Tis the Season I

(Psst: Please don't notice that these scarves are cleverly disguised as place mats and table runners. Ho. Ho. Ho.)

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.

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:

• Clayton's Project 365 Photo of the Day
• Marg's pretty fused glass houses
• Alison's oh so soft bunnylace in 'bramble vine'
• Nancy's Silk Garden Scarf (her first installment in her rigid heddle scarfaweek)
• Kimberly's beautiful hand dyed shawl
• Liz's first stash busting scarfadayorweekormonth

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.

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.

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:

• Alison's Feb01 dye-a-day post: 'Official launch and dye-a-day!'
• Clayton's Feb01 photo plus bonus gourd

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!

Weaving Courses Offered

Woohoo! Time for a Big Honkin' Announcement! As I may have alluded to once or twice but never really expanded on, Mom and I are offering two five-day weaving courses at her studio on Vashon Island, WA in January of 2010. Now that the madness of the latest craft market is over, I've finally had enough time to put together a respectably complete prospectus of what we'll be doing.

(I had intended to do up a spiffy web page on my Weavers Palette site to announce this but, woe is me, my mad webskillz were not up to the task. Or not up to making it as pretty as Blogger can, at any rate, so to the greater and prettier wisdom of Blogger I shall yield.)

Here is Thee Scoop, for your viewing pleasure:

Beginning & Continuing
Weaving Courses
from
The Weaver's Palette
& Willingham Weavery

Mother/daughter weaving tag team Sue Willingham and Janet Dawson are offering two five-day courses in January 2010: Weaving 101 – Beginning Weaving (January 11-15), and Weaving 102 – Continuing Weaving (January 18-22).

Courses run from Monday to Friday and include an hour or two of “class” each morning and afternoon plus several hours of time at the looms with two (2!) experienced instructors close at hand, for a total of 6 hours of instruction and supervised weaving each day for five days. In addition, the studio will be open before and after scheduled class times from Monday to Thursday; students are welcome and encouraged to weave on their own as much as they like between classes. Students who complete their first project with time to spare may plan and weave a second if time permits (additional materials fees may apply in this case).

There is a maximum enrollment of eight students in each course and there will be two (2!) instructors on hand at all times, so students will receive plenty of individual attention and assistance.

NB: Sue's studio contains looms made by several different manufacturers so students will have an opportunity to meet and test drive jack, countermarche and rigid heddle looms made by Ashford, Glimakra, Harrisville, LeClerc, Macomber, and Schacht – an invaluable experience for anyone considering purchasing a loom for the first time. The Weavery also has a nearly complete set of Handwoven Magazine and many other weaving texts that students may make use of during the week.

Course Descriptions

Weaving 101: Beginning Weaving ~ January 11-15, 2010

Topics covered:

• Loom meet & greet: the parts of a loom and how they work
• Other weaving paraphernalia: what it's for and how to use it
• Planning a project: choosing threads, set, structure and size
• Reading and creating drafts for weaving
• Dressing a loom from front to back
• Introduction to simple structures: plain weave, twill and basket weave
• How to actually weave: filling bobbins & shuttles, treadling a pattern, throwing the shuttle, maintaining an even beat and tidy selvages
• How to avoid and correct mistakes made while weaving
• How to stop weaving: hemstitching, hems, knotted fringes and other methods of securing your fabric
• How to wet finish cloth

Each student will wind a warp, dress a floor loom and weave a sampler in plain weave, basket weave and a variety of twills, then use the skills learned from the sampler to weave a set of tea towels in her choice of colours on the same warp. Additional looms will be dressed and ready for students to weave samples of variations on plain weave and twill: warp faced, weft faced, twill gamps, and/or finger manipulated weaves. Students may plan and weave a second project if time permits.

Beginning Weaving makes use of the book Learning to Weave by Deborah Chandler; students are required to bring their own copy of the book to class. Students should also bring their own small, sharp scissors, blunt end tapestry needles, and note taking supplies. All other materials and equipment will be provided (though students who have their own shuttles and bobbins may wish to bring these as well). A materials fee will be charged.

