Deja vu all over again

No, you're not imagining things. Yes, that's Scarf 29 again. Talk about the same only different: it's the same scarf but now it's twice as long.

Let me explain: I wove yesterday's scarf short like the one before it: 48" this time as I found the 40" one was much too long for once-around-my-neck and yet just a bit too short for twice-around. And I hemstitched it. And I wound the warp forward and got all set to put the lease sticks in so I could cut and rethread again. And, as I wound it forward, the last piece of paper fell off the beam and dropped to the floor. Clearly, had I cut and tied and woven another piece, it would have been the shortest scarflette known to man. I might have gotten about 20" out of it. Maybe. Probably not.

On the other hand, I reasoned, if I didn't cut and tie, if instead I picked out the hemstitching from the end of #29 and kept going, I could probably add another 30" to the scarf I already had. 20" is a silly length for a scarflette, but 78" is a lovely length for a scarf. And so that is what I did.


I had help again today as I worked. Normally Brownie is very shy and suspicious of us - it is a rare thing and cause for celebration when she actually deigns to sit next to one of us on the couch (quiet and internal celebration, as making sound or even acknowledging her presence is likely to make her run). Occasionally, though, she'll actually demand attention while I'm weaving and will even jump right up next to me on the loom bench and squeak her ridiculous, tiny squeaks. Usually, like yesterday, she keeps right on moving meaning I only get a rear view (literally) but today she hung around long enough for me to take some pictures from a more appropriate angle.


She is so cute and sweet and timid, I can deny her nothing...


Not even walking on the warp, even though it's sooooo naughty. :P I know I ought to shoo her away when she does this since it only leads to even worse goings on, but she's such a phantom and so thoroughly convinced that we're out to get her that I hate to confirm her suspicions.

So that's my scarfa post for today. Short and sweet, like my scarf no longer is. :)

However, I do have some other things to catch up on: coffee bombing and blog awards.

You may recall I mentioned long ago that I'd engaged in my first act of virtual coffee bombing. I did this because Beverly had posted to the Weaving List that she'd been enjoying Scarf A Day but was envious of the freedom I had to go out with my friends for coffee in the middle of the day.¹ "Hmm," thought I, "who says that the only way to enjoy a cuppa with someone is while sitting at the same table? It sounds like Beverly needs a coffee bomb of her own!" So I stopped by Tim Horton's and then showed up on Shari's doorstep unannounced. Shari did take a look at the extra coffee in my hands and peer over my shoulder to see who was with me but I guess she's used to me 'cause she just let me in and, apart from slightly raised eyebrows and a bemused smile...

I'm hoping that, since I'm only putting half a picture of her on the blog, she'll only half kill me...

...she didn't say a word as I sat Beverly's stunt double at the table and passed out the coffee and sweets. And then we proceeded to have a lovely cuppa and a lively chat and a merry old time indeed. Yes, even Beverly, though she didn't have quite as much to say or eat much of her danish:

As you can see, it's Roll up the Rim to Win season at Tim Horton's.²

In case you're wondering, that's my Dammit Doll playing the role of Beverly for the day. This seemed appropriate since the real Beverly was no doubt at work right then, possibly even in a meeting. My Dammit Doll is a prized possession, given to me by my grandmother. It usually lives in the chair beside my loom - you can spot it in one of the pics in my post about sectional warping on HFD. You cannot tell from this picture, but it has Very Very Skinny Legs, metal button eyes, and a little poem around its neck:

When you want to throw the phone
And kick the desk and shout
Here's a little "Dammit" Doll
You cannot do without.

Just grasp it firmly by the legs
And find a place to slam it,
And as you whack the stuffing out,
Yell, "Dammit, dammit, dammit!"

This is actually the second Dammit Doll I have owned. The first one had plastic button eyes which shattered into a zillion pieces one day when these instructions were followed to a T. Dear ol' Gramma figured she'd best get me another one right quick, and made sure the new one was more indestructable. ;)

So, Beverly, if you're reading, I hope you enjoyed your coffee (and Ron says thank you for the danish). :D

Now for the Blog Awards. A week or so ago, Sue of Life Looms Large and Peg of Talking About Weaving each gifted me with blog awards, which made me feel GRATE. :D Sometimes I wonder if anyone out there is really interested in all my blathering on and all your comments, emails and now blog awards reassure me that I'm not too boring or wasting my time and yours here. :) And so, even though blog awards seem suspiciously similar to email chain letters (which I delete with extreme prejudice), I was really tickled and flattered to get these and want to pass them on. For one of them I'm supposed to list five of my addictions and then five of my favourite blogs; for the other no addictions are required but it's eight blogs I'm supposed to list. I'm going to combine the two, list five addictions and eight favourite blogs.

