Learn you must, young Padawan....

I'm not sure if you know this or not, but I studied both mechanical engineering and industrial design while at the grand University of Michigan. The point is not to gloat; it is to point out that I should be good at math. Or at least numbers, sequences - you know - stuff like that. But unfortunately, they gave me a really large fancy calculator the first day in school and all mental ability went out the window.

Depressing, I know.

Anyway, I found this pretty cool draft the other day on Handweaving.net.

Find it here!

There's something about the line sequencing that visually appeals to me. So what I failed to notice when I downloaded it is that the repeat is in units of 13. What does that mean for a weaver?

A LOT OF [expletive here] CONFUSION. 

For those of you who don't know, weaving usually involves a lot of even numbers for a variety of different reasons that I won't go into here. This particular exercise was equivalent to finding a common denominator for 3 prime numbers... Yeah. Exactly. And on top of it, I dyed my own yarn which of course didn't come out the way I thought it was going to come out. Oy!

Yellow Yarn #1. Still have to add the gray!

Love the pattern, though...

So let me pass on what I learned from this experience:

1.) When dyeing large amounts of fiber, always do small swatches first. I know, I know! That's always been rule number one for dyeing. But I was so eager to get going on this project I threw a little too much caution to the wind and ended up with an easter egg scarf. The upside? Time to do some overdyeing! Yay!

2.) Stick to even numbered drafts for the time being. Or get tips and tricks from other awesome weavers on how to do this without loosing your mind. Seriously.

The Ombré Addiction

I have a not so terrible addiction folks. It's an uncontrollable urge to ombré the crap out of every piece of yarn or spare fabric I have. I should probably move on before I end up in a terrible ombré rut.

But for the time being, check out a couple of warps I dyed recently! 

This is hopefully for a scarf. Made of 100% alpaca.

And this one is 100% wool for some pillow fabric I'm making.

But it was on sale!

I did a little more yarn shopping last month. Probably didn't need to add to the already large fiber shelf, but I couldn't help it. It was on sale. 

Oh, those words! How many times I have uttered them out loud? None. 'Why is that?' you may be asking yourself. Because I give so much hell to my mother for it. Don't get me wrong, she is amazing at finding a deal - and usually it's for things she actually needs and uses. And she by no means needs to be added to the ranks of those crazy coupon clipper people on that TV show. Although there was this one time when I came home for Thanksgiving to find 10 boxes of her favorite chai tea in the pantry. When questioned why there were so many boxes and how she could possibly use them by the time they would go stale, she responded sheepishly, "It was buy one, get 9 free. We use the stuff all the time. Would you like a box? Or three?" ending with a hearty chuckle. Needless to say, my brothers and I went home with a few boxes of chai that holiday season.

Of course, I see myself perhaps acquiring that trait and well, I'm dealing with it one step at a time. 

But really, I found this incredibly soft bulky yarn for super cheap made out of wool and alpaca and I couldn't pass it up. (I just typed that sheepishly, by the way, with my shoulders up to my ears and my head cocked to the side.)

And hey! I'm using them. No sitting on the shelf for long for these little guys. I decided to take three balls and prepare them for a little dyeing....

A good soak with a little scour...

Preparing the acid dye baths...

My goal hear was to get 3 different shades of one custom mixed color. But I couldn't figure out how to replicate the color, especially with such small yarn quantities. Normally I would just measure out the dye on my scale if I was replicating. Unfortunately, my mini scale doesn't measure past a tenth of a gram. So my solution? Use two cups of water to mix up the darkest color, then parse out fractions of that to each dye bath. And I would say it worked fairly well!  You'll see my knitting end products soon...

Amazon, wha?

I'm a little obsessed with my Kindle. It has turned me into a voracious reader. Or at least more so than before. My boyfriend likes to joke about how he didn't think I read at all before I got my Kindle.

Either way, I'm excited about the introduction to their new Lending Library. Why, it was only just a month or so ago when the NYPL added Kindle to their list of approved lending/reading devices which turned mine and everyone else's world upside down as could be seen from the amazingly long wait lists. But the addition of this just makes me giddy. Granted you need a prime membership, but I'm pretty sure between my boyfriend and I we either have one or should have one the way we order from Amazon.

With this new introduction, it makes me want to make Kindle cases! I've started a few prototypes, to get the feel for construction and materials....

And in the mean time, check out my Goodreads list!

Ombré on, hombre....