Weaving 102: Continuing Weaving ~ January 18-22, 2010

Topics covered:

• Review of topics from Weaving 101
• Dressing the loom from back to front
• How to read a profile draft
• Moving beyond plain weave, basket weave and twill
• Mixing fibres together successfully

Each student will warp a floor loom in different structures and fibres, using warps and drafts provided by the instructors. Once the looms are dressed, students will rotate among the looms¹ and weave a project on each warp. Structures will vary from three to eight shafts, including krokbragd, waffle weave, lace, fancy twills, block weaves, unit weaves, and/or two shuttle weaves. Projects will include scarves, tea towels or table runners as appropriate for the fibres, structures and sets being used on each loom.

NB: Continuing Weaving (Weaving 102) is designed for students who already have some experience in weaving and dressing a loom, reading a simple draft and planning their own projects. It focuses more heavily on loom time than Weaving 101 so that students have ample time to weave each project with instructors nearby to offer assistance if required.

Students should bring their own small, sharp scissors, blunt end tapestry needles, and note taking supplies to class. All other materials and equipment will be provided (though students who have their own shuttles and bobbins may wish to bring these as well). A materials fee will be charged.

The Instructors

Janet Dawson (that's me!)

"I've always loved yarn: the colours, the textures, the feel of it in my fingers... As a girl, I used to spend hours sifting through my grandmother's yarn drawer and winding up the tangled skeins into tidy balls, then unwinding them so I could do it all over again. Gramma taught me to knit when I was nine and to crochet a little later but when I moved to Cape Breton Island in 1994 and took my first weaving class, I knew I'd found my place: at the loom.

Though I've always longed to create beautiful things, my strengths run more toward math, computers and mechanics. This makes weaving perfect for me because it combines structure and beauty, balances planning with creativity, and allows exploration within a clearly defined framework. In short, it lets the arty-farty right side of my brain and the techy and mechanical left side of my brain cooperate rather than compete for my attention.

I also love to teach! I come from a long line of teachers so it's in my blood and discovering a new way to explain an old idea so that it finally clicks for someone who's been struggling is a particular delight. That I can combine my two passions for weaving and teaching into an actual job is a constant source of surprise and wonder for me. That I can do it with my mother? Priceless!”

Janet learned to weave at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design in 1994 and taught the weaving program there from 2000 to 2009. She has been a member of the Sydney Weavers' Guild since '94 and was the HGA Rep for the Maritime provinces for four years. She has had articles published in the Ontario Spinners & Handweavers magazine, Fibre Focus, and twice in Handwoven Magazine, most recently in the Nov/Dec 2009 issue. Janet has her own weaving business, The Weaver's Palette, and is one of the founding members of Mixed Media Artisans Co-operative, a retail gallery showcasing the work of artisans from across Cape Breton Island and mainland Nova Scotia. Her handwoven blankets, scarves, table linens, garments and other items have been sold in shops in the Maritimes for 15 years and now grace the homes and wardrobes of customers across North America, Europe and as far away as Australia and the country of Georgia.

Janet is also active in the online fibre community. She writes two fibre related blogs: Scarfaday, which is almost entirely devoted to scarves, and High Fibre Diet, which covers fibre topics of all stripes. She also broadcasts live on Weaving In My Jammies (access code: jammiecam), where viewers can watch her weave and ask questions in real time about what she's doing or anything else related to her high fibre diet. Janet goes by janetdawson on Twitter, on Ravelry, and on Weavolution and by Janet Dawson on WeaveZine.

Though Janet has experience weaving and teaching advanced, multi-shaft structures, her current passion is for colour and texture in simple structures like plain weave and basket weave, and twills both plain and fancy.

Sue Willingham (a.k.a. My Dear Ol' Mum)

"Weaving has become the focus of my life since retirement, a way to be creative and to be involved with creative people. I especially enjoy helping people learn to weave and to explore more about weaving. My students never fail to surprise me with their individual flair -- I always learn as much as they do!

Sharing a love of weaving with my daughter is, of course, a very special gift. Her enthusiasm is the reason I took my first class. Since then sharing and consulting together has bridged the miles between us. I am really looking forward to teaching these workshops with Janet!"

Sue learned to weave in 1996 at the Weaving Works in Seattle – and via phone consultations with Janet! She moved to Vashon Island in 1998 and after retiring in 2001 had more time to focus on weaving. In 2005 she was asked by friends to teach them to weave. Her living room wasn't big enough so she converted her garage into a studio and later in 2005 opened the Willingham Weavery there. All of her looms were used when she acquired them. Currently there are eight floor looms and several table looms. During the workshops two more will be added temporarily for participants to use. Sue's weaving interests are eclectic -- she likes to experiment with new weave structures and various yarns. As looms have been added to her studio, new opportunities arise because of the size and number of shafts.

In 2003 Sue was one of the co-founders FiberNet, a group of Vashon fiber enthusiasts who share, teach, and learn from one another and, in 2008, mounted a show in Vashon Island's Blue Heron gallery. An outgrowth of FiberNet and of Sue's weaving classes is Vashon Weavers, a group of island weavers that meets regularly and enthusiastically to share and learn.

Sue has been a member of the Seattle Weavers' Guild since 2002 and is currently serving a third term as recording secretary. Next door to her studio is Vashon Island Alpacas; Sue works with the owners to produce and sell spinning batts and yarn from the luscious fleece of their animals under the name Vashon Alpaca Fibers. For several years she has participated in the Vashon Island Holiday Studio Tour the first two weekends in December; other island weavers also show their work at her studio during these tours.

Sue and Janet: Mother/Daughter Weaving Duo Extraordinaire!

Together, Sue and Janet are an international, east-meets-west, island to island, border hopping, mother/daughter weaving duo extraordinaire! They may live on opposites coasts of two different countries but they visit one another as often as possible and, due to the wonders of the interwebs (and a couple of webcams and hands free phones!), they weave “together” almost as much as if they lived down the road. The two of them live and breathe to weave and are often in consultation with one another on projects, on teaching, and on life in general.

Collectively, Janet and Sue represent almost 30 years of weaving and teaching experience. Their shared enthusiasm for their craft will inspire you and their mother/daughter antics will entertain you while their breadth of teaching experience and subtle (or not so subtle) differences in approach and technique provide you with a solid foundation of weaving theory and skills that will enable you to weave confidently on your own for years to come.

The Willingham Weavery

Sue's studio, The Willingham Weavery, is located on beautiful Vashon Island in the Puget Sound between Seattle and the Olympic peninsula. There are several places for visitors to the island to stay and to eat; anyone coming from away to take the workshops may contact us and we'll provide you with suggestions.

The Weavery is also right next door to Vashon Island Alpacas (where my niece and nephew live!) and Sue sells alpaca bats for felting and spinning as well as spun fibre that weaves up beeeooootifully. If there's interest, arrangements could be made for a tour of the farm. We may even be able to arrange a special yoga session for Madly Weaving Weavers if there are folks who'd participate - always a good idea to give your body a break after weaving for six hours a day!

1. Weave on one loom and then another and another, that is... as opposed to, you know, standing in amongst the looms and spinning round like a dervish. Though you're welcome to do that too if it makes you happy!

For your viewing pleasure: Scarfaday Live

I use the term "pleasure" loosely, you realize. There's not much to see here besides the clickety-clack of a loom at work and a shuttle swooshing back and forth, but you can now watch Weaving In My Jammies live on JustinTV. Access code: jammiecam!

Except that it won't be online all the time, or even most of the time. When it IS live, though, you can come watch me weave and chat with me while I do.¹ I'll be happy for the company, and happy to answer any questions you may have about what I'm up to. If you're very lucky, you might even catch a glimpse of an elusive loom cat. You will almost certainly glimpse some flannel.

