've had... quite the day. That'll have to wait a bit longer but there's one person in particular I don't want to overlook - in part because she's posting to TwicPic rather than a blog so my sidebar doesn't work for her - but also because I am just sooooo tickled3 with what she's doing!

I got this tweet from @callybooker on Twitter last Thursday:

callybooker: @janetdawson Is getting up every day enough for #ProjectFebruary? I think it's about all I can realistically commit to.
I think... I think she may have been kidding but of course I jumped at the idea and then wouldn't let her off the hook when she protested. ;) She insisted she'd be too incoherent to blog about getting out of bed each day but she's been posting pics of the first thing she does each morning ever since.

Here's Friday:

♥ the slippers!

And Saturday:

♥♥♥ this mug!

And Sunday:

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mug! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥


And today:

Those are some seriously tall and narrow windows. Srlsy.

You cannot imagine how much I covet her sheep mug! @evelynoldroyd and I are planning a trip4 to Scotland to get ourselves some.

And now it's nearly 2:00 aye em, so I'm going to go play with my tiny new SQUEeePC for a couple minutes and then crash so I can be semi coherent for my meeting at 10 tomorrow morning. Somehow I doubt the guy I'm meeting with will accept a TwitPic of my new xmas slippers or any of my sheep mugs as a substitute.


1. ...said Granny Weatherwax's sign when she was out Borrowing, i.e. Not At Home (inside her own head).2

2. That is a Discworld reference. My character on the Discworld mud wears such a sign At All Times. I think I might need to get one for Roundworld, too.

3. Did I... did I just use the word "tickled" in a semi-public forum? Gadzooks.

4. A hypothetical trip. That mug would be worth every single theoretical dollar.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Short & Sweet [Scarf 45]


Another quickie post tonight9 'cause once again I'm writing in the wee hours. Believe it or not, I actually finished this scarf early this evening - early enough, in fact, that Ron and I were finally able to go see Avatar.1

Oh, wait! You have to believe me since I wove this one on Weaving In My Jammies again and therefore have video evidence of when it was done! ;) Speaking of which, you may have discovered WIMJ is now embedded over there ---> in the sidebar. I don't know if I'm going to leave it there or not; it's a bit obtrusive and that giant eye ... well, it's a bit creepy.2 Still, the embedded thingie might encourage folks to stop in and chat while I'm weaving, which would be ever so keen! Consider that a thinly veiled hint if you like. :)

But I digress! Back to today's scarf, which was also a quickie for a couple of reasons. First was that I discovered this well after I'd started winding my pirn:



Srlsy, what the heck happened here?? Do we have some kind of rare acrylic-eating moth in Atlantic Canada that no one ever told me about? Did the cats sneak into the yarn room and rub sandpaper vigorously over the end of this one spool? Was I so out of it on Tuesday that I actually gnawed on the yarns I intended to use for weft? I have no idea. Regardless of the cause, the state of this spool meant that I only got my pirn about 2/3rds full before I hit the first break and after that there really didn't seem to be much point in trying to use any more of it.

This is a colour I use a lot, though, so I just planned to make appropriate sacrifices to the yarn dye lot gods and finish the scarf with another spool of the same shade... until the second reason this scarf is so short reared its head: I somehow miscalculated on the length of the warp. Tuesday's all a bit vague but I know my reasoning went something like this: "Three scarves at 72" + 12" fringe between = 3 x 84" = 7 yards warp. I need some for loom waste (but not too much, since 12" of those fringes will come out of it) so I need 7 yards anna bit. This guide string is 8 yards long, so if I put this end round this peg but wind my warp round that one, and then just wrap this extra bit here around this other peg to shorten it up a bit more... yes, that should give me 7 anna bit."


