Saturday, February 28, 2015

I'm being productive.

Yesterday morning I wound off a 40-thread, 8-yard warp, tied it onto the old warp and wound it onto the warp beam. Then at various times throughout the day, I wove miniature rugs. I finished weaving off that warp this morning and cut it off the loom. There are 33 mini-rugs all cut apart and waiting beside the sewing machine for me to zigzag across the ends. And I already have another 40-thread, 8-yard warp wound off and ready to be tied onto the warp I just finished. If I keep going at this rate, I'll meet my goal of 500 by the end or March. The 33 I just wove bring my total to 146.

However, if I spend all my time weaving, I won't get any knitting done, and I DO have several knitting projects I need to work on. Also, the weather IS going to improve and I won't be stuck at home.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Weather & Weaving

WOW! It's been a long time since I posted here. No particular reason. Probably spending too much time on Facebook. I know of one woman who quit Facebook so she would post on her blog more. I'm glad she did. I always worried about her when she let her blog go too long - she lives in Israel, a worrisome part of the world.

We've had two weeks of freezing weather in tiny town, and about a foot of snow. We're not used to such weather. Snow is usually limited to 3 or 4 inches (usually less) and it disappears in 3 or 4 days when the temperatures rise. I didn't leave my house for at least ten days.

The seed heads from last year's garlic chives wore snow caps for a while.


The robins have come back early. They like the fruits of the flowering crab apple. I'm glad that I have some hollies and pines that they can shelter in.
These few are perched in the Japanese maple, which still has a lot of its leaves from last year. I took all the pictures through windows. The icicles are on the rain gutter.

With all this bad weather, I should have done more weaving and knitting than I did. I have woven 113 of the miniature rugs for this year's Walk through Bethlehem; my goal is 500. Here are a few of them.
 On the loom.
And off. I tried something different this year - tied three 44-end warps onto the 160-end one that I had woven on at the Walk, leaving about two inches between the warps. Then I wove three pieces at a time. I found that I don't like weaving that way, so when I finished them, I put on a single warp of 40 threads. I will continue doing one warp at a time until I get the 500 mini-rugs.

I'm also making 2-inch squares on a Weave-it loom. I keep that here by the computer and work on them while doing other things online. I have 183 so far, with no particular goal. I figure we'll 'sell' them at 4/'shekel' and have samples to show the kids how they can sew them together in different ways.
Here are two dozen of them that are all made from the same ball of yarn - very colorful yarn!