Rambles

Today I've been doing quite a bit of weaving with, *fingers crossed* no apparent discomfort (ahem, I'm putting the twinges down to typing, OK?). I have very nearly finished the second half of the scarf, and since we have heaps of videoed stuff to watch, may well get it finished tonight. Then I just have to deal with how to attach the two halves together. Hmm...

One of my new black'n'blue Oh So Goth (as long as you cover over the sports company logo ;) ) tennis elbow bands arrived today. The seller forgot to put the other one in the parcel *rollseyes* These are a different design to my other one. My original one is just a padded band, whereas this new one has a 'tendon pad' which pushes into the skin quite a lot. It's taken some getting used to (in that I nearly emailed the seller to say forget about the other one, I want a refund), but I've been trialling it this afternoon and think it'll be OK. If the worst comes to the worst I can try and hack the tendon pad off the second one and see if it's any better. I've also ordered some heatable/freezable straps, which - if they work - should be a better way of icing my arm rather than balancing ice packs on it.

The dyed top is pretty much dry now - I put it by the window this morning to catch some sun. Some bits seem a little felted :-/ but I'm hoping if I pre-draft well enough and take it slowly it should spin OK. It's all a learning process anyway. I may try and hold out until at least tomorrow before I start it though. How about trying to keep it for a 'congratulations I've finished chapter two' present? I hate chapter two. I've been writing it for aaaaaaaages and just want it finished! I can't believe I've signed up for a PhD (got my confirmation letter today) when I'm whinging about writing a 5000 word chapter :P

OK. I'll try and use the beautiful top as my carrot. No spinning until chapter two has been sent to my tutor. Eek!

Uh-oh, it's that boring pain thing again

Well, I appear to have jinxed myself. Following the pain update the other day, I ended up with tennis elbow in both arms at the same time. Oh, how I chastised myself for returning that second tennis elbow band!

I don't want to admit it, but I guess weaving could be the cause, since it started after that. Well, I've done nothing arm-related bar typing and writing since the pain started, and now it is shifting somewhat. I don't know if fibre arts really are the cause, but I guess I really do need to try and lay off them until I finish my thesis.

And if weaving and knitting are both going to give me hurty pains, then I choose the knitting! Once I finish my MPhil I'll hopefully be starting a part time PhD. The part time job I get will be a non-typing one, so with any luck I'll be able to limit the amount of typing I do at the start of my PhD, and work on being able to knit.

I just keep stumbling across more and more breathtaking patterns that I must make! After seeing some pictures of the latest Rowan magazine, #40, I popped into House of Fraser today (sadly the LYSes in this town don't do Rowan wool, so I guess they don't do their magazine) to have a look at it. I am totally in love with so many of the patterns! Seriously, we'll be here all day if I list them all, but I especially love Aelf and Sadie, with Rosa, Cobweb and Dew coming in close second.

If I can only knit 25 stitches a day it will take me so long to finish everything BUT I WANT THEM. So if not weaving means I get to do 50 stitches a day, well...

I would like to finish my green woven scarf though - I'll take it very slowly and see how I get on.

Spot the deliberate mistake (OK - mistakes)

(and no, it's not just that I forgot to turn the flash off)

So: the looms. I have two - they are both small vintage child's looms, both cost under a fiver (inc. P&P) from ebay as well. I've only tried one, but it works really well, a lot better than I was expecting! The one in the picture is a Spear's loom, size 2. I've also seen Spear's looms in sizes 3 and 4, but they tend to be more expensive and a lot rarer; the bonus is that they're wider though. The size 2 is about 5 inches wide, and can apparently make lengths of up to 5 feet.

The other loom has a different type of heddle (the thing you thread the warp threads through to raise them up and down). It looks like it won't work as well as the Spear's one, but it should be better for using with my handspun, since it's a pain just to get double-knitting wool through the holes in the Spear's heddle, and my handspun is not yet consistently that thin.

I could barely wait to warp up the Spear's when I got it on Monday. I used some random acrylic in my stash, planning to make a pair of slippers, using up all the black yarn in the pictue above. Yep, that was mistake one: I used up all the yarn on the first slipper; it only occurred to me half-way through the actual weaving that to make a pair of slippers I'd have to make two - doh!

Mistake two was starting to weave at the wrong end, so I couldn't roll the fabric up - doh again! I actually ended up un-weaving all that I had done, and redoing it from the right end. It really doesn't take that long; well, compared to knitting a comparable piece.