That's all a bit dodgy, I'll grant you, but that's just how I roll. And you know, usually it works out fine. Tuesday, though... on Tuesday, all bets were off. I don't know which part of that logic fell down. Right now, at 2 in the morning, it all seems to make sense.3 For all I know the guide string wasn't even 8 yards to begin with, tho' I did measure it. At any rate, round about the time my stubby 2/3rds full pirn was running out, I looked at the back of the loom and discovered my warp was running out right along with it. I could have gotten another 8 or 9 inches woven but, given the woebegone state of my weft spool and my distinct lack of faith in yarn dye lot gods, I decided to just cut my losses and go with a short scarf. It will be exactly the right length for some woman of small stature, or for some woman who prefers to wear her scarf just round the back of her neck rather than round-and-round-and-round.

So! The specs: this one was still 90 ends of 8/4 and boucle sleyed at 12 EPI in an 8 dent reed (so 7.5" in the reed) and once again woven with 8/2 orlon. This time, however, the scarf was only 56" long rather than the 72" I was aiming for. I used the yellow spool in the pic from yesterday's post and although it seems incongruously spring-y when there's snow on the ground outside, it does make me think of sunshine and new buds and tiny flowers - and there's nothing at all wrong with that on a cold February day.



You know what's interesting? This picture is exactly what this scarf looks like up close & personal but from where I'm sitting right now, just three or four feet from the loom, it looks totally different. I bet once it's washed it'll look more like that <--- than that ^.

Not sure yet what I'll do tomorrow, but I'm thinking perhaps something light blue in honour of the 10' tall blue dudes from Avatar. Maybe with a bit of gold or green or black like their eyes? And I might see about some kind of shiny, slinky white stuff for the little phosphorescent dots on their skin. Of course, if I really wanted to represent them well, I'd just weave with fibre optic cable... but I haven't got any of that, so I'll just stick with Plan A.

On the other hand, I was also thinking I might weave another scarf on my rigid heddle since I hate to warp the floor loom for only one scarf but I really want to weave either some placemats or some napkins over the weekend. I'm not sure how well I can implement blue/green/yellow/slinky in yarns that'd do well in my Knitter's Loom, so the Avatar scarf may have to wait. On va voir!

Project February

A few more folks have signed on to Project February so, lest I forget to link to their blogs when they post something new, I've added a blog roll in the sidebar over there --->4 I also tried adding a twitter search for #ProjectFebruary over there but - surprise, surprise! - it turns out that I/we are not the only folks with a project so named so I changed it to a #Scarfaday search instead. I will likely keep fiddling about with these things over the next days and weeks, so keep an eye on the sidebar for excitin' new haps.

Here are the Project February offerings for February 04, 20105:
Once again, if I've missed a link or a photo you've sent me, do let me know!


1. Avatar was just as pretty as I expected and the story line just as predictable. I did expect the acting to be a little better but I wasn't going for the dialogue or story or acting, so I wasn't disappointed. In fact, I enjoyed myself quite a bit and even sniveled at the appropriate bits towards the end, even though I knew from the moment the film started just how it would end. The 3D was definitely impressive and I was relieved that when I left the theater my eyes were merely tired and scratchy and not totally blurry & painful like they were after Coraline.

2. Just imagine what that other @rondawson might say!8

3. I'm nearly 100% certain that, as soon as I hit "Publish Post" and therefore permanently and publicly record this logic, it will immediately dawn on me why and how it is nonsensical. Please be gentle.

4. Man, am I all about the ---> arrows <--- tonight, or what?

5. Happy Birthday, Gramma Rosemary! And thank you thank you thank you for the good weaving/knitting/yarnaholic genes!

6b. Okay, so I'm pretty sure I've screwed up my footnote numbering somehow. C'est la vie!

8. If you've no idea what I'm on about re: rondawsons (and really, why would you?) and would like to get in on the joke (ha ha!), you could search on twitter for 'janetdawson' and 'rondawson'. All Will Be Revealed.

9. Ha! Who'm I kidding? Not even myself, that's who.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

When Last We Spoke... [Scarf 43 & 44]


... I was in a bad way. A zombie-like way. And if there's one thing that's true about zombies, it's that they're bad for your mental and physical health, especially when you're the zombie in question. Fortunately, if caught early enough this condition can be cured with a full night's sleep, which is what I decided to do rather than stay up and finish yesterday's scarf. I feel quite sheepish about that but I also feel quite rested, so on balance I think I made the right choice.

