My Sister's Birthday!!

Happy Birthday to you... Happy Birthday to you...

Yes, it's true.  My sister had a birthday last month and I have been dying to write about the placemats I wove for her!  But, I didn't want to spoil the surprise- now she has them and I can show you all photos!!

It all started a year ago, when she asked me to weave her new placemats for her birthday this year.  I tormented her with photos, questions- What colors, what pattern, what size?? And she dutifully answered everything, picked a pattern, suggested colors... so I went ahead and did something totally different!! I know, I know, I'm like that.

Four Placemats

I wanted to use the warp that I painted in the class I took with Kristie at Blue Flag Handweaving Studio.  It was originally supposed to be for scarves, but my sister didn't want scarves... She wanted placemats!  The painted warp is perle cotton and the colors don't show up very well in this photo, but they are the lighter stripes.  Then I had to buy some blue perle cotton for accent stripes and weft.  I did use some of my stash for the green and yellow (can't really see the yellow...) stripes.  This is also cotton, but it is cotton rug warp.

And then, I suddenly got tired of the blue perle cotton and was forced to buy some beautiful dark green- thus 2 blue napkins and 2 green napkins.

2 blue, 2 green

Things I learned:

• a plain weave border looks nice, but takes up differently than a twill body.  Next time, use basket weave for the border (thanks Kathy!)
• Perle cotton and rug warp cotton are not the same, they have different stretch and shrinkiness (yes, I made that word up!)
• I hate sewing.  Well, not exactly true, I don't hate it, I am just not good at it- even seams, I couldn't sew a straight line if my life depended on it!
• Napkins and placemats don't HAVE to be square...
• 6 yds of warp is A LOT of warp.
• I love packaging things! One of the most fun parts was folding these up and tying them with pretty twine and a label.

Pretty twine and label (complete with pink kitty button accent!)

Beautiful placemat!!

Napkins and Placemats

So there they are- Birthday placemats!  (plus bonus napkins)

Next up... Crochet mania

Hope you all have a very Happy Holiday!!!

My beautiful, numbered, loom!

I have been wanting to post about this for awhile, and just haven't had the time!

I love my table loom- it is an 8 shaft Woolhouse Tools Carolyn loom.  It is very sad, but Woolhouse is no longer producing their wonderful weaving tools.  The Carolyn is by far the best table loom I have ever used!

I did, however, have one problem using it with my pea-brain: every time I pulled the levers down, I would have to count to see what number shaft I had raised. Observe this photo:

With plain weave it is pretty easy, but any pattern that calls for a sort of random assortment of shafts to be up at one time, well let's just say my husband was tired of me counting out loud every 10 seconds.

It is pretty typical practice to either use a Sharpie or a piece of masking tape to label your levers, but this is my beautiful baby!!  I didn't want to mar her perfection with my chicken scrawl.  My husband suggested the wood burner, but burnt chicken scrawl didn't really seem any better.  Thus, the search began.

I looked at scrapbooking stickers, stencils, fabric numbers, but nothing looked right.  What I had in my mind's eye was old type writer keys.  Now, that would be cool.  But try and find numbers 1-8 in one set for a price that wasn't as much as the loom...  Time to blink my mind's eye and find something new.

What I found was:

How perfect is this???

Yes, I know. It's a ring...  but you get what I was thinking don't you???  

I contacted Tracy at 3Fine Design on Artfire and asked her if she could make me a set of leather discs numbered 1-8.  Not only was she willing, but she even found me some thinner leather that would work better on my loom levers.  She did a fantastic job! They are perfect.  And I got to paint them myself.

They came like this

and then I got my paints out:

and did this!

and this!

Aren't they pretty?  And then my beloved husband glued them on for me (he is way better with spatial relations)

The lowered shaft numbers are blue and purple (my personal favorite colors)

  The raised shaft numbers are orange and yellow (my new personal favorite colors!)

Now I have the prettiest loom on the block.  All thanks to the wonderful artist Tracy and her ability to not only figure out what I was talking about but to work with me to to get the perfect diameter and thickness. 

I couldn't be happier.  Well, maybe if we won the lottery, but barring that...