And the fabric. Well, it's purty! As you can see it shows the warp and the weft, so I'll be able to do tartan designs. It's very sturdy as well, and smooth. I'm just so used to feeling knitted fabric that this is a nice surprise, but as it's rather stiff I'm not sure what sort of garments could be made from it.

Yesterday I warped up the loom for a skinny scarf, and today (so after weaving for about 2.5 hours in total) I thought I'd finished it... Only to find (mistake #3) that as you have to double over the warp threads I'd left this out of my calculations and made the blasted thing half too short. I've come to the decision to just make the second half separately and whip-stitch them together; I did intend to splice on new warp threads, but the idea of doing that 30 times with acrylic non-sticking-to-itself yarn really really bores me.

It's all a learning process I guess!

As for me and weaving: well, it has never appealed to me before. Quite frankly, I just couldn't see the point. However, after talking to the re-enactor woman in Wales the other week I realised that weaving could well be a use for my handspun, given that I can't knit with it at the moment (the jury's out as to whether weaving causes pain BTW - I've been feeling tennis elbow in both arms today, but it may be the excess typing). Then after seeing the Roman/Dark Age re-enactor's warp-weighted loom I went home and read about looms, before deciding to just give it a go with a cheap little loom (although I already have two bead looms they weren't suitable - other than for scrap weaving - as I don't have a heddle, and really, you need a heddle).

As it is, it's enjoyable, and the fabric is created very quickly. However, I just don't know how many uses I'd have for woven fabric. We don't need any mats, cushions or wall-hangings, and there's only so many scarves you can have. I have a couple of designs for skirts in mind, but the width of the loom is rather constrictive. I'm planning to try some blackwork embroidery on the woven fabric too, which could be fun.

However, since I've spent the past week emersed in book 10 of the Odyssey, writing about Circe, I feel an ancient connection with all the women of the past who had to weave everything. Yes, Pallas Athena is the Matron of Female Crafts (in the myth of Ariadne she turns Ariadne into a nameless creature because I'm terrified of them but they make webs because Ariadne claimed her weaving was better than Athene's, or some such hubris), but most of the Goddesses weave. Athene is my Matron Goddess though, so she is especially special to me. Weaving is a common theme in ancient literature, and crops up multiple times in the Odyssey - especially with Penelope fending off the suitors by unpicking her weaving (she said she'd only marry one of her suitors once she finished a funeral shroud for her missing-husband's father) every night. I'm trying to work weaving's magical properties into my thesis, but might have to save it for a further paper.

'They could hear Circe within, singing in her beautiful voice as to went to and fro at her great and everlasting loom, on which she was weaving one of those delicate, graceful and dazzling fabrics that goddesses make.'

The Odyssey, 10.221-223
Penguin edition trans. Rieu

Doh!

Argh! You know, I was beginning to think that maybe Athene was hinting to me that I need to work on my thesis - as Goddess of Intelligence that's certainly part of her remit, and it was beginning to feel like as Goddess of Weaving she was hiding my looms! I've bought two and so far neither have turned up - one was shipped out on 11th August as well. Deciding that enough was enough I've just turned the hallway upside down, and what do I find - a card from the postman saying my parcel was too big for the letterbox when he tried to deliver it on the 12th. Doh! I did look for a card, but this had snuck right into the corner behind an umbrella. Sigh. And it's too late now to get to the Sorting Office - I'll have to hope that it's still there on Monday.

This morning I've been doing some scrap weaving (gotta love those scraps) on my giant bead loom.



I have a vague idea that I'll make a load of woven-scrap panels and patchwork them together. Maybe. Of course, I had a lot more long lengths of scraps before I cut them all up the other day ;) but one of the joys of having an overlocker is that you tend to get lots of long scraps as you're trimming things down in dressmaking.

And I'm outta the zone...

It turns out that they're repeating The West Wing from the beginning on More 4, so I did do some spinning on Sunday evening. It, erm, didn't start off too well:



I have no reason why it suddenly went into over-twist hyper-drive. So I changed the drive band, using a different type of string. This one is a lot sturdier. I had been trying to use the smaller whorl setting to spin a finer yarn, but it obviously wasn't working!