Last night when I staggered up to bed, Scarf #43 looked like this:


This isn't really a very good picture colourwise, incidentally. I was relying on auto white balance, which failed me miserably. Hopefully the after shots of this scarf will do the colours justice. This picture makes it look really pink but it isn't quite so cotton candy as it looks, honestly.

Anyhoo, I went straight to sleep last night and woke up this morning much refreshed. I trundled back downstairs around 10:30 to finish up #43 and was done by noon o'clock. It seems I forgot to take any "Huzzah, it is finished!" shots but the end of the scarf looked remarkably like the first 45", only with pretty little hemstitching. :)

At that point I took a break to reward myself by finally ordering the EeePC I've been hankering after for so long. Well, okay, I've been hankering after a netbook for so long and just in the last couple of days decided that the netbook in question was the Asus Eee PC 1005PE. I am awfully excited about this little darlin': in addition to being uber portable and handy for all kinds of mobile computing, I think it'll be just the thing for Weaving In My Jammies. It should run my spanky new webcam drivers a treat and it's small enough that I can pop it on top of the castle of the loom and see what folks are saying without turning round, or at the very least put it on the low table next to the loom so that the cam cords aren't dangling about all over the place. The past few days I've felt a bit like I was sitting in a mass of spaghetti noodles whilst I was weaving. Awkward, letmetellyou.

(I also ordered a new cpu fan and new hard drive for poor, poor Lulu, and Ron had something of a breakthrough when fiddling with her earlier tonight, so there's some hope that once the new stuff's bunged into her innards she'll be okay. Not 100% 'cause I don't know that I can replace all her software, but far better than the... oh, 2%, maybe? that she is right now. And there will be much rejoicing!)

ANYWAY, back to scarves! I did just that (went back to weaving scarves, that is) after supper (more spaghetti but of a far more pleasant kind!) and wove up Scarf #44 to catch up. This time I used a soft greyish green which matches the new version of green in the warp almost perfectly:


It's that one in the back. The light raisin colour in front is the one I used yesterday - now with much improved white balance so you can see what the colour actually looks like. The yellow... that's a possibility for tomorrow. These are all 2/8 orlons, which I used in one of those scarves that I never posted about last fall on a warp very similar to this one. That scarf has a lovely, soft hand and I've been wearing it myself quite a bit 'cause I like it so much, and I plan to weave quite a few more like it for sale this summer.

Speaking of which, I suspect that this year's Scarfaday offerings will tend toward finer threads than last year's. That isn't to say I won't be doing any of the chunkier threads 'cause you know, they're just So Darned Fast and Easy. Still, I'm getting over my disinclination to use the finer threads and my impatience to get scarves woven as quickly as possible. Who knows, maybe I'll even go wild and do something besides plain weave this year. ;)

Here's another look at Scarf #44:


Very springy, don't you think?

So that wraps it up for today. Tomorrow I've got a Small Business Seminar in aye em so won't be weaving until later in the afternoon. Might use that yellow or I might not; we'll just have to see what the new day brings!


Project February

I'm sooooo excited that several more people have signed on to participate in Project February in some fashion! Here are today's offerings & updates:

  • Clayton's wintery Project365 photo for Feb 03, 2010.
  • Alison's nummy 'Florentine' from her dye-a-day project on Yarnscape.
  • My friend Marg of Caper Glass has decided to go whole hog and do some glass-a-day for the whole month. :D
  • Laura's fun (& therapeutic!) rigid heddle scarves on her blog, Weaving A Life. I'm not sure if this was a one time offering or if she's going to have pics for us regularly during the month - hope so!
  • Peg's beautiful rayon chenille shawl on Weaving A Gem of a Life. Peg also hopes to weave lots during the month, tho' she isn't committing to any particular schedule, which is totally fair. [edit: Gnaaah! I knew I'd missed one! Sorry, Peg! - JWD]
Nancy, one of the students from the first week of classes that Mom and I taught last month, is going to do a scarf-a-week, too! No pics there yet but I'm really looking forward to her first installment on Friday. And Shari's, and Liz's and those of a few other folks who've mentioned they're thinking about playing along at home. :)

Hmm, I hope that's everyone. If you sent me a link and I've forgotten you, please let me know! Or if you want to participate and already have blog posts to link to, send them along! I can add new links into old posts easy peasey!

