Christmas tea towels 2014

It’s New Year’s Eve already and even though I’ve had a few days off work, I haven’t managed to restore any sort of order at home as I had planned.  I have started shredding the excess meeting papers and now have several large bags of shredded paper, a large pile still to be shredded and small shreds all over the house.  I might as well just keep at it and clean up properly when I’m finished.

I’ve done a little new weaving during the break but wanted to write about this year’s Christmas tea towels first.  A few years ago I started making a run of tea towels for gifts and they seem to be a success because my friends now ask hopefully ‘will there be tea towels this year?’  

This year I started with a summer and winter design from Handwoven May/June 2013, used yarns from the stash, dyed some in solid colours for wefts and randomly for stripes in the warp, put 14 metres on the loom and away I went.

I ended up with 14 towels, all a bit different, some with squares, some with rectangles and almost all with different colour combinations for the tabby and pattern weft. 

When I looked at them on the loom there seemed to be a lot happening, maybe too much, so I decided to stay with the same tie up and treadling.  After the first 6, I inserted a couple of sticks, cut the tea towels off  because I needed them for early presents, tied them back on and kept going.  As a result there isn't a glamour shot of them all posing together, and I think a couple might have missed the camera entirely.

Here's one hanging on the work towel rail showing the back side and the matching ribbon I found in the stash

Overall I was pretty pleased with the results as were the recipients.  Some of the colour combinations worked better than others and 2 towels had obvious faults.  It was one of those patterns where the mistakes didn’t show up that much on the front, 

but were very obvious on the back 

so there are a couple destined for my tea towel pile.  There’s no effect on the drying qualities, it’s just annoying, not easily fixable and simply not worth it for a tea towel.

And look what I found hanging over my fence

It’s from my neighbour’s passion fruit vine so maybe there will be some free fruit to follow and if not, the flowers are amazing and I love to see them appearing over the fence

Helen

Merry Christmas

Christmas is almost over her in Australia, far too much food has been eaten, the last of the Christmas tea towels have been woven and finished (more about that next time),  presents have been exchanged, and a good time enjoyed with friends an family

And here to end the day is the plate of Strawberry Santas I took to lunch with friends, strangely they weren't all eaten.  I think some of the adults felt sorry for them and the children just thought it was a plot to make them eat fruit.

New Projects

I have been busy weaving for the Woolcraft section of the Royal Geelong Show, hence the need to keep things under wraps.  I just managed to finish all the items I’d put on the entry form.

The first was a bright rug, that I thought it could be for the very young or even for the very old.  I was inspired by a wrap I saw draped over the back of a chair at work and decided to translate it into a rug.  I was able to buy some red 4 ply wool on special when I was in Bendigo, but it wasn’t quite enough so I added some 4 ply baby wool, a different red but I alternated the 2 yarns right across the warp.  I dyed the brightly coloured stripes on an unexpected day off.

Here it is on the trapeze

and is there anything better than a new warp all tied on and ready to start weaving?  Yes it’s the same warp with all the mistakes identified and fixed, the tie up done and behaving nicely so that I’m really ready to start weaving.

  It wasn’t as straight forward as I thought it would be.  The right sett for the yarn was 15 to 16 epi.  As it was machine washable wool and I wasn’t expecting a lot of fulling, I sleyed it 2 ends per dent in an 8 dent reed.  Although the yarn was all wool, it seemed to think it was mohair.  The ends clung together and the first rug was pretty much a large sample.  I re-sleyed in to 1 end per dent in a 15 dent reed and it behaved much better, not perfectly but much better.

  The draft was adapted from an 8 shaft advancing twill in ‘The Best of Weavers: Twill Thrills.

