I Hope Summer Is Here To Stay!!

Remember on the first day of spring season, I came to work and there was 4 inches of snow on the ground? Things are finally looking like spring has come. The apricot trees that where covered with snow now have small apricots, and lots of them.
My garden is looking very green as well. The plants all survived the winter except for one of my Hollyhocks, but the rest are coming up and growing.

This is the first time that I've been able to see Coreopsis growing for two seasons in a row. Figured it out last spring when the rabbits kept eating this plant down to the ground. A little chicken wire and some stakes helped keep the plants safe, and this year I will have golden yellow dye from the flowers.

This is a Rose of Sharon. It has some lovely periwinkle blue flowers on it. I haven't had enough flowers to dye with before, but maybe this year I will get enough to see what color I can get from them.

This is Yarrow. It grows like crazy, and it is the most beautiful soft green right now. I've used this plant as a dye before, and when I use copper as a mordant I get a very pretty green.

This week I'll be planting my annual plants. I have two colors of Marigolds. I've already planted the Zenia's and Sun flowers. I'm also going to plant a tomato plant. Not for dyeing, but for fresh tomatoes to eat. I love BLT's with home grown tomatoes

Looms Are Like Potato Chips

Yep, like the title says, looms are like potato chips.
You can never have just one.
When I first started weaving I noticed that many of the weavers that I met had more than one loom. I couldn't understand why you would need more than one loom. A floor loom can do many things and other than not being portable you can do most any weaving project on one.

Well that was a nice dream.

Then just when you're not looking, wham it hits you, the bug for another loom. Well this is my latest purchase. It's a rigid heddle loom made by the Schacht Spindle Company. It's called the "Flip" and it's wonderful. This little loom makes it so easy to play with my weaving. I can warp it up in about 30 minutes instead of hours. I can play with different yarn combinations. And best of all this little loom folds up even when it's warped, and goes into it's own travel bag.
This is the result of my latest play time. I was curious to see what would happen if I spun up some kettle dyed roving into long color sections. I then set the yarn without plying it in order to keep the color changes true. I then warped up my loom, and wove with the same hand spun yarn.

You know how something looks really good in your head, but then when you try it it doesn't work? Well that was what I was afraid would happen with this idea, but it didn't. The colors softly change thoughout and the scarf turned out beautiful.

This picture was taken before the fabric was washed. After washing the open weave of the fabric closed up, and made it even better.

Love my newest loom.

Faith, Hope, and Charity

I've been busy inside this last week setting up looms. This takes a bit of time, especially if you're not really sure about a couple of really old looms.

This first loom was donated to the village late in the season last fall. From what I could tell about the loom, it was built in the early 1900's. It had been in someones barn or shed for many years, and was in bad condition. The loom came with a warp still on it and rugs from the last person that wove on the loom. The old warp was very dirty, and you could see where mice had been all over it. Needless to say that had to come off. The reed was very rusty as were the headles.

This spring I decided this would be my first task in the house. As I was working on this loom I thought how much faith I must have in this old loom. It did after all come with warp on it, so I knew at one time it worked, but would it work for me? I wouldn't know until I had put a new warp on it. So that is how this loom got it's new name, Faith.

I replaced the reed, and the headles, and warped it up with 5 yards of yarn, and holding my breath I slowly opened each shed. Yeaaaa, I had a clean shed on all 4 shafts.

One more hurdle to overcome was that this loom is a counter balance loom so now I had to attach the treadles and see if the balance was correct. If the shafts aren't balance you won't have very much luck weaving.
Again my faith was rewarded and I was able to weave on this old Cambridge Loom.

This is the other loom that is in my house. This loom was built in 1885, it too is a counter balance loom. We did a little weaving on this loom last year, but it wasn't set up correctly. So I am now working on this loom, and I hope that I can get it up and running again. So the name of this loom is Hope. I found several missing parts in the upstairs of the house, so instead of a two shaft, I hope to restore it back to it's original four shaft glory.
Now, I know what you're thinking, you can't have Faith, and Hope without Charity, so meet my dependable little spinning wheel Charity. She has never failed me. She is my go to wheel, and she has always spun up a mighty fine yarn every time I've sat in front of her.

So there you have it. If you're ever in Salt Lake come up and visit Faith, Hope, and Charity.

I'm Back !!!!!

Yea it's spring????? Can you believe this weather? It's April 13th and there is about 4 inches of snow on the ground. Spring season 2010 has begun here at This Is The Place, and that means that any type of weather can happen here in the Rocky Mountains.