Ooph. Looks like I'm getting over exclamatory. That's a sure sign it's time for bed. See you tomorrow. :)

Zombie Weaver Strikes Out [Scarf 43]


Okay, so this is embarassing, but I'm going to play my first get out of jail free card - and it's only Day2! Argh!

I woke up this morni... no, that's not quite right. I GOT up this morning but I never honestly woke up until this evening. I spent the whole day staggering around and staring blearily at the computer, waiting for the waking up to start... but it just never did. Long story short: I took a nap instead of weaving, and then because of Various Technical Issues1 ran out of time.

So here it is, almost 1 aye em, and I figure I can do two of the following three things: finish the scarf, write a blog post, or get a proper night's sleep so that the same thing doesn't happen tomorrow. Ima go with #2 and #3.

Here's how Scarf #43 is shaping up:


It's almost exactly the same palette as the Peony scarves I did last year, except that I really wanted to use some boucles so changed the shade of green and white slightly in order to use what I had on the shelf. I guess I'll call it PeonyII?

This time I'm weaving in it 4/8 cotton instead of in 8/8, and set at 12 EPI rather than 10. I wound 90 ends, so it's 7.5" in the reed. It's hardly drawing in at all, in part due to the lovely new small sized Schacht EFS that my dear ol' Mum gave me for Christmas:



The weft is an 2/8 orlon - I think. It's some mystery yarn that's been on the shelf for Some Time but I'm pretty sure that's what it is even tho' it doesn't feel quite like the other 2/8 orlon I've gotten in recent years. I'm apparently beating it in at 12 PPI, at least in the inch I just measured. ;)

The scarf's about 46" long right now, so well over half way. My plan is to finish it up in the morning, and my hope is to weave another scarf for Day3. We'll see how that turns out tomorrow, now won't we? Hopefully I'll get plenty of rest tonight and won't be so tired tomorrow that even my autopilot is set to Stunned Zombie.

See you then!


Project February

Clayton's Project365 photo of the day for Feb 02 2010.

No other links for today (yet!) but Liz of Lizzie Plays With Clay and Shari of Red Twig Brown Twig have both said they'll participate in Project February in some fashion, too. Really excited to see what you come up with, guys!


1. My tale of woe: First I forgot that this boucle doesn't like to be in a 12 dent reed, so I had to untie the warp & resley in an 8. Then I forgot to put the apron rod over the knee beam, so had to unscrew it from the loom and put it under the cords before reattaching it. Then WIMJ went all pearshaped 'cause for some reason our wireless network delights in kicking Plum off the net when it's running in Vista, so I had to switch to Solaris. Then I had to futz about with webcam cords trailing around all over the place 'cause Plum can't go on the little table next to the loom - too heavy and unsteady. THEN I futzed around with my snazzy new EFS which worked fine but required a bit of getting used to, also some tension adjustments that I was leery to make lest I break the thing like the last one I got.2 Plus there was the lure of Lost upstairs, which I'm really not the slightest bit interested in but it was playing So Blinkin' Loud that I couldn't help but hear and wonder what was going on.

2. It was broken when I opened the package! Really it was! But I'm still anxious about fiddling around with those tension screws. Yikes.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Everything Old is New Again [Scarf #42]


Oh geez oh geez is it February already? Where on earth did January go? Oh well, February snuck up on me faster than I expected so I didn't get around to posting any fanfare in advance, but now it's February and that means it's time for (dum dum dum duummmmm!)