The next project was the second half of the summer and winter warp.  I had been inspired by Tien’s article in Handwoven May June 2014 and had come up with a point draft with 2 and 3 block units.  The first scarf had a Moorish look to it

and I wrote about it July but I fancied something more geometrical for the second scarf and thought of windows.  Then I read somewhere that it’s good to have a border and so ‘Windows and Doors’ was born.  I experimented with the tie-up on the computer to see what sort of windows I would get.  I found I had a single and two double windows and one of these turned out to have special significance.  In 2012 I went to the Weaving Summer School at the Australian National University in Canberra.  It was a terrific workshop where I got to play on a 24 shaft computer controlled loom for the first time.  

A staff member very generously offered me accommodation in her studio – a studio with a bed and a bathroom – what’s not to like?  When I looked on the internet to find where I was staying I caught sight of a link to ‘Tocumwal Houses’.  During the Second World War at the age of 18, my mother had joined the WAAAF – Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force – learned Morse Code, and with 5 of her fellow recruits had been posted to a big Air Force training base at Tocumwal, just the 6 of them and 3000 young men.  According to the oral history project, when the base was built, instead of typical long rectangular army huts, the huts at Tocumwal were house shaped. 

The idea was that if enemy pilots flew over the base they might think it was just another country town, one with all the houses the same size and shape and a couple of large air strips as well.  After the War, when Canberra needed a lot of new houses for the returning military personnel who were marrying and settling down with their baby boomer children, the huts from Tocumwal were moved across country, about 300 kilometres, and turned into suburbs.  It was a very thoughtfully planned estate for young families with courts along two sides and plenty of open space, accessible without any need to cross roads.  When I looked at the houses they did certainly looked as though they had come from a military base.  I took a few photos

and compared them with some of my mother’s old photos and indeed the windows were an exact match (I think my mother is the one on the far left but not sure why they are sleeping outside). 

Of course I imagined that the house where I stayed was my mother’s old hut.  

So when the tie up gave me double windows, I made sure that one version had the same proportions as the windows on the Tocumwal Houses, right down to the narrow glazing bar across the middle.

Here it is – on

– and off

the loom.  Weaving was slow because of the 2 shuttles but it was worth it and I couldn’t resist adding a knob to one of the doors.

The third project was to use a lovely ball of Juniper Moon Farm Findley Dappled in soft greys, sent to me by my aunt in the US.  It was 50/50 merino/silk and I thought that with a darker grey cashmere yarn from the stash for the contrast warp stripes and the weft, it could be entered in the other natural fibres class.

I wanted to make the most of the wool/silk and opted for satin stripes with plain weave stripes in the cashmere.  I found something close to what I wanted in Sharon Alderman’s Mastering Weave Structures but there was no draft.  Off to the computer and I worked it out, then I thought I had seen the same fabric in Handwoven, checked, and there was the draft in the March April 2003 issue  – the shafts were a bit different as they had put the tabby on 1 and 2 and I had put it on 6 and 7 but the resulting cloth would have been the same.  Weaving must be good exercise for the brain. 

Although the dark grey yarn was labelled ‘cashmere’, I’d bought it years ago and wasn’t completely sure what it was.  Once it was wet finished there was no doubt, it was just so soft.  The satin stripes with their closely sett merino/silk gave it just the right amount of weight and drape. 

It’s now on its way back to the US as a gift for my aunt, I hope she likes it.

The judges liked what I’d done, a third prize for the red rug and blue ribbons for the two scarves.

Helen

Inspiration

When I was taking some photos for another post recently, I got out the roll of leatherette I use as a background and I noticed that the cardboard roll where it’s normally stored,

looked just like a large one of these.

Then I went home to set up a kumihimo braid, picked a couple of yarns that I thought would co-ordinate with the pearly square, and away I went.  When it was long enough to examine properly, I realised that I was reproducing the fabric roll – or was it the ice cream wafer? 

Probably the cardboard roll as they are both ‘Z’ twist, the wafer is ‘S’.  It wasn’t a conscious decision but was clearly influenced by thinking about the cardboard roll, and the wafers.  Funny how the mind works.