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen. Yes, I love to cook. Creating elaborate meals for my loved ones is one of my favorite past times. But my first passion is dyeing. Oh, goodness how much I love it! It can be a bit of a pain with getting out all the special pots and pans and laying down pieces of plastic tarp all over the countertops and floors (not sure our landlords would appreciate random splotches of red, yellow and blue all over the place.) But when I do it, I am in my element even when it might not turn out right.

Recently, I decided to fix some of my blah looking knits. I've been on this crazy knitting streak with some less than fancy yarn. So I've decided to ombré up a storm, hombre.

I love the irregular gradations - not a huge fan of the perfect ombré. Isn't it great? I'll have more pictures up soon...

Space - Desk Space - the Final Frontier

As I get older, I have discovered a few things about myself. When I get sort of irritable, there is a definite reason for it and although this seems obvious to most, I now make a purpose of trying to figure out what the irritant is and then fixing it. The latter - the fixing it - is something I never really bothered to do when I was "younger" because usually the irritant just went away. Now that I live with my boyfriend and two cats, I have three entities that are always in my immediate vicinity and we occupy a one bedroom in Manhattan. I feel like that is enough said, but if you need any more clarification, 'it be cramped, yo'.

My boyfriend was kind enough to let me use his old desk as my desk. But it was a little too small to be a working desk:

(Little Socks in the corner is wondering where her favorite fireside chair went. In the living room, Socks!)

 As you can see, it's a bit cramped overall - all my weaving yarn was shoved into a couple shelves on the bookcase. And can you see the two bins under my desk? Those are full of fabric and other stuff. For me, out of sight is out of mind and I won't use it because I won't remember I have it. Not to mention it's hard to even use my laptop considering there's no where to put my legs! So in my ridiculous efforts to organize and rearrange, I decided to do a little IKEA hunting and came up with this configuration:

(I love that Fiona is trying to figure out the best place to rest her bum on the bed.)

Definitely less cluttered and I can actually see all the stuff I have! Oh joy! The table looks a little small in the picture due to the 360 stitching app I used (which is an awesome app, btw), but it's a good size (~30" x ~60"). And there's even a little space between the desk and wall to put the ironing board when it's not in use. 

Love, love, love! Time to start makin'!!

Organize, organize, organize!!!

Is there something in the air? Am I just too hyped up on coffee? Why do I feel the need to organize and clean everything in sight? So this weekend, along with the curtains and windows, I felt the need to organize and take stock of my yarn collection. Oy.

In my ridiculous stash of "random things that can't go into the trash" I found an address book. An address book. Do you even remember what one looks like? Yeah, me neither. So if you need a refresher, here it is:

I think I purchased this at a Hallmark store in the mid 90's - thus the ridiculous cover and color scheme.  And the fact it has seen it's way through college and, um like, 6 different moves is baffling to me. I might recover it with some sort of fabric, but we'll see how ambitious I'm feeling....

Anyway, I cut up white card stock that was laying around into quarters, made a quick hole template and punched holes through all of the sheets:

 Then I took all of my yarn, made 6 strand samples of it and wrote down everything I knew about the fiber onto the cards, including random notes like the EPI pre and post scour (yikes!). Since I really didn't want to precisely cut and affix sticky labels, I took the lazy way out and flipped the dividers over, labeling them with basic categories: cellulose, cellulose blends, proteins, protein blends, synthetics, etc:

When I was done, I thought, "When am I ever going to use this? Was I just procrastinating?" But over the course of the weekend, I've actually referenced it several times. And it's been quite helpful. Score one for me!

Mistakes in yarn buying...?

There are times when I look at the yarn I have bought and I end up scratching my head wondering if I chose it in a past life. Most of the time I buy with good intention; I'll actually have a project in mind, a certain weave pattern, a color scheme perhaps. But there are times when I look at it and say - often out loud, "What was I thinking about doing with that?" Honestly, I can't remember. In this case it was a cone of wool in a "mushroom" color that must have looked better under the lights of my favorite yarn store. I know it was meant for some sort of weaving project, but lord help me, I can't remember.

 Anyway, since I've been on this random knitting kick, I decided to use it as my "practice" yarn. I made an infinity scarf using a honeycomb pattern.

Not to shabby, right?

And then I just kept knitting. I made two more - one of roughly the same size and another that was twice the size. But there was still something off, which of course goes back to the color. It's just blah... so I gave it a boost! Stay tuned to find out how...

Adventures in Dyeing...

Before I took my refresher dye course at the Textile Arts Center this summer, I decided to attempt an ombré effect with some rags for what would eventually be woven into a rag rug. Our duvet cover had seem better days due to our little muffin kneading fur-balls; it was worst for the wear. I tore it up into 1" strