You're not gonna believe this...

Just last week I was commiserating with a friend about how hard it is to find good deals on old spinning wheels & looms in the Age of eBay. Then this came home with DH after work today:
Apparently someone was throwing it out. A friend noticed it on the curb, and called DH before he left work (thank goodness he drove the pick-up today!). It appears to be homemade, we think. At least I can't find a manufacturer's name on it, and it's made of different woods. The beams seem to be made of pine, some pieces are oak. The reed is missing, and one side of the beater is broken, but we can replace that (that rope is holding the pieces of the beater up, which is why it looks crooked). Other than that, I don't know enough about floor looms to know what else might be missing/broken. It does have string heddles, which I'm not crazy about, but we'd have probably have to change the heddle set-up to change to metal heddles. And I'm probably going to need boat shuttles eventually. It folds, thank goodness, so I won't trip over it leaving for work in the morning. :-DThough I'm interested in tinkering with it, it's going to be awhile before I can do anything, as I have way too many projects ongoing right now. Plus it is so big I don't know how much I'll end up using it, but we'll see. Thank goodness DH cleaned out the basement while I was away visiting my family! Happy anniversary to me!! (Our anniversary is tomorrow - what timing, eh?)


Now back to our regularly-scheduled topics. :-D While visiting the family I finished spinning the first bobbin of alpaca (YAY!) and carded the second batch (wow do those cards hurt my hands!). I also took the 'secret' knitting project, and did a few rows on that; and I took the small loom and worked on that. Setting it on the stand DH made sure makes the weaving go much faster! I thought of some stand improvements as well, such as a ratcheted cloth beam, but that will be a future improvement. Surprisingly, all that stuff fit in my car - including the dog - probably because both the stand and the spinning wheel come apart easily for travel (have I mentioned I love my Babe wheel?).

It was great to see the family again; they are far enough away that I don't see them nearly as often as I would like. The dog was on his best behavior, and we tried several new recipes and made some old favorites. All-in-all, it was a very good Thanksgiving.

We hope you all had a good Thanksgiving too! :-D

No news here...

I've been taking a bit of a vacation from crafting. I'll be out of town (and away from computers) the rest of the week, so I won't be able to post again til next week. Unfortunately, DH has to work so I'll be spending the first Thanksgiving without him in a very very long time. :-( I will be taking the hound though - he loves my family (and being the center of attention)! :-)

The tough decision is: which projects to take? I'm tempted to take the spinning wheel, the small loom scarf, and a couple of knitting projects; but realistically, which if any will I do (and what will fit in the car with my stuff and the hound?)? I'm definitely taking the alpaca that needs carding, but as to the rest....

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Oopsie!

I've been delinquent in both crafting & blogging - sorry! I hope to get back to it tonight. It's raining and generally nasty weather (snow! predicted tonight - early for here), so probably no dog-walk tonight. I'll have to break in my new running shoes on the treadmill, instead. :-(

Hopefully I will get some crafty stuff done tonight!

Sunday!

It's probably going to be housecleaning day, since I didn't do any yesterday. But I did make some progress on my projects.

First up, the Reader's Wrap on the Harp:The pockets are finally done. Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to finish them. I did buy washable white glue the other day, but I believe some sewing or knotting needs to be done as well before removing from the loom. I'll probably look through my books during the football game today.

Next - Grandma's Hearthside loom:As you can see, I did straighten up the warp on the back beam, which meant I had to re-tie the front beam. Also, I was having an awful time with the fell line, so I put this very small dowel in between the yarn I used to spread the warp out, and the hem, to help have something stiffer to beat against. I did get a straighter fell line, but ended up with a much more dense weave (which is actually ok - now I don't have to fold it under and stitch, plus I was having a tough time getting an even weave row-by-row). Adding the dowel, however has made it quite a bit harder to get the heddle down to the fell line to beat. Guess I'll be using the hair pick! I'm now ready to start the body of the project though. Yay!

I did some spinning between the first two weaving projects. Though it was only about 45-minutes' worth, I seem to be making more obvious progress.

And then I put the small loom on the stand DH made for me. It works really really well, and I can actually sit in my recliner ('unreclined') and weave! I'm really hesitant to drill holes in the side of this loom to attach it more securely, so I'm thinking of different ways to clamp it. I think blocks of wood with a thin piece of rubbery-type material glued on to grip will probably work, but will think on it some more. The blocks would make it much easier to position the loom where I want it; and at least with this project, it should be secure enough since I'm barely beating the weft. And I am still planning on building a RH loom myself, I just don't know when I'll have the time.

Wow, just look at that crappy edge:You sure can tell where I started! Not wanting to 'unweave' it all, I'm hoping it won't be noticeable once off the loom.

I never did get to the tied-rug project. Maybe one day this week.... I did get some rows done on the garter stitch project - no pics yet as I haven't decided if this is going to be a gift or not. :-)

And this is what my faithful companion did all day:Actually, he and his football followed me from room to room to room (since it seems everything - or at least stuff I need for the projects) is in a different room!). No wonder he's exhausted!