Here’s a warning for anyone foolish enough to use a tape measure with a paper guillotine

– and no I wasn’t measuring something 7 ½ inches wide, I was measuring something 3¾ inches wide – and managed to do it twice!

Helen

A short break, followed by a lot of activity

I spent the weekend before last in Hobart for a conference and while we were kept busy most of the time, I did have a room with a wonderful view of the water including Constitution Dock where the Sydney to Hobart yacht race finishes around the end of December. It's the smaller dock on the right, not the larger one straight ahead.

This was the view from my window on what at first glance seemed to be the 16^th floor, but since there was nothing between Mezzanine and 10 and no 13^th floor, was much closer to the 8^th floor.  Nothing wrong with the view and I suspect the room rate is much higher around race time.

We had an expedition up the river by ferry to MONA – Museum of Old and New Art.  It’s a new privately funded gallery set up by David Walsh who according to the publicity, made his fortune gambling and then used it to build MONA. Fantastic building  built down into the cliff with lots of exposed stone.  Most interesting range of exhibits, some more confronting than others, but not many textiles.  There was a bench covered with what appeared to be a felted fabric with lots of mohair locks hanging from the surface, it growled as you went past it.

The conference ended with a dinner on Sunday night and I was on a late afternoon plane home on Monday – about 90 minutes later than it should have been as it turned out.  I spent Monday exploring the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery as well as the local shops.   Hobart is the base for the Antarctic program and there were some excellent displays especially about some of the early expeditions.  The people on those expeditions must have been really tough to survive the conditions with the very basic protective clothing from the time but I was pleased to see that the Mawson expedition had taken their trusty Singer treadle machine with them.  I suspect for repairs rather  than dressmaking.

Once I arrived home there was a lot of weaving activity to get the works in progress out from under wraps and finished in time for the show but all was eventually completed, packed and posted on time.  More about those next time

Helen

Not sure where the time went

The past few weeks have been mostly taken up with fighting off, hopefully, the last 2 colds of the Winter.  There hasn’t been time or energy for much weaving although I did finish another run of scarves in a basketweave variation.  I used a plain black weft and a few different 8 ply knitting yarns, some with random colour changes, some with long repeats.  My original idea was to have a widely spaced warp threaded in a straight draw but a few inches in I could see that it wasn’t going to work.  I thought about how I could save the warp already on the loom.   I knew I could sley it more closely but then of course it would be too narrow.  Taking a deep breath, I wound 2 more sections to make up a reasonable width, unwound the original warp off the back beam leaving it still threaded, added the 2 new sections, one on either side, and wound it all back on to the back beam.  I’m sure I’d read about this as a solution but had never tried it.  Much to my surprise it went back on to the back beam with no problems and by the time I’d finished the 5 scarves, I’d forgotten the warp’s inauspicious beginning.

So here they are, 2 were in a wool/acrylic/ viscose mix mostly green but with small amounts of lots of other colours, one of these went straight to my scarf collection. 

One was a plain violet 70/30 wool/soy fibre mix. 

The next was the same yarn but I was able to use up the remains of a few skeins in related colours. 

The last was a pure wool roving type yarn with long colour repeats. 

These scarves were easy weaving, probably a good thing as I didn’t need a challenging project.

A friend and I spent a weekend with another friend who lives near Geelong and we went to check out the Scarf festival at the National Wool Museum.  It’s an annual event but this was the first time I’d been.  There were a few woven scarves, including a few by weavers I know, but most were knitted or crocheted.  I’m not sure what the entry criteria were but I guess I’ll find out as I left my contact details for information about the 2015  Festival.  I hadn’t been to the Wool Museum for a long time and they’ve done a great job documenting and displaying the textile history of the area.  There was a thriving wool and textile industry in Geelong in the past but unfortunately it’s all gone offshore, mostly to China.  No more mill ends for us and more importantly no jobs for the people who used to work in the industry.

