weaving – Behind the Smile

November 25, 2008June 24, 2010

Less Scratchy Than I Thought

I finished my Silk Garden Sock scarf that I made on my loom.

I know, right, I haven’t talked too much about weaving lately. This is because I encountered a big knot on the warp that threatened to unravel the warp thread every time the heddle crossed it, so I put the loom away until I could figure it out. And I did. And it involved a fork.

I’m happy with it, even the part that is a little goofy because of the fork action. I don’t think I’ll weave with the Noro again though, it’s a little too sticky, and there were a couple of knots. Luckily the other ones were on the weft which doesn’t matter much. Still, it was frustrating.

The new scarf matches my new sweater I got at Target:

It’s rather festive!

Next up, I am going to weave something with Dream in Color Smooshy OR Socks That Rock. Depending on how the Socks That Rock weaves up, it may be worth buying more. I don’t think I’ll be making any other socks with STR considering its huge fuzz factor. Maybe these colorways would be good:

I didn’t have any problem hacking the Silk Garden to bits; the STR won’t be an issue either, I don’t think. Heh.

September 3, 2008June 24, 2010

THE LOOM OF DESTINY

I am really not sure when it happened that this blog turned into a craft blog, but I guess that’s the way it’s rolling.

My goal for the next few months: MOVE. Like, physically move – unload my storage unit with all my Texas stuff and find a place to live. I may already have done that. Does anyone have $40K? Hello?

Once I move, presumably into a two bedroomed place, one bedroom will be the Studio. I have been far too remiss in the part of my life that I miss the most: drawing. I want to get a proper drafting table and lighting and soon will delve back into illustration , specifically comics (yeah I know) and some narrative work. Click the pic to the left to embiggen my last significant piece that was actually sort of finished. It’s old, from May or June, I think, and I totally drew it at work while on the phone. I have drawn a few zombie-related comics (naturally there are no zombies in them) but they are not done.

I really miss all the time I used to spend on the drawings – and I know that technically I could make time, but I have to say, this whole “working for a living” really cuts into my me-time. However, in the end, I have still been fairly artistic and crafty with all the knitting and teaching myself to weave and all that. I got my sock mojo back. I dumped my hojillion skeins of sock yarn on the bed the other night and sorted it into AWESOME and REALLY AWESOME piles – I have a really great collection at this point. And I really want to make something out of the Dream in Color Smooshy.

This weekend I am going to Ikea with my mom. I saw in Craft Magazine a project I would like to make. It involves these apothacery (oh god how do you spell that???) drawer things that glued together and screwed to a different table base makes a great jewelry stand. I don’t normally buy Craft because it is stupid expensive, but the latest issue was all about weaving, and I have been bitten pretty hard by the weaving bug. In fact, I finished my first project and warped the loom for the next one:

I used various socks yarns to complete my first project, primarily some Knitpicks Essential Kettle Dyed in Bordeaux (?). The Essential is quite soft and makes a nice end project. I didn’t like the Bordeaux color at all (wasn’t variegated enough, but I bought it when it first came out so their dyeing process is probably improved at this juncture) and was actually going to return it, but then thought it would be a good yarn to try my hand at weaving with – because I wouldn’t care about cutting it up.

The new project is being woven out of Noro Silk Garden Sock, which while GORGEOUS was kind of a dumb choice – the yarn is very sticky on itself, and makes moving the heddle rather annoying. However, the end product will be worth it. My tension is much better on this piece, and the colors are super awesome! Too bad I am ALLERGIC TO MOHAIR. Also, you’d think I’d be a little more freaked about cutting up a $20 skein of yarn, but OH NO, I cut that sucker with an evil gleam in my eye!

Anyway.

I also got a haircut. I like it a lot.

I think that might be the debut of my “new” glasses on this blog, too. I’ve had them for a couple months now. I was getting a lot of headaches and realized that it had been about three years since I’d been to the eye doctor. Time to get new glasses. I’m slowly going blind, of course, and I suspect bifocals will be in my future, but for now, my vision has settled in the 20/40 and 20/50 range. Also the doctor did a pressure test on my eyeballs where he numbed them and put a glowing blue contact on each one (glaucoma test?) which SUCKED because I totally have an eyeball issue, like, don’t touch them! Or get near them! Or talk about them getting squished or poked in any way!

Oh god, now I have to lie down; I’ve disgusted myself.

P.S. Be sure to check out WANTED, the movie about the LOOM OF DESTINY and fraternity of assassins who use it:

I thought it was pretty awesome (and better than Batman, BUT EVERYTHING IS BETTER THAN THE DARK KNIGHT). Okay, the movie is not really about weaving, it is about explosions.

July 22, 2008June 24, 2010

Loominous

Well first of all, I think it is noteworthy to inform the interwebs that my intestines have betrayed me. As soon as I finish writing this I am going to LIE DOWN.

Anways…

I am totally weaving you guys! My loom came in the mail last Wednesday. I’d been feverishly tracking its progress here via UPS and was rather irked when I got home from work and it hadn’t arrived. But then the UPS dude dropped it off at 7 p.m. and all was well.

So that night I put it together while watching the first episode of Project Runway Season 5, which I have to say was not very interesting. Tim Gunn seems put upon. But I got the loom mostly together until I got to the part where you attach the handles “with the screws that are already attached.” Well, mine came with extra screws, but they didn’t fit the handles as they were too wide and too long. So I knew I had to go to the hardware store. I also needed to get a candle to melt the ends of the nylon cords together. I’m definitely not a candle person so I was a little irked that I had go buy fire.

Anyway, so I also needed to get some T pins to block the Swallowtail shawl, so I stopped at JoAnns on Saturday and picked up some of those and also a candle tin that was only a buck. I also stopped at Ace Hardware and found new screws that fit perfectly in the handles, and only set me back thirty whole cents.

I tried to take a picture of me melting the nylon cords together, but that proved impossible with how quick the strings caught fire and melted together. So, here is a picture of the crappy candle and the mess I made, trimming the ends of the strings to match:

You can see on the right the little melted black blob where the ends are fused together.

And I finished putting together the loom and then I made a warp on the warping board (a Kromski Harp has a built in warping board on the underside of the loom – you just insert pegs and get to it) out of some Knitpicks Essential (the new kettle dyed stuff, I wasn’t too impressed with this reddish colorway – I was going to return it, but then realized that I wouldn’t care if I screwed it up so used it for the first warp) and put the warp on the loom:

It is pretty obvious that I ignored the instructions on how to center your warp, but for just eyeballing it I came pretty close. I am not super sure that it really matters on a rigid heddle, but I am just winging it at this point.

Then I started to weave, using the other ball of knitpicks essential that had a better color variation, and I added some extra sock yarn bits I had lying around and wah lah, I have a scarf well on its way to completion:

Woo!

Anyway, so it is pretty easy to get started. My next project will be a wider and shorter scarf out of Noro Kureyon Sock yarn. I am learning a lot from this project, about tension mostly, and I REALLY like weaving. I suspect that once I get my initial projects out of the way I will be doing a lot of Christmas presents on the loom. Also, I think it will be an awesome way to get rid of some of the goofy novelty yarns I have lying around – I think they’d work pretty good as wefts, not so much as warps. Luckily I don’t have any crappy fun fur but I do have some random stuff I picked up at Hobby Lobby and JoAnns.

I still love socks, I just totally got bored with them (all at the same point):

So for now you all will have to suffer through this whole weaving binge! 😛

(Also no, apparently I do not make socks that are not pinkish or greenish.)