If you do stop by, be sure to introduce yourself! There's a little chat balloon jobbie to the lower right of the screen.


1. And by chat, I meant txtmsg. I've got the mic off, 'cause I didn't want to have to make it a 18+ site and One Never Knows when some swearing might happen.

And the calendar goes to...

...Ron Dawson! Errrr... hang on now, that won't do at all.

Okay, try again: the calendar goes to... Evelyn Oldroyd! No, wait, she's got one already. Does she have one already? Yes, yes she does. Is it definitely the 1998 and not the 1997? Yes, it most certainly is.

Oooookay, try again. The calendar goes to... Ron Daws-- gnaaah!

*deep breath* Once more: The calendar goes to....

...PattyAnne of PattyAnne's Place! Congrats, PattyAnne! Your calendar is all wrapped up and waiting right by the door for its trip to the PO in the morning. :D

Big thanks to everyone who weighed in with an opinion on random vs. reflected. The answers were about 2:1 in favour of random, with 2 people not coming down on either side. (plus a third lurking in twitter DMs - you know who you are!)

Don't be too disappointed, those of you who didn't win, for all hope is not lost: I still have a handful of these and they'll likely be turning up in future contests, so Watch This Space.

It's contest time again!

Time for another quick and dirty survey, and hence another contest! It's going to be really quick and really dirty this time, so weigh in quickly for your chance at a Mahvelous Prize!

First, the question:

Do you prefer scarves with random stripes, like these:

Or those with reflected stripes, like these:

And now for rules and the prize:

To enter, simply comment on this post and tell me which you like best - easy peasey! At noon on Friday, I will pick a comment at random and that person will win... (dum dum dum dum duuuummmmm) A 1998 calendar!¹

Wait, don't go! I may be shamelessly giving away ancient calendars but it's not as lame a prize as you may think! This is actually a vintage² hand woven calendar made by the Sydney Weaver's Guild:

Yes, it's from 1998, but it's got handwoven swatches for each month! Actual bits of handwoven cloth, with a different thematically chosen structure and colour scheme for each month. Complete with drawdowns by Yrs Trly even, so you can weave them up yourself if you so desire. These are really nifty little swatch books and we sold hundreds of them all over the world back in the day.

But wait, there's more! Absolute proof that everything old is new again: the dates on the calendar are correct for 2009! I promise to get the calendar into the mail really really fast so that you can enjoy at least one month of accurate dates. Just disregard the "1998" on the cover and you'll be all set for the month of December - after that, it reverts back to being a swatch book.

Please be sure to include your email address in your comment so that I can contact you for your snail mail address. Do not include your snail mail address in your comment unless you like strange people appearing on your doorstep or junk mail in your mailbox!³

This time I really will only consider comments actually attached to this post and not email sent directly to me, as I'm going MAAAD this week trying to get ready for next weekend's market and won't have time to figure out how to merge the two lists. I'll also only consider comments that contain an email address since I want to put the calendar into the mail toot sweet (like on Saturday) so that there's really some hope of it arriving by Dec 1, so I want to be able to contact the lucky winner ASAP.

There, I think that's everything.

[Edit: Oops, not quite everything! You can put in your twitter user name instead of your email address if you prefer. Just so long as I can get 'hold of you really fast.

Oops: one more thing! Even if you'd rather not have the calendar - perhaps you're not a weaver yourself or maybe you've already got one? - I'd still like your input! Please chime in anyway and either say in your comment you'd rather forgo the prize or let me know on Friday if you happen to win. - J ]

1. I did say "really dirty"!

2. Is 11 years old vintage? I'd say so, for a calendar!

3. You might also like to hide your email address with an [at] instead of an @ and a [dot] rather than a . so that spammers do not sniff it out and start to use it. (e.g. jandawson[at]gmail[dot]com).