My addictions: chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, and chocolate. Is that cheating? Okay then:

1. Chocolate - in all its forms. Except maybe white. I'll eat white, but I'm not addicted to it. These days my faves are Ghirardelli mints, Toblerone and cocoa. Mmm, cocoa!
2. A toss up between colour and fibre. Best of all: colourful fibre! Spinning it, weaving it, knitting it, just petting it.
3. Blogs (and social networking in general) - I'm subscribed to 42 blogs and counting!
4. Computer games (and social networking in general!) - this is, after all, how I met my husband...
5. CATS. My cats in particular (we're down to only four now, but four's a good number) but also cats in general.

My favourite blogs were hard to choose since I'm subscribed to so many and adding more every day. My top eight list looks like this (in no particular order):

1. U*Handblog - the first blog I ever started reading. I love Lisa's wit and sense of humour. Her bags are also FAB.
2. Angry Chicken - the first blog I ever subscribed to. I love Amy's approach to life, play, motherhood and all things craft.
3. Weaving A Life - I want to be Laura Fry when I grow up, plain and simple. Stalkerish, much?
   
4. Ninja Knowledge - Jenn is my go-to guru for blog gadgets, intel, know-how and all things blogarific.
5. Craft Stylish - a craft portal, not an single blog, but So. Many. Great. Projects. I post my scarfas here sometimes. :) Also, I find links to fab new blogs here.
6. Fibermania - a feast for the eyes, and for anyone addicted to colour and fibre, heavy on the colour. Makes me want to take up quilting.
7. Needled - a fascinating glimpse into the life and mind of a talented Scottish fibre artist; also some really amazing knitting patterns.
8. Life Looms Large - I just love Sue's enthusiasm for everything from weaving to photography to.. well, everything!

So there you are. Please don't lynch me for only including two weaving blogs!

Phew. I *think* I'm all caught up now! On the docket for tomorrow: guest scarves from Linda Gettman. MANY guest scarves from Linda Gettman, in fact!



1. Owing to my complete lack of gainful employment, which has its drawbacks, I assure you. Although, you know, I have trouble thinking of any...

2. Which is to say: it's Lent. Gotta hand it to the sneaky little devils, makin' sure no one gives up their Tim's for 40 days.

The same only different [Scarf 29]

Yesterday I mentioned that I planned to cut off each of these scarves as I weave them and then rethread with a different stripe pattern. Sue asked me how I do this and when I started to answer I realized it'd be a lot easier just to show her.

First, I put lease sticks in the cross behind the shafts and secure them to the back beam:


To do that, I tromp first on one plain weave treadle and insert a stick behind the shafts and then tromp on the other plain weave treadle and do it again. Then I put the handy dandy rings wot my dear ol' Mum gave me for Christmas into the ends of the sticks to keep them together (but not too close together!) and dangle the works from the back beam.

Next I whack the old scarf off:


Normally when you're cutting and tying you want to be very sure to completely release the tension on your warp, else you run the risk of having the ends sproing right out of the reed and maybe even the heddles. In this case, though, they're coming out of the heddles anyway so it doesn't matter so much. I still did let most of the tension off, mind you. I'm just sayin'.

After chopping off the old scarf and untying it from the loom, I pull the threads out of the reed and the heddles and leave them dangling from the lease sticks at the back...


...while I organize my fancy schmancy hang-the-shafts-off-the-castle-from-just-the-right-height-for-threading set up. This is a finely tuned system involving highly engineered parts, namely: little girls' hairbobs, dpns and some cheap shower curtain rings, all of which were obtained at the dollar store. Best three bucks I ever spent!

Let me just say right now: I love hairbobs. They're like tiny little bungy cords, and I use them ALL the time. Occasionally I even put them in my hair.



The dpns hold the shafts up at a comfortable height for threading. They also hold up the hairbobs, which are hooked under the dpn and held in place because the big plastic balls on the end are too fat to squeeze back through the space they're allowed. Over time one of my hairbobs has stretched alarmingly (it's not the only thing!) so I just wrap it around its dpn a few extra time to take up the extra length. The hairbobs are attached to the shower curtain rings at the other end so that they've got easy to open and close hooks just ready and waiting.

Once all that's in place, I take the lease sticks off the back beam and hang them from the castle...



...and I'm all set to thread again!

Now, that's all well and good, but I'm guessing Sue's question was actually more along the lines of "how do you rearrange the order of the threads?" At this point I haven't done - they're all waiting in the lease sticks in the same order they were when I cut off the last scarf.