As well as the scarves there was a great exhibition – Vanished into Stitches - by Ruth Marshall, an Australian artist who lives in New York and knits animal pelts.

Here's a copy the cover of the 'Teacher's Guide' (school was never like that for me) I borrowed from the gallery website to give an idea of the amazing work Ruth does. It's well worth a look at the link or in person if you're in Geelong or passing through, open until December 7 so there's still plenty of time. 

Of course, there are always new projects in the pipeline but they're ones which have to stay under wraps for the next few weeks, more about them later  

Helen

Is there such a thing as a man's scarf?

The first run of herringbone unisex scarves turned out so well that I decided to do a second run on a different warp - navy blue and silver grey this time instead of the original red and charcoal grey.  I finished them this week and decided to test them on the models at work - usually known as 'the girls and the boy'.  He is particularly life like and has been known to frighten staff who see his reflection in the mirror and think that there's someone there.  The first scarf had a jade weft and looks great on both my models.  

The second had a navy weft with multi-coloured slubs, not pure wool but it still feels soft.

The third had a red weft, one strand of wool I'd dyed for a project long forgotten and one stand from the nearest cone of red wool.

The fourth had a denim blue weft from a bargain cone I found at a sale at a workshop, would work well with any colour of denim.

 The fifth and final one had the same silver grey in the weft as in the warp and by that time I was getting a little tired of all that herringbone so I reversed it every 16 picks to make blocks of herringbone.  They look like little crystals, perhaps ice crystals, and it's cold enough today for there to be ice crystals inside as well as out.  

And what was the verdict on the scarves - I think I've worked out that taking photos at work is easier than doing it at home.  There's a good place on the bench which faces South, there are plenty of drapes in the window dressing cupboard and there are models who don't complain. As far as men's, women's, and unisex scarves are concerned, I suspect it's hard to make a scarf that could only be worn by a man, these certainly seem to work well on my male and female models - and none of them complained.  

However, I did make the herringbone scarves so that there would be something on our stall at the Hawthorn Craft Market for men, so I had a look at the unfinished treasures to see if there was anything else for women and found 2 almost finished wraps I’d made last year.
They’re a combination of wool and multicoloured handspun, one a rainbow and one is shades of green and rose, wide but light, just the thing to keep out the Winter chill, so I finished them and added them to our stock for tomorrow.

Helen 

A weekend in the country

I got away from work early on Saturday and made good time to Bendigo where the first thing I saw was one of their historic trams, decorated for the occasion by yarn bombers with particularly nice crocheted bunting.  No pictures unfortunately as I was driving and the traffic needed my full attention. There was just enough time to visit the factory shop at Bendigo Woollen Mills before they closed.  They do a good job with mail order but it’s not like being able to touch the yarns and of course, sometimes there are bargains.

It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining even though it was cold. 

The wattles are just starting to bloom, a sure sign that Spring is just around the corner.

I spent Saturday night with a family friend who despite advancing years is still managing on 4 acres.

Next morning I got to the Sheep Show at the showgrounds just in time for the woolcraft parade, here are just a couple of examples of the very creative garments on display

.

After the parade I worked my way around the vendors to see what was on offer.  I had a couple of gift vouchers I’d won as prizes at earlier shows.  I remembered to bring them from home but then left them in the car so I made my choices first and then went back to the car park, fortunately not too far away, to get them and do more shopping to add to the yarn from the mill.  It was a modest pile, some yarn, a couple of rovings and another temple so now I can cover every width from about 400 mm to the full width of the loom.

There were sheep,

shearing

and sheep dog trials

And of course there was the woolcraft display where I found that both of my entries had been placed second in their classes.

By early afternoon, I’d seen everything I needed to see at the sheep show and went downtown to see the newly opened exhibition at the gallery – all sorts of underwear dating from around 1600 to the present and yes Queen Victoria’s knickers were there as well.  After that I went back and collected my jacket and scarf and headed for home, about 2 hours away

Helen