Spinning, weaving, knitting, travel, and whatever…
I can’t weave all the time. For those times when I’m out and about, or watching TV, knitting (or spinning) is my craft of choice. At the end of August we headed out to Longreach and Winton for a short holiday, and I needed a new knitting project to knit on the plane (and bus).
Continue reading “Snowmelt Shawl”
Plain weave isn’t necessarily balanced. For this floor loom project and the next, I’m taking balance to the extremes. What do I mean by balance? The Log Cabin project created a balanced weave structure – both the warp and weft were equally visible in the finished fabric. In contrast, this project shows only the weft threads – it is a weft-faced fabric.
Continue reading “Playing with Balance”
More plain weave – this time with colour effects. Log cabin is a great plain weave pattern where you alternate dark and light threads. In Season 3 Episode 3, Jane Stafford shows how to design a log cabin with extra border threads that make it pop out and look almost 3-D.
Continue reading “Log Cabin Plus!”
Now that I have the new loom, I’m off and running. The first project was from Season 3, Episode 1 – Denting of Jane Stafford’s Online Weaving School in brown and rust 16/2 cotton. I showed a bit of the warping process in my previous post about the loom. The idea is to add some interest to plain weave by considering the spaces as well as the fabric. The warp was arranged in 1/2″ segments – 1/2″ of warp at 24 ends per inch (12 warp threads), then a 1/2″ gap. The colours started at rust on the edge, moving through browns to a light ivory then reversing. There are 14 of the 1/2″ segments of warp and 13 empty gaps between.
Continue reading “The Power of Negative Space”
The last project on my old floor loom was a set of three scarves in parallel or echo weave. In my stash there was some Tencel yarn in four colours for the warp. I picked these up more than a decade ago with the idea that I would weave scarves. I’m so glad I finally got around to them.
Continue reading “Parallel Scarves”
Spring is here, my new Spring II loom!
Continue reading “Spring Is Here!!!”
While I’m in between floor looms, I’ve gone back to my rigid heddle loom. The past couple of weeks I’ve been playing with empty space, leaving gaps in both warp and weft as I weave.
Continue reading “Playing with Space”
This year I again took on the challenge of participating in the International Scarf Exchange. The exchange is run by a different weaving guild each year, and this year the task was taken on by several guilds in the Shoalhaven area of New South Wales. Each participant sends in 150 grams of fibre. You receive someone else’s fibre and you make them a scarf (or shawl, socks etc.). I received three shades of naturally coloured corriedale fibre that I spun up into laceweight yarn.
Continue reading “International Scarf Exchange”
A while back I posted about some natural coloured handspun cotton. The tan coloured cotton was marketed as “green” – but it didn’t really look green. Then I found out what I was missing – the cotton needed to be treated to bring out the natural green colour. The trick was to soak the cotton in ammonia!
Continue reading “Green Cotton”