Here, for instance, are the first five ends which are presenting themselves for threading in the same order they were used previously:



That's not the order I want to use them in this time, though, so I simply thread them out of sequence. You may just be able to tell in this pic that the threads are not threaded in the same order as they appear in the cross:


This may sound a bit alarming since we're all taught to guard our threading cross so carefully and not let anything happen to get the threads out of order. The fact of the matter is, however, that once those lease sticks are pulled out, the threads have no idea what order they were in and couldn't care less.

Well, all right. That's a bit flippant and it's not really quite that straightforward. There is some fine print here, which reads like this: these threads were wound five-at-a-time, and I am always careful to make sure that a thread from one group of five doesn't wander over and get mixed up with its neighbouring groups - they move about within their group but not beyond it. Taking a thread out of its group of five and threading it even an inch or two away can play havoc with your tension and produce tangles. Also, I do this with smooth, easy to manage threads, not hairy stuff nor fragile stuff.


Rethreading like this is easy as pie, but it still helps to have a little assistance (my apologies for the viewing angle here - the only time she stood still long enough to get a pic was when she realized there was nowhere to go up ahead. Besides, while this isn't her best angle, it's still pretty cute. I just love the fluffy little pantaloons she's always wearing):



Once I'm rethreaded, I sley as usual...


... and then I pull out those lease sticks you can still see hanging behind the shafts. I always do so before tying on, since the little bit of criss-crossing the threads are doing in the sticks will play silly buggers with the tension if I don't. I also drop the shafts back down before tying on for much the same reason.


All tied on, now with new stripes!

Here's a comparison of yesterday's stripes with today's:


Makes a difference, huh?

Picture's so bright, I gotta wear shades [Scarf 28]

Okay, so the scarf's bright too. Might want to don some shades yourself! Still, that's not what I'm talking about...

As I mentioned a while ago, Lulu's LCD started dying on me few weeks back and it finally got so bad that I stopped using her altogether and switched back to our old Dell desktop. It hurt to do it, but not as much as it hurt to squint at her nearly black screen or listen to her making that terrible dying-flourescent-lightbulb whine. You'll have to take my word on the whine, but you can see the screen for yourself:


See the text on the right side? Yeah, neither could I.

Then last week I bit the bullet and ordered a new screen. After a few days of waiting anxiously, the screen arrived yesterday so I dashed right out to drop it and Lulu off at the doc's, which was a bit of a wrench as it's the first time I've been separated from her overnight. Still, her surgery went really well and she's home now, safe and sound and so bright it's almost painful to look at her. This is The. Best. News. EVAR since, of all the screens on all the computers in the house, Lu's is by far the best. The screen is sharp, the colours are accurate and the picture is bright, at least when it's not dark. It's like having a brand new computer, only she's my old computer so all my stuff is right where I left it. And it cost only under $300 for the screen, expedited shipping and installation, which was a far sight better than replacing a $1700 laptop!

So enough about the computer already. Let's talk scarves! I'm still in the midst of Warp #8, which is the brightly coloured warp inspired by Melody's quilt. Having spent so much time taking pictures of my process for warping F2B, I decided I may as well gild the lily and take pictures of many different ways to create stripes with the warp. Since I did the first two scarves with the colours arranged randomly, today I cut the warp, chose a new colour progression and rethreaded in my usual reflected regular stripe:


I wove the scarf with the same weft I used in Scarf #27. Tomorrow I'll cut the warp, rethread in a different stripe pattern, and use the same weft again. By the end of the warp I should have a collection of scarves that demonstrate a little of the variety you can get when winding more than one colour at a time. :)

Incidentally, this warp is SO bright that I decided to intentionally weave this as a scarflette rather than a full length scarf - a little will definitely go a long way here! Plus, that'll let me yield even more stripe variety since I'll use up less warp in each scarf AND it'll give me a number of scarflettes to try various construction ideas out on. Really looking forward to it. :)

And if it also just happens to mean I can get my scarf blogged before going out for wings with Da Crowd^(tm)... well that's just serendipity!



P.S. I have added a new search field to the right sidebar. If you've been wondering where you saw that post about e.g. coffee bombing¹, now you can find it again!

P.P.S. I have joined the WeaveRing blog ring, and created a brand new Cape Breton Artisans blog ring; you will also find new links to these in the sidebar. :) I am glad to be in such lovely company but I have to say I am not enamoured of Ringsurf's website, so I also created a new Cape Breton Artisans blog reader as a sort of one stop shopping locale for local artisans' blogs. You should check it out!