Scarfaday 2010


I'm reeeeally excited to be doing Scarfaday again this year, hopefully bigger and better than ever! I've got some new stuff planned but it worked pretty darn well last year so I've also got lots of old stuff planned. ;) For starters, the ground rules remain the same as last year, tho' I'm reverting to the v1.0 rules for February, i.e.:

  1. I'll just do the month of February and then take stock.
  2. I'll only commit to weekdays, though if I weave a scarf on the weekends I'll post pics of those, too.
  3. I'll try to put a new warp on every few days but since the warps will often be three or four scarves long it might take three or four days to weave them off.
  4. Every scarf will be unique, though it might be very similar to others on the same warp.
  5. The scarves have to be complete by the end of the day but not necessarily wet finished.
  6. Family trumps scarves! I might wind up missing a few days if something big comes up.

New for this year: I'll be weaving my scarves live on Weaving In My Jammies most of the time, though the timing will be hit or miss unless I manage to get on some kind of a schedule. I also intend to make up warps and/or kits (including weft) for most of the scarves you'll see this year, which will be for sale in my Artfire shop.1

Also, although I'm not planning on doing guest scarves per se during February, I'm really hoping that others will join in with their own version of scarf (or not!) a day (or not!) and then send me links to blog posts and/or pics online - my hope is to include a round up of links to other folks' projects at the end of every day's post. Bear in mind that your project doesn't have to be scarves - it could be belts (hi, Annie!) or tea towels (Beth? Laura?) or anything else. It doesn't even have to be woven - it could be baskets (Shari?) or boxes (Les??) or dyed fibre (Allllissssoonnnn!). And it most certainly doesn't have to be *aday, if you're more of an *aweek (Liz!) or even *amonth kinda person.

And with that rather disorganized start to what's bound to be a rather disorganized month, I give you Scarfaday 2010's first entry: Scarf #42!2




This scarf was a first in a few ways: it was the first scarf of Scarfaday 2010 (in fact, the first scarf of 2010 Full Stop), it was the first Scarfaday scarf I've done on my rigid heddle loom, AND it was the first Scarfaday scarf I've woven (at least in part) on Weaving In My Jammies - not to mention the first time I've used my spanky new webcam. Most excitin' of all for me, though: it was the first time I've ever woven with my handspun yarn!!

I really didn't know what to expect with the handspun. The sliver was space dyed by hand and I'd plied the singles from the inside & outside of the ball which created a barber pole effect. Here's what the skeins looked like:


One skein was a lot more barber poley (is that a word? is now!) than the other; it was also the longer skein so I used it as warp. The second skein had a lot more areas where both plies were the same colour. I knew the colours in the weft would obscure some of the colour in the warp but I didn't have any idea to what extent that'd happen. I suspected that the colours might wind up a bit muddy but I also knew I'd always wonder what would happen when I used my barber pole yarns for warp and weft so I figured I might as well leap in with both feet and find out right away. Plus I'd hauled all kinds of my handspun to Vashon with me and figured I'd better use at least some of it while I was there.

Which brings me to a little confession: I cheated just a bit on this scarf. I dressed the loom and started weaving it in my Dear ol' Mum's studio on Vashon during our second week of class. Here are a few pics from the fantabulous album of photos that one of our Week 2 students, Myra Willingham (no relation), took during class:

Me dressing the loom...

This was a curly hair day, I see. They happen, especially towards the end of the week. Photo by Myra Willingham.

...with the aid of my lovely assistant, Judith, who was another of our Week 2ers...

Photo by Myra Willingham.

...and then showing a few of the students just what a rigid heddle is all about:

Judith again, plus a bit of Karen G's left side. Photo by Myra Willingham.


