01.24.10

Recycling Loom Waste

Posted in accessories, weaving at 8:17 pm by pauline

One great thing about weaving is how quickly one can go through yarn! I’ve had skeins upon skeins of cotton yarn that I bought on sale. With a giant ball of Sugar and Cream Hombre, I made a seven foot long table runner last year.

Woven Table Runner sm

During the Christmas break, I started making some placemats with two heddles. I made lots of mistakes but I’m getting better. Here are the first two placemats. The selvedges gradually got better and at the end, I was pretty proud of my hems!

placemats2_sm

I cut those first mats off the loom and retied the ends to get the tension more even. I have enough warp left on the loom for two more placemats.

In the mean time, I ended up with a huge pile of loom waste. Here’s just a small fraction of what I actually had.

loom waste sm

Not wanting to throw away all those scraps of yarn,  knotted  them together and so that I could make something useful out of them.

loom waste yarn sm

I knitted a 9 ” by 9″ square with all the knots and ends on one side. Then I folded the square in half and sewed up the three open sides with all the knots and ends on the inside. The result is a well padded pot holder!

loom waste 004

01.21.10

Baby Booties – donated to CPC

Posted in Jenny, booties at 5:21 pm by Jenny

Booties  with the "feet" pin

Booties with the "feet" pin

01.05.10

Finished Objects for 2009

Posted in accessories, baby stuff, booties, hats, lace, mittens and gloves, scarves, shawls, stoles, and wraps, socks, sweaters, toys at 2:05 am by pauline

I was so inspired by Abigail’s FO mosaic I wanted to have my own. So here it is , 37 objects fiinished in 2009.

2009FOsm

Everything, except the two cardigans, were started in 2009. I started  Breezy Cables (top row ) back in 2006  using some beautiful yarn that I bought from Harrisville, NH during our cross-country drive. I knitted it in a KAL with Jenny to keep me motivated so that I can finish it and wear it to Stitches West 2007. I ended-up knitting a sample Millicent sock for Cookie and ran out of time. With a little encouragement in the beginning of Summer 2009,  from Margit, I finished the cardigan by the end of Summer.

That left the the Fall to finish a couple of  Cardigan for Arwen sweaters that Margit and I started in our two-person but infrequent KAL in 2007. Now that Breezy Cables was done, the plan was to work on Arwen once a week at lunchtime and again at BobaKnit so that they will be done by Halloween, allowing us to greet trick or treaters in our elfin garb. Margit finished hers a few days ahead of schedule and I finished mine on Halloween.

As long as I can remember, I’ve always want to weave. I made a scarf(lower right), a table runner(lower left), and a placemat(center right) with my rigid heddle loom. Last year, I read everything I can about weaving. The vocabulary, the equipment, the yarn was all foreign to me.  After a year of reading books and several issues of Handwoven I can read a draft and can read through an article without looking up a word. Maybe 2010 is the year I get into weaving with a 4 harness loom! Or, I can spend a little more time exploring the intricacies of rigid heddle weaving.