After a while I got back into the groove and managed a respectable bobbin:



It always looks so neat on the bobbin doesn't it? However, it will have slubs and kinks in it. I need more practise! As it was, my arms didn't hurt, but after about 90 minutes my back ached under my right shoulder blade. Two days later and it's OK; I guess I should try to spin for 30 minutes at a time more regularly, rather than just going at it every now and then (maybe every West Wing!). I'm considering getting some kool aid to dye with, might make spinning lots of white wool slightly more interesting!

I'm really tempted to buy more bobbins for my wheel. Because it's kinky when taken off the bobbin it's always hard to ply my yarn with an Andean bracelet, and winding on to those toilet rolls is so time consuming. We'll see.

Finally the weaving bug took hold of me yesterday and I just had to get my small bead loom out and give it a try:



Not too bad eh? I'm tempted to buy a kid's loom on ebay, one that comes with a heddle, and see what happens. It would be cool if weaving were relatively quick and pain free...

I'm just interested in why I can't see the warp threads - how does one make, say, a tartan pattern? Perhaps the weft threads need to be thicker so that they don't all squish don't into each other and cover up the warp. I haven't managed to find a 'how to weave' website that's as clear as 'how to spin' ones are.

Bunnies & Pinnies!

Mr Bee has been harping on about getting a bunny for some time now. He especially likes Netherland Dwarf bunnies, as they are so incredibly cute. I used to have my own rabbit when I was younger who was considerably... non-dwarf. Anyway, at the moment we are somewhat limited by the fact that we have no garden and barely any space in the flat. I think if we had a rabbit it would probably live in the house, but we'd have a run for it outside as well. I know when I had my rabbit she got way more attention when she lived inside as a baby than when she moved outside.

The other issue we have is that Mr Bee, as stated, likes dwarf bunnies. Admittedly, I like those too... But, I'd kinda like a spinnable bunny ;) Mr Bee thinks that angora bunnies are ugly (though even he will admit that The Sanguine Gryphon's angora bunnies are soooooooooooooooooooo cute!).

So. Impasse.

Fear not! Today I discovered the Jersey Wooly - a cross between a dwarf and an angora (boringly named 'Dwarf Angora' in Europe apparently). All the cuteness of a dwarf with the spinnability of an angora!

Though having lived in a house with 3 long-haired cats and their resulting fluff, we may end up with a Rex bunny instead ;)

Today I've been cleaning and sewing. The sewing was a result of the cleaning - I realised I could really do with some aprons. I have one pinny that's for best (I bet not many 25 year olds say that nowadays), but none for actual cleaning/cooking in. Plus I like pinnies, especially ones with pockets. Since I only wear skirts I rarely have any pockets on my clothes, so it's good to be able to strap on some extra pockets!

So I made a little pinny for cleaning/cooking in. This is quite small given that I just used a random fabric offcut, and it happened to be small pinny sized! I had 4 offcuts the same size, and used one for the pinny and one for the waistband. I could put some tiny pockets on it with the waistband remnants, but they'd be pretty impratical. I may make another with the other two offcuts and put a pocket on that one. I'm wearing it now and pretty sure it already has lasange spatter on it ;)

The second pinny is more an apron: it's my Spinning Pinny! Now that we live in a relatively fluff-free house sans chats (see above), I don't like getting spinning fluff on my clothes. So I've made a full length apron of a very shiny fabric to wear whilst spinning, in the hope it will make fluff-disposal easier. It's not very well finished - I haven't even neatened the edges with scissors never mind hemmed it, but it should be functional.

I do need one further pinny - a full, calf-length one. I realised once I'd made the little one why I'd decided to make a pinny today - to help me do the laundry! Both our laundry baskets are full of random crap, so when I get the clothes out of the washer I put them all in my skirt. Which is fine when I'm wearing a full long skirt, but today I was wearing a mid-thigh nightie (what? It's a Sunday!) which wasn't really practical! So one further pinny shall be in the works, and then I may just make more from funky fabrics to wear for extra pocketses.

Photos to follow shortly!

Depending on what's on TV tonight I may try some spinning (if it's all crap I'll have to do some work) as I don't think it hurts me. I realised after yesterday's post that weaving would be a perfect way to use up my spun yarn! I haven't felt like spinning recently as I can't do anything with the finished yarn other than look at it or give it away. But weaving might work... I've found instructions for a warp-weighted loom ;) but may try something less ambitious. I have a giant bead loom, so may try and convert that and see how I get on!