I got the scarf about 2/3rds done before I left for home. I've been saving it since then - I figured I'd cut myself a little bit of slack and finish it up on Scarfaday No.1 rather than stressing out about winding a new warp and dressing the loom as well as restarting the blog. Good job I did, too, since between staying up late last night4, starting a new yoga class this morning (yay!), going out for lunch with Ron, going knitting at the Wentworth Perk with some of the Unspun Heroes early this evening and then hunting all over Icecrown & Storm Peaks for titanium nodes a little later on, I hardly had any time left for weaving! I'm definitely going to have to reshuffle my priorities if I'm going to pull off Scarfaday again this year. But hey, it's the time of year for doing that anyway so I welcome the challenge and the resulting productivity. :)

Anyhoo, this is where I was (a week ago and) at 4:00 pm today:


As you can see, I sat at the kitchen table to weave today, with Plum & Twitter & a lovely cuppa tea to keep me company. What you can't see is that Brownie was also sitting at the table, in that chair by the window. She's elusive and shy as ever but still determined to be near the weaving!

This close up shows off the barber poleyness (ooo, another new word!) of the yarns:


Not long after these photos I realized I should try out my new webcam so there was a bit of fiddling with that - installing the software on Plum, figuring out how to mount it on my tripod, etc. etc. - before I really got going... and then, before I knew it, I was done and it was 6:00 and high time I was at the Perk for knitting.

I was home again by 8 but then we made dinner so I didn't get to hemstitch the ends3 and unfurl the scarf until 9:00ish:

That's one of my spiffy new blunt needles wot I bought at the Weaving Works. Some of our students (Karen G, maybe?) had them in class and I thought they were Pretty Darn Neat, what with their nice size and bent point, so I hunted them down and got a couple to try. They are made by Clover.

So, about the yarn colours. Turns out that the weft obscured the warp a lot more than I expected it to, to the point that they didn't actually muddy one another up 'cause the warp was calling the shots. (ha! "shots"! That's a terrible pun but I like it so in it stays!) Also, the colour shifts in the weft turned out to be way more regular than I expected, what with the barber poleing (poling? polling? meh. poleing!) and all. In the end, although the weft is two toned almost all the time, the overall shifting colourway of the sliver played out in the scarf as well:




You can almost tell from the pic how soft and drapey it's going to be once it's wet finished. :D

A few technical details:

The sliver was 100% merino, dyed by Katherine whoselastnameIneverremember of The Fleece Artist. Not sure which colourway but I'm guessing it might be 'Hercules'. It was spun by Yrs Trly and I haven't got the faintest idea how many wraps per inch it was, or whatever the proper numbery bits are for spinning. I spun the singles, balled them up and then plied from the inside & outside of the ball.

The scarf was woven on my Ashford Knitter's Loom using the 7.5 dpi heddle that came with it. I think (but couldn't swear to it) that my guide string was 92" long. I used the direct warping method. There are 55 ends, so I guess that makes it 7.33" in the heddle. It looks like a pretty balanced weave, except for where it's not. The yarn's a bit thick and thin and my beat was, too. ;)


Ta da! Done, and only an hour late! That's practically right on time. :D

[Edit: Woo! Owing to my mad arm twisting skillz, I've got some takers already! Alison of YarnInMyPocket is launching her new blog, Yarnscape, with a dye-a-day project for the month. I'm also going to link to my friend Clayton's photos from his Project365... er, project?... which lasts ALL YEAR! Here are some links:


C'mon, everyone else. You know you want to! Bring on dem links! - JWD]



1. Will be, I said, will be! Yes, yes, it's empty right now but it won't be for long - I hope?

2. I wove a bunch more scarves toward the end of 2009 that never got blogged but it's too late to worry about them now so this one gets to be #42. Perhaps I'll revisit those other colourways during the month as some of them were Quite Nice, ifIdosaysomyself. :)

3. Er, yeah. Ends plural. Turns out I hadn't hemstitched the beginning. Didn't remember that when I ended. Oops? Oh well - was easy to do once the scarf was unfurled from the front beam!

4. I'm reading the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency novels by Alexander McCall Smith. They are so addictive! I finished up #2 and started #3 last night and couldn't turn out the light before 3:00 aye em. ZZzzZZzzzZZZzzZZZZz!