Saturday is for...

everything! I'll be doing a Craft-Rotation Day today - hopefully I will finally finish the pockets for the warp on the Harp! I'm starting with that project today. Next will be spinning the alpaca for the next wrap - I spun on Thursday and actually could see progress. :-D

Also in line for today is the scarf on the small rigid heddle loom, the project on Grandma's RH loom, a garter-stitch knitting project, and the neglected tied rug in the craft room.

I've already done my yoga program and had breakfast, and the Roomba is vacuuming another room, so now I just need a little caffeine and I'll be ready to start!

I'm baaack... sort of

Just a quick note - the new modem is all set up at home, and we finally got my computer to hook up to the 'net again (mine routes through DH's, and for some reason our local network would no longer work after installing the sat modem). No crafting has been done as we were trying to make the computers work, but hopefully I will be back on the ball tonight or tomorrow.

I did, however, want to thank everyone who voted in Tuesday's mid-term election. THANK YOU!

VOTE!

To everyone in the United States - GO VOTE TODAY! Today your voice is heard. We've seen all too well that having all of the branches of government in the hands of one party is a recipe for disaster, so let's take the country back - back to the people - back to it's proper checks and balances system - before the Constitution is completely ripped to shreds.


Crafty-wise, I've got nuthin'. I had thought I was going to spin last night, even though it was Small-Loom Project night, but was too busy trying to figure out why we couldn't hook up to the internet (Earthlink apparently had a huge problem yesterday - we never were able to get online) and cleaning up the computer room getting ready for our satellite modem (not a moment too soon!). Hopefully I will have crafty news tomorrow.

Saturday!

After getting a late start to the day, I got a late start on the crafty stuff too. I had planned to do a craft rotation day, but got sidetracked while re-arranging the furniture in the guest room so I could squeeze Grandma's Hearthside loom in. So, here is the loom in it's current home:
(Yikes - look at that nasty wind-on in the back! :-( I'm gonna have to fix that.)

I love this room - I love the color of the walls, I love the woodwork, I love the big window, the mementos are in here; when I started machine-knitting I set up in here. But as I became more involved with crafts and my stash started to grow it became such a hassle to truck everything out and find spots for it when we had overnight company that we set up a craft room in the basement, where most of my stuff resides, so I hadn't been spending any time in this room anymore.


This was my result from Thursday night when I couldn't see what I was doing:
I could not get a half-way-straight line across, so I 'unwove' this today and tried again, with this result:Better, but still.... I don't think I'm going to re-start again though. Thank goodness I didn't used square knots on the tie-on! I'm planning to do a hem of about 3/4 inch (or 1 inch if it looks better), of the warp thread.


Here is the project on the Harp:Still not much happening here. All I have left is to weave the hem, but I am very bad at finishing projects - once I get to the end I either lose interest, or I have a finishing hang-up - I think it's a hang-up. That's probably why I have so many UFO's laying around (I still haven't finished tying the fringe on the placemats).

I must say, weaving on the Harp is much easier/more comfortable than weaving on Grandma's loom. I don't know how much of it is the width difference (Grandma's is a 27", vs the Harp's 24"), and how much of it is the construction. But it sure is unwieldy waving those super-long shuttles around!


Speaking of UFOs - here is the scarf. I haven't worked on this for a week:

And then there is the spinning - the bobbin is getting close to being full (finally!):But holy cow look how much I have left to do!
The second bag of alpaca is still wadded up in the bottom of the bag, uncarded.

I need to quit my day job! LOL

I'm going to go work on a simple knitting project that I had forgotten about, but need to finish for the holidays. Thankfully I found a pair of circs to use, instead of the straights I had been using - straight needles hurt my hand something awful after just a few minutes of knitting.

Oops!

Sorry, everyone! I took a couple of days off of crafting (well, ok, it was more like 4 days off), so don't have anything to report. I sort-of started the project on the Hearthside loom last night, but the lighting is awful where I am working so I couldn't see what I was doing. Since that loom isn't very portable, I need to find another spot where I can leave it set-up. It may end up being my listening-to-the-radio-on-Saturdays project, as the only other room I think I can set it up in is the guest room, and there is no tv (gasp!) in there. ;-) There's not a lot of open floor-space in there either, so it might be tricky.

Tonight is Spinning Night (yay!). I really want to get out one of my drop spindles and try to drop-spindle spinning again (I don't do that well at all!), but I need to get the alpaca spun. It never fails - I always want to be doing a different project that what I should be doing! LOL I may do just a bit of spindle-spinning, and maybe that will get it out of my system. First I need to find the drop spindles though....

I'm having serious internet connection problems here, so I probably won't be able to post any pictures until Saturday. Maybe that will give me time to actually get enough done to show some progress! :-D