This is one of the apricot trees that is in my yard. It's really hard to see the apricot blossoms, (what with all the snow on them) they where just starting to bloom. I hope the snow wasn't enough to damage the blossoms. These trees produce some of the best apricots and this year is suppose to be a good year for the trees to produce.
I won't be sitting on the front porch today. The village looks more like it's getting ready for Candle Light Christmas than spring season. My neighbor, Sister Andrus won't be in her house for another month, but slowly the houses will all start to open up, and air out after a long winter. My dye garden will have to wait a few more days before I can begin the spring planting. Many of the plants in the garden are perennials, like Day Lilies, Sage, Lavender, Irises, Golden Rod, and Madder. But I do need to plant a few annuals such as Marigolds.

The wild Canadian Geese like to come to the village as well and raise there goslings. If you listen carefully you can almost hear what they're saying.

Dear, are sure you read that map correctly?

Do you think we went to far north?

I could have sworn that the GPS told me to take that last right.

I knew we should have asked for directions at that last pond, but nooooo, you said you knew the way.

I hope you're happy now.

The good thing about getting snow this time of year, is that it melts quickly. By tomorrow it should all be gone.

Yippee, Fiber Exchange

Last night was the most fun of all the guild meeting for the year. You guessed it, it was the annual fiber exchange meeting. Maybe I should change my description from Christmas to "Trick or Treating", that's what it felt like last night. No tricks just some fun, colorful, treats. When I emptied my bag out on the floor this is what I came home with.
I think the challenge of natural dyes scared some people away, but for those of us that faced the challenge head on with courage, had a wonderful time. One of the ladies liked her wool so much she didn't even come to the meeting cause she didn't want to give any of her wool away, so said her partner. We all got a chuckle out of that. I really didn't see anything that wasn't interesting or beautiful. Some of the ladies made it very difficult to choose, because they tried several different dye stuffs. I learned some new things as well. For example, Judy made a dye bath using a gallon of vinegar and several steel wool pads. She poured the vinegar into a bucket, and crumbled the steel wool up in it, and then let it sit for several days. She saw this on the DIY network for making a wood stain, and thought that if it would stain wood it would for sure work on wool. You can see her wool at the top. It's in a plastic bag, light tan with a smidgen of rusty brown on the tip. (go figure) The wheels are turning on what I can make with these little beauties, but for now I like to just look at and pet them.

If you're wondering how the sweater is coming along, here it is. I've almost finished the body. Only a couple inches, and then it's on to the sleeves. I've really loved working on this sweater. It's nice to have a big project, that is not on a time line to finish. I don't think I'll have it finished in time to wear before warm weather hits, but come next winter this sweater will keep me looking fashionable and warm.

Happy or Sad?

I received a package in the mail last month from The Griffin Dye Works and Fiber Arts company, and I've been having a ball with it. I purchased their American dye kit which contains dye materials that where used by Native Americans as well as early colonists and pioneers. One of the dyes that I used was fustic. Fustic which is also known as Dyer's Mulberry is a hardwood. The fustic came ready to soak as shavings. I made the dye pot, put in some wool and this is the color that came out. I didn't need to use a mordant, so the color that I got was a very sunny yellow. This picture really doesn't do it justice.

The kit also came with several different mordants. One of the mordants was Iron. Iron saddens the color of the dyes, so I thought I would see how sad I could make this happy yellow fiber. I used some more wool and mordanted it with the iron. I then added the mordanted wool to the same dye pot that the first wool came from, and this is the result.

The wool turned into a very pretty olive green. It's really fun to see what different colors I can get from the same dye pot by just changing the mordant. There are about 7 or 8 different dyes in this kit along with 3-4 different mordants. The kit has been well worth the cost, and it's been quite fun to learn about the plants and mordants.

My Littlest Loom

A couple of weeks ago I started attending a new weaving class. In this class I'm learning how to do double weave, which means I can weave two fabrics at once. I know, my brain trys to leak out of my head every week at the end of class. Needless to say my floor loom has warp on it to do the home work that I need to do for class so, I can't do any other projects for awhile. I noticed the other day that I started to twitch, and knew that I needed to do a little weaving. So I thought now would be a great time to get acquainted with my newest loom the "Inklet" from Ashford. I bought this little inkle loom in order to work with some finer threads, and it is a bit more portable than my bigger floor inkle loom.
It's only 14 1/2 inches long, and 7 inches tall. I really like it. This is my second inkle band that I've woven on it.

The warp that I've put on is just sewing machine thread. This so far is the finest thread that I've worked with, and I hope to start weaving with silk threads soon.

This is a close up of all the warp threads. I used four different colors for this band.

This what the woven band looks like. The width of this band is 1 inch, and it will be about 50 inches long. I really like working with this loom. I've been thinking about what I can use the bands for and this is a list of things that I've come up with so far.

Hat bands

Garter Ties, (re-en actors really want these)

Shoe Laces.

Sashes

Belts.

Straps for bags

Guitar straps

The loom is so simple, that the possibilities for designs are almost endless, and because of it's small size I don't feel intimidated to experiment.