1. Holy cow! I forgot all about my virtual coffee bombing! Tomorrow - I'll post about that tomorrow.

Yep, definitely better [Scarf 26 & 27]

Hmm, I kinda forgot to conclude yesterday's post. I blame the hour - was pretty foggy by four aye em, letmetellyou. The point was that taking so many pictures and videos made dressing the loom take aaaaaages longer than usual, so I ran out of time to weave a scarf yesterday. (We just won't mention that Wednesday is also the night that three of my fave t.v. shows air and I couldn't tear myself away from the boob tube for three hours straight.)

However, to make up for slacking off yesterday, today I wove scarf #26 AND scarf #27. :) How's that for due diligence? I considered weaving my make-up scarf on Friday but I didn't want to distract from Beth's beeeeooootiful guest scarves tomorrow, so (after sleeping until noon - wooph!) I knuckled down and got two done today. :)

Here's the first scarf, done in a really lovely shade of dark teal. I'm nearly out of this colour and will definitely be ordering it again - I've loved it in everything I've used it in. It's quite a bit darker than the teal that's in the warp but still blends well with it. I always like using a fairly dark weft on a really brightly striped warp - the dark colour always makes the bright shades *pop*.






For the second scarf I used the same colour I used in scarf #22. It's another shade from the original quilt that I based this colour scheme on, so it's no surprise that this scarf turned out really well, too.





These were both done in the same 4/8 unmercerized cotton I've been using so much lately. I think I'll use something different for the next one just to change things up a bit. Oh, and parenthetically: I beat these two quite loosely - around 7 PPI UT. I didn't set out to do that, it just seemed to come about even though I was beating as I normally do. The difference must be the extra inch of width in the warp - surprising how such a little change in width affects your beat, huh?

Coming up tomorrow: a pair of stunning scarves woven by Beth Mullins that you don't want to miss!

Better late than never?

Okay, I'll just cut right to the chase: today's scarfa is not only late, it is absent. *Ahem* I do have a moderately good reason for this, however - and, I hope, a reasonably good substitute. And hey, it's still Wednesday somewhere out there, right?

The reason for today's complete lack of scarf are twofold. The first goes back to last week when Beth won the free scarf kit in my first free giveaway. Beth picked her colours right away and I promptly wound her warp and weft. The kit is all boxed and ready for the mail... and yet, I was anxious about sending it. It turns out that Beth warps her loom from front to back, you see, and I honestly wasn't sure how well my warp chains would work from front to back. I wind an inch worth of threads at a time, which works a treat from back to front but I wasn't sure what would happen when an inch worth of threads made their way through the reed and moseyed up to the heddles - I feared that I'd send the kit off to Beth and it would turn into a tangly nightmare on her loom rather than an exciting prize. If anyone was going to be faced with a tangly nightmare on a loom, I wanted it to be me and my loom. And so I decided that I would wind Warp #8 onto the loom from front to back to make sure it works okay and to identify any potential pitfalls and solutions.

Then, since I wanted to write up instructions for warping F2B to send with the kit anyway,¹ I thought it would be a peachy idea to take a lot of pictures and even some videos of the process. This would be killing two birds with one stone, I thought: I would both test the process and document it. I should mention at this point that, although I learned F2B first and warped my loom that way for 10 years, when I saw Laura Fry demonstrate her method for warping a loom² in 2004 I never looked back. I've warped B2F almost exclusively since then - using a slightly modified version of Laura's method - so my F2B skills are Very Rusty Indeed. In retrospect it would have been a good idea to test and refine the F2B process on one warp (or even two!) before documenting the process. As it was, I documented plenty of false starts. ;)

Anyhoo, I now have one (1) warp on the loom and eighty-seven (87) photos and videos of the process I went through to get it there. You may be pleased to learn, as I was, that by far the most difficult part of the process was figuring out where the heck to put the tripod in order to take a video of threading. I confess that dealing with the camera and tripod was a bit sweary but the warp itself wound on as smoothly from front to back as it ever did from back to front. Yay! I am tres relieved!

