My favorite part of weaving...

is NOT the finishing part of projects. :-P But I finally fired up the sewing machine to start finishing new and olde (so old they require the old spelling :-P) projects such as the dishcloths from... maybe last summer?


And I finished the huck sample; here is the front (my camera made it a very odd color - it's supposed to yellow):


and the back:


And I decided to do one more sample before cutting the Textures & Patterns warp off of the Flip for now - and boy am I glad I did. Here is what you see while you are weaving:


Nice, but it doesn't seem to have the same visual effect as the photo in the book (Color Variation 1).

Then I cut it off the loom and looked at the underside - WOW:


I absolutely LOVE this (it's easy too)! I will be doing something with this pattern soon!



Well lookee here:


The shirt is finally off the Harp! I still had a few inches of warp left, but I was getting tired of weaving it, and it was becoming difficult to weave with the pattern stick so close to the end of the warp. I washed it today, and it is soooo soft now!


I liked it quite a bit before, but I think I like it even more now! It really closed up after washing and drying too - it certainly doesn't look airy any more! Now if I can just sew it up properly....


I warped up the cradle loom for a sample band using a RH from Everybody's Weaving (great book from the 70s); and warped the Flip for a Brooks Bouquet placemat from the newly revised version of the Ashford Book of Rigid Heddle Weaving. Those little balls of DMC 8 thread that it calls for don't go very far - I used 2 1/2 balls just on the warp (the pattern is written for just one mat using four balls of DMC 8 - a set of four would be a little pricey unless you find a good deal on DMC 8 or use a substitute). Love the shimmery yarn though. I haven't started weaving on either project yet, so no pictures.


And since I haven't posted a puppy pic in awhile, and I almost never get a good picture of my Lab mixes because they are black, here is a lucky shot of Lazy Girl from Friday. :-D

Weaving progress...

I've made some progress on the rug...


I'm really enjoying this weave. :-) And while I was weaving on the rug yesterday, Sirius/XM's Book Radio channel played several chapters of Edgar Rice Burrough's "At the Earth's Core" - I love ERB stories so it made for a really nice afternoon. I'm now into an extra-long brown section and am going to stop there for awhile while I work on the other projects.


I also started a new sample on the Flip from the Textures & Patterns book - huck:


I'm enjoying this pattern too, though I'm not sure why I have gaps between each pattern block. Perhaps once it's off the loom it will fill in better.

I also did some more on the shirt, but didn't make a lot of progress this weekend. I hope get it off the loom this week though. Keep your fingers crossed!

This looks much better...

I unwove down to the brown (and then forgot to weave the brown tail in, so had to do that with a needle after I had woven what you see here - boy was that not easy!) and re-did the color changes a la Betty Davenport's Hands On Rigid Heddle Weaving and her DVD - much much better! I was able to mostly even out the bit of a hump that was forming in the middle too, so all in all it was worth the unweaving.

Sadly, that is all the weaving I've done, except for picking out the next sample on the Flip and getting its hem woven. I'm planning to do a bit more on the rug today, once I find my pattern; and hope to get to work on the Flip Wednesday. And I'd like to have the weaving for the shirt finished this weekend, but two of the dogs have their annual vet visit planned Saturday morning and any interruption to my weekend routine usually means I don't get anything done. But I'll cross my fingers and maybe I'll get more done than I think I will. :-D

Manic Sunday updated...

Ok... I got a bit carried away:


I guess I missed working with color, and it really didn't take all that long. This could probably be a fast project if I needed it done sooner. I'm not crazy about how obvious the color change between the white and the blue is, but with such a bulky yarn there is just no hiding it - at least I don't know of one. I'll be double-checking my books in case I've missed something though. This is the method in "Weaving Made Easy", and it works well with thinner yarns. Interestingly it is not quite as obvious with the brown and white.

But I did have help:


He's supervising, and she's making sure I keep the shuttles high and take weaving breaks (for dog-petting, of course!). :-)


I haven't worked on the shirt yet, but I'm going to be calling my mom shortly so I'll work on that while talking to her. :-D

Manic Sunday...

The hubby's out gallivanting around today, and he wasn't around much yesterday either, so I have had most of the weekend to weave. And what did I do? Yes, I did work on the shirt:


Look at all that fabric on the cloth beam!! :-D And it struck me yesterday that I have been obsessing about the fell line being straight - checking it every pick, which was really slowing me down. Now I check about every inch, and the weaving is going faster.


And I finally started weaving the rug:


But I had hoped to do an hour of weaving and then a half-hour of something else and then back to weaving - that plan went out the window as soon as I got out of bed yesterday. :-( Oh well, I can see I'm getting close to the end of the weaving part on the shirt, and I like how the rug looks so far.


Granted it's only a couple of inches, but look how well that cotton beats in - and that's with just the shuttle edge! It's a shame that they don't make this yarn any more - it's Maysville rug filler. The rug is going to be striped and is a pattern out of the original owner's manual that came with the loom. DH is making rag shuttles for me, but I decided I needed to get started on this as it needs to be about half-finished by early April. I never did get a decent warp on the rug loom - the upper shed is a bit too tight and the lower threads are too loose on the heddle maneuvering, but the weaving seems to be going ok (I think I put the heddle on backwards too - it keeps popping off the heddle block! LOL).

I also need to put a short narrow project on the cradle loom for a demo - I have no idea what I'm going to do for that. And I need to get back to the Flip samples - if I had enough vacation time I'd take a week off of work and get some of this stuff done - but then again what I plan to do and what actually gets done are often two different things. :-( I did get some housework done yesterday though!

Now, should I go back to weaving on the rug, or should I work on the shirt? Hmm... I think I'll have a fudgsicle. :-D And then do the rest of the first brown section on the rug - 6.5 inches total, so I only have about 4 inches to go - that should be done in no time. Then back to the shirt!