Just the stash, Mom, Just the stash. [Scarves ?? and 44-46]

You may recall that when Mom came to visit¹ last May, I stashed her in my yarn room for a month. Some people might object to being stuck in a storage room rather than a guest room but, being a weaver, Mom is quite content with the arrangement.² For one thing it's the only room in the house besides our bedroom, office and bathroom that actually has a door (for some reason she objects to cats climbing into bed with her).³ For another, it's filled with yarn:

Remember this? One wall of my yarn room/guest room/Mother containment unit/playground.

The door's nice but it's really the yarn she likes, even though she says it makes it hard to sleep sometimes. It overstimulates her and gives her all kinds of ideas for things to weave, apparently, and I don't doubt it. In years past when she visited I'd stick my head in and find her lying on the bed, staring thoughtfully up at the walls and worrying her lip or tapping her cheek as she combined the yarn on the walls in her mind. "I'd love to use that one and that one together," she'd say, pointing at the walls and looking at me hopefully.

I had my stash sort of organized, though - at least in theory. Production yarns were on one wall, knitting yarns on another, yarns I collected before starting the business on a third, etc - and I tried not to mix them up too much since some were business supplies and some weren't. And we were always so busy... and I never wove many scarves... There was always some reason I put her off, poor thing.

This year, though - This was The Year of the Scarf! I swear, she literally clapped her hands with glee when I didn't just allow her to go crazy in there but asked her, pretty please with sugar and cherries and all the trimmings, to wind me up some stash scarf warps. She was like a kid in a candy store mixed with a kid whose favourite toys were all in her room - she'd disappear for ages and when I finally tracked her down she'd be sitting on her bed with piles of yarn all around her and a big excited smile on her face: "Look at these, honey! Ooo, and what about this!? And you could use this or this... ooo, or that for weft!"

The end result was seventeen (17!!) warps she wound for three or four scarves apiece. The first couple of combos she just made a single warp out of but by the third one she was making two warps from each so that she could take one home and weave it too - the idea being that we could then compare to see how our respective scarves turned out. Here's the lot, aren't they gorgeous?

The stash warps Mom wound for me while she was here in May.

We thought they were so cool (and the pictures so neat) that we sent them off to Handwoven to see if they'd be interested in them for an Endnotes but I guess they already had stash warps articles planned for an upcoming issue or something so they didn't bite. Their loss, I think!

Anyhoo, we were both really excited about this back in May and each of us put on a warp right away. Mom actually wove three of them in quick succession, and they all turned out GRATE. See for yourself:

Mom's first three stash warps, all woven up. Soooo pretty!

Aren't those pictures FAB? I particularly like the ones that show the finished scarves all swirled up with their own wefts.

Unfortunately, I hit my Weaving Funk and stalled during the first stash warp I put on. Truth be told, I think the two are related to some extent. I don't mean to say that the stash scarves caused my funk, no sirree! They are BEEOOOTIFUL and I love them, and I love that my Dear Ol Mum (who I also love) wound them for me. But Mom's scarves were soooo pretty and her pics soooo cleverly composed that I, in my funkiness, thought to myself: "how can I compete with that? How can I improve on that??" As if competing or improving on was important somehow! Pfff! Ridiculous! But there it is: my darkest, dirtiest secret is that I'm a competitive little bi...er, thing, even where my Dear Ol Mum is concerned. I'm working on it, really I am. :P

I did manage to finish that first stash warp, though. And then, since those three scarves and three similar stashy scarves Mom had woven before she left sold like hot cakes in the shop, I managed to squeeze out a second one over the summer in spite of my weaving dry-spell. As it turns out, the two warps I chose were two of the ones Mom had also woven and we both wound up picking similar weft colours, too. Great minds think alike and all that:

Gaah! Mom's pics are much better than mine! Let it go, Janet, let it go...

Sadly, I didn't take any finished shots of the pastel warp, or if I did I can't find them. I still have one of those left - the only stash warp scarf that hasn't sold yet, I think because it's very springy colours and I didn't get them woven until fall - so maybe I'll get one taken yet. Or maybe I'll unearth the pics I thought I took but can't locate.

