Long Weekends Rock!!

What do you get when you place a motivated weaver, a loom and uninterrupted weaving time? Well in my case I love, love, did I say love long weekends, because I get to start and finish a project. I warped my RH with a color exploration from Plain Weave is Anything But Plain, by Leslie Voiers, but I read the draft wrong and warp two end per instead of one and I added and extra color so I did mine with four instead of three. I really love the results and plan to recreate it with the right amount of warp for a scarf.

I hand hemmed instead of machine hemming, although the process is slower it was relaxing. I had extra warp and I wanted to experiment with the new Textures and Patterns book so I used the 5/1 pickup for window panes and used the remainder of my yarn that was on the shuttles, I made a mistake and missed one of the pick-up, leaving a extra long warp shot, so I need to practice, but I'm confident I'll turn it out and have some lovely towels to go with the mats.

I'm warping for a few more kitchen towel, but in a different sequence of solid color blocks to see if I get more definition on the patterns, as I think the pick-up's get lost in the variations. I'll also experiment with different pick up's and test how they look, that should be fun, I'll get towels, practice, and samples all in one shot.

I also got to snap a pic of the baby hat that I finished, here it is along with the cardi, which are now on their way to South Carolina. I decorated the hat with a pink bow and an ever so cute lady bug button, just perfect for a little girl.

ALL THINGS FIBERY

Sunday night I finished the last scarf for SSVE, I washed it and twist fringed (ugh), someone should come up with a gadget for twisting fringe it's annoying. I've commissioned the DD to take some pictures, hopefully all the photography classes she's taken will come in handy ;o).

Whenever I finish a project I get the blues, like oh it's done, now what? sort of a process of grief, I know it sounds silly but I always feel that way for a day, then I look at the finished piece and get total satisfaction in the completedness (new word?) of it.

So in my euphoria of completedness, I cast on a toddler hat to go with the flyaway cardi I knitted for Abby, it's on DPN's, to knit in the round, God help me. I cast on just fine not a problem understood how to separate the stitches amongst the needles, (always easy with a calculator, no I'm not a math wiz (hangs head in shame). I started the ever so simple pattern I found here on a great blog, thank God bloggers are so generous with time and advice. As I started the pattern I being the idiot novice knitter I got through the K2, P2 rib and joining the piece just fine, then came the stockinette stitch and I thought I had to purl once I passed the start point and knit on the RS, never mind that I've knitting on the knitting loom in the round, this tidbit of experience for some ungodly reason disappeared from the memory bank. Needless to say I had to frog and start over another one of my favorite things, ;o( this time I ribbed and kept knitting, not because I had an "AHA" moment but simply forgot about the start and finish. I just kept chugging along having issues with the needles in my way (how do you guys hold these things to knit so they don't protrude everywhere?) as I knitted each row I low and behold it worked, DUH!!

Yes, I should have known but I didn't realize the concept was the same as knitting with looms in the round, why I don't really know, sometime all the info in my head is just there, then something triggers and the whole right/left hemispheres seems to click and pass info to each other, amazing how that works LOL. So I guess I can maybe think about doing a pair of socks, which is the only thing hubby has asked for and I'm deathly afraid of doing. I would need the easiest sock pattern designed, non wool yarn in sock weight, I don't think I've ever seen any, and tiny dpn's, I don't really care for really small needles. Oh the challenges of loving the DH to death, only for this man would I ever attempt knitting socks.