Meanderings of a Mermaid

First off, here is a bench cushion I made from the first fabric that came off the loom. All the pieces are from different variants on that first twill I played with. I do have some leftover pieces and as soon as I can get some more interfacing, I will make a tote bag from the remainder, plus a little wall hanging to remember Project Number One. Now this is the second fabric I wove. It is also a twill pattern, but is a Point Draft and irregular. It was definitely more fun to weave. I had to concentrate more to follow the treadling pattern correctly. It was easy to see if I made a mistake in treadling and I learned how to repair mistakes! I also had threading mistakes and had to fix those right at the start. I am learning lots! This third photo is just a close up of Project Number Two. It is off the loom now and is destined to become a table runner. I will put it on the counter between the dining room and family room, when we have our dinner parties. I will need to make a bi...

Check out this beautiful Spindle. I received it as a gift this week from a friend, MS. She is in my little knitting and spinning guild that I started in my southern home town. She appreciates the classes I teach. MS drew on a mermaid and then wood-burned her onto the whorl of the spindle. The mermaid's tail wraps around the side! Isn't she fantastic?  I love it when art meets practicality. I was needing a nicely balanced spindle too! This is my first time trying a top whorl spindle and I quite like it. I am practising with pink blue-faced leicester.  Now this charming little dress is something I designed for our barrista at Fuel where I go weekly to knit with the gals. More precisely the dress is for an infant that is due in April. Since I was about to teach a class in intarsia knitting, I did the colour change and leaves in intarsia. Then the daisy is knitted as separate petals and then sewn together, then sewn onto the fabric. Being a superwash wool, I hope this wi...

Here it is folks: installed and ready for some work! Get a load of that green floor. I am pretending like I know what I'm doing. Mug shot!

  I know this for a fact. My preference is for the simple things in life. This loom, for example. It requires no electricity. Even inside, it will be beside a bank of windows and chances are I won't need lights on when I am operating it. Not only am I saving money by not using electricity, but I can keeping working and playing when the power goes down. There is something to be said for the resourceful inventors and pioneers that came before us.         This is my new (used) Leclerc Nilus II jack floor loom. Some of the pieces are outside of the view of this image. Things are being cleaned up before coming into the house. In the image you can see a loom, a warping reel (with round base), a bench and the beater bar. The warping beam is the other big part you can't see there (just a little edge of it at far right). The weaving width is 45 inches, but when I get the flying shuttle beater attached (sometime down the road) it will be about 7 feet wide...

My current work in progress is this mohair and merino lacy shawl. It will look much better when blocked out, at the end. I am using all Texas fibre for this one. Here is another square that will join some others for a Cable Block Poncho I am designing. All the blue and green pics below are part of the same project. This cable is lovely. It is called French Braid and I love how the twists drift back and forth by a few stitches periodically. Not cabled, but funky none the less. We recently attended the Junior Livestock show in our home town. I tried to convince these mohair goats to come home with me. They were having none of it, preferring to stick around for their moment of glory in the show ring. And my favourite shot for today: at a recent guild meeting in a nearby town...a young gal (member of the public who was touring the museum that day) learns to spin on a great wheel. Awesome!

 Recently a drive in the country brought us to this little art installation. Yes, a creative fellow lives nearby and placed this near the road for one and all to see.  All of the crosses and tombstones have feelings, emotions, bad things that he wanted to lay to rest. If you zoom in you can see some of the things he has left behind. If I was to inscribe a cross in this way, what would I put on it? What would you carve in stone? I've developed some Impatience at times, recently. That should be got rid of.

 These three lovely skeins are the result of my practising the long draw in spinning. It is a technique for creating woolen yarn; the soft, lofty,warm, springy type of yarn. First I needed to prepare the fibers and blend them. I started with a white mystery wool, green dyed mohair and ivory tussah silk. I am enamoured with this yarn.  I will be getting a large floor loom in the near future and it was time to re-organize the rock house a little. I wish I could stretch this rock house. For now I had to settle with reorganizing furniture in three rooms. In the guest bedroom, otherwise known as the Painted Floor Studio, I removed one dresser and schlepped the spinning hutch over to a different corner. I think you can make out three wheels jockeying for supremacy and you see a drum carder awaiting my hand.  Here is the Painted Floor Studio again, looking into the vast northern reaches. Two wheels visible, the drum carder and oh! a recently acquired Wooden Spinner (a sk...