Yea, I am also Very Tired. Ergo, I shall post a bunch of pics³ so you can see that I did at least work on a scarf today but I am not going to weave a scarf at this hour. I'll try to weave two tomorrow to make up for it. :)

Oh, and a note about the colours in Warp #8. I'd really meant to do the blue/green/brown number I keep talking about but it's not an 8/8 warp like the one Beth chose so it wouldn't have been a good test. I really wanted to use 8/8, which meant I needed to pick some new colours. I was mulling over colours when I remembered a fabulous quilt I saw on Melody Johnson's blog, Fibermania. I ran across Fibermania last week⁴ and fell madly in love with Melody's hand dyed fabrics - she is all about colour, is Melody, and you know how I eat that up. Yesterday Melody posted a new quilt she'd made and I've gone back to look at it several times; I even commented on how inspiring her use of colour was... and as I remembered this it dawned on me: I could actually use the colours from her fabulous quilt and see if they make a similarly fabulous warp. :)


It's bright, like the quilt, and it makes me happy. :D I really like the warp on the loom - will be interesting to see how it weaves up with some of the other colours from the quilt in the weft.

Without futher ado, here are several of today's pics of warping the loom from front to back (in slightly smaller format than usual so that the page will load is somewhat less than 30 minutes):

I've put quilter's adhesive measuring tape on my beater, measuring from the centre out. Makes it soooo much faster to know where to start sleying!


I use these white erasers all the time to keep my reeds and raddle from sliding around in the beater and in various other ways.


I usually hold the cross in my hand to sley, in which case I tie the warp to the front beam at the choke tie. This pic shows my method of tying the warp on so that it won't slip around...

...I realized, however, that I wanted to preserve my winding cross and that sleying this way would lose it, so I put lease sticks into the cross instead...


...and fastened them to the front beam with the smallest bungy cords known to man: hairbobs! I have tons of these, and use them all the time. People assume this means I have a daughter; really, I just have a barely controlled mess. ;)


The best threading hook EVAR. I also have tons of these, as I am prone to setting them down in odd places and not being able to find them again.


The threads choose their own order for sleying. :)


The first thread being sleyed. The rulers mean I never have to measure where to start.


All the threads sleyed. Imagine a clever video [here] showing how that happened .


The shafts all propped up for ease of threading. I always do this when threading B2F as it's a much better height and easier on my back. Turns out it's better just to leave them down when threading F2B. Who knew?


I [almost always] pull over a threading repeat worth of heddles at a time, and then rarely check my threading after - I am occasionally Saddened by this fact, but I know I've got the right number of heddles on the right shafts before I start, so if I happen to flub up and thread something wrong, I never have to undo more than a single repeat to sort out the heddles and always have the ones I need.


Once I was threaded, I tied the warp onto the beam as usual to provide tension while tying onto the back beam. Turns out it's a really good idea to move the lease sticks up to the beater first since they play havoc with the way the warp spreads if you leave them on the front beam. Guess how I know this?


Tying onto the back beam with surgeon's knots. Look at all that loom waste! B2F, how I miss you! I always tie the outside bouts first to support the rod.


A close up of a surgeon's knot, from a video showing how to tie them, how to tighten them up and how to loosen them again. I never use anything but surgeon's knots. (Except for when I do. Ahem.)


All tied on and ready to go!


Knots are around the beam - time to add paper. Again with the loom waste. Woe is me.


Crankin' and yankin' all at once. Constant tension, as Laura would say. Good thing I've got long arms and a loom with a narrow depth! I actually took vids of winding on this way, and of arranging the warp in a different fashion that lets you put tension on it from behind the loom where you can reach the crank more easily, and of the actual crank and yank method (i.e. without putting tension on the warp while winding). All of them worked just fine even though I'd wound in 1" bouts. O happy day!


D'oh. Forgot to take a pic of the front of the warp once it was all wound on, with the lease sticks still in. Oh well, here's me ready to chop off the end.


And now tying onto the front beam. More surgeon's knots!

All ready to weave! All I need now is eight hours' sleep and I'm all set.

So there you have it. The Cliff notes (Coles' notes, for any Canucks in the crowd) version of F2B warping. Tomorrow we'll see what some weft does with pretty quilty warp, just as soon as I get that scarf kit in the mail...

1. Not that Beth will need them, as you'll see on Friday - the scarves Beth is sharing with us for this week's guest scarf are actually pretty similar in concept, although much finer and more luscious than my simple cotton ones. Mmm Mmm Mmm!

2. If you haven't seen Laura's CD of videos and instructions titled "You Have to be Warped to Weave", you really should! (And I'm not just saying that because I played a small role in its genesis...)

3. The vids are not cooperating. :( For some reason when I chop them down to nice, short, clear snippits, Picasa goes BOOM. Very sad. Also, Google/Blogger wants me to sign some scary user agreement/release form before I can upload videos. Just doesn't seem worth it somehow. At least not at 3:00 aye em.

4. Via Sue's blog, maybe? Ravelry? A Google search of some kind? I can't remember!