Those two warps were the only scarves I wove between June and September, actually. I've been weaving like crazy this month, though - and, now that my funk is over, these stash warps are calling to me! I wove one last week and am hoping to get several more done before the market next month. I'm sure they'll be as popular there as they were in the shop.

Here's the one I've done so far:

Warp #17, Scarves #44-#46

As I wove the first one I thought I was beating the weft in too hard and that it would cover up the lovely warp too much, so I beat the next two very lightly. In retrospect, I like the hand of the first one best even though the warp does show better in the other two. The third one, #46, was a particular experiment: I couldn't find the exact shade of grey I wanted on my production wall so I used a fine silk that my friend Barbara (hi, Barbara!) gave me years ago. The colour wasn't quite as blue as I wanted but hit the mark pretty closely. It must've been a good choice 'cause that's the scarf that the peanut gallery of weavers I showed these to on Thursday liked best. All three of these are sooo drapey and soft and the colours look reeeally great with a chocolate brown vest that I have, so I'm hoping they'll go quickly at the sale.

I still have four more warps from October to share with you but I'll save those for future posts. Right now, it's back to der loom for me!


1. Read: "work like a slave"
2. Good thing, 'cause I haven't got a guest room!
3. Hmm. Maybe I'm adopted?

Round Up [Scarves 36-41]

I finally got a chance to take some after shots of some of the scarves I've done the past week or so. I took all these pics in the shop, actually, so the colours are really pretty accurate - the ones I've been taking in the basement lately have been Very Odd Indeed. Maybe we changed the lightblubs or something?

First up is Warp #12, which is the same colourway as Warp #1. You may recall that I wove the first one just like Scarf #3 except that I hemmed the ends rather than fringing them. After I finished that first scarf, though, I resleyed at 8 EPI rather than 10 to see whether I liked the hand of the looser fabric better.


Scarf #36...

...Scarf #37...

...and Scarf #38!

Turns out that I do quite like the lighter hand: the 8/8 cotton woven up at 10 EPI is a really nice weight for winter but the scarves are ... well, let's just say they're Big Boned. At 8 EPI the scarves have a bit more drape and flexibility - and they're wider, of course. If I had to go out on a limb, I'd say the 10 EPI might be better for guys (narrower, sturdier, denser) and the 8 EPI ones might be preferable for da ladies. I'll definitely be doing more of each for the market and will try to pay attention to whether or not this theory carries any weight. :) I used the same old 4/8 cotton weft as usual for scarves 36 and 38; for 37 I used a cotton boucle of similar weight.

Next up, Warp #13, the wide Water Lilies scarves -- except that now that they're done, they make me think of the Scottish heath as well so now I'm not sure what to call it. Might have to have a "name that colourway" contest or summat. Name the palette, win the palette kinda thing. These are done in 4/8 cotton both warp and weft, with a planned stripe permutation in the warp. Anyhoo, here they are, whatever they'll wind up being called:

Scarf #39...

...Scarf #40...

...Scarf #41...

...and the whole happy family:

So there you have it: the first crop of scarves I'm getting ready for the craft market next month. I'm going to work both these colourways up as kits as well, and I think I might take some prewound warps to the market with me - either to sell to local weavers or to take orders if someone wants to choose his or her own weft colour.

Incidentally, I didn't make a slideshow out of these 'cause I put them on Flickr rather than uploading them right to Blogger, as my Picasa account is rapidly filling up. I don't yet know how to create a slideshow out of a Flickr set and if there's a handy little "create slideshow" button on my Flickr page, I'm not finding it. Can anyone shed any light?


I also wove off this wide scarf that I'd put on the Schacht Flip I borrowed from my friend Marie earlier today. Apart from an interlude of great wailing and gnashing of teeth, I got along pretty well with the Flip. I've got to give it back on Friday but I went ahead and put another warp on it this evening while Ron and I were watching t.v. Will keep you posted!