Back in the Pink

After a long absence, I finally have gotten back into the studio. This isn't the best picture, but I am working on pink baby blankets. It is a great project - not much thinking and so very easy that it helps get me back to the loom. There are girl babies on the horizon for friends of friends so they will not stay here long once they are finished.

Not sure what's next, but at least I'm weaving!

Cheers!

Calendar Sample Pictures

I finally got the picture upload to work. Here is the cloth still on the loom. I did around 4 yards (and actually have more warp that I can weave). This was done in 10/2 cotton. The warp is a yellow and natural alternated. The weft is yellow and a light tan, also alternated.

This detail, isn't great, but the cloth is meant to be reminiscent of

strata of earth.

The samples are all cut and we have started assembling the calendars. We only did 100, so it wasn't too much work.

Calendar Samples

Well, it has been a while and many thing have been going on - not many of them weaving. The latest project is a perpetual calendar with my weaving discussion group. The theme is the Gold Country of California. We are weaving samples to use for each month of the calendar. I have October.

The samples are finished and cut to size and we are currently assembling the calendars.

The mechanism to upload pictures isn't working, so I'll have to post the pictures later.

Fair Results

The County Fair has come and finished this past Sunday. I am pretty excited because I won two ribbons for the three entries I submitted. The baby blanket got a second place in the baby category.


The end of the warp from the Shadow Weave class that I was too lazy to do more than just weave as a runner got a first place in the home accessory (or something like that) category. The third entry was two of the pink striped towels.




I was very impressed with the quality of the other entries. That made the awards more special.

I'm busy working on the next project, but more on that later.

Blankets are Finished - Mostly

At the left are two of the four blankets I got out of the warp I put on earlier this month. Actually I got 4 1/3 blankets. I haven't gotten the calculations correct so that I can just have enough for a specific number and I hate to just cut off the warp and try to figure out something to do with it. I think eventually I can make a kind of patchwork blanket out of all of the 1/3 blankets I have.

Here is a close-up of one of the blankets. (It's not great, but might give you an idea.)

I don't have anything on the loom yet, but I am entering four things for the County Fair next month - oneof these blankets, the brown and white runner and two of the striped towels. Our calendar project is coming together, so that may be the next project.

Towels Finished - On to the Next Project

Well, the cotton towels are finished, hemmed, washed, etc. They turned out pretty well. I used pink, yellow, green and brown for weft. The brown ones (center under the yellow towel) looked better than I thought it would. The green isn't my favorite, but doesn't look too bad. I am thinking about entering them in the county fair in August.



In order to keep the momentum going, I started on some baby blankets. You can kind of see my process for designing the blankets. They are striped using two different colors and yarn types at a time. I have a plan for how wide the stripes are and just pick yarn combinations that seem to go together. These blankers are in peaches, yellows and whites. The warp is all cotton - mostly knitting-type of yarn. The wefts will be some kind of synthetic blend - acrylic/nylon, etc. It makes a very nice hand for the blankets.

If I get these finished, I will probably enter one of these in the fair as well.

Striped Towels in Pink and other Colors

I am still working on the multi-striped towels in 10/2 cotton. I started with a sample that crossed all of the warp colors in the weft. This gave me a chance to see how each color would look as weft. You can see the sample to the right.


I have woven a towel with the pink and have cut this off. The picture below was taken before it was washed and its detail is below. (The hardest thing about this blog is to get the pictures where I want them. It must not be that hard since lots of blogs have pictures everywhere in their posts. sigh...)

I have woven a yellow and a green towel and will probably use the tan for weft next. The yarn colors that were darker like the hot pink and purple didn't look very good as weft, probably because the value was so much different than the overall warp. I am hoping to finish these before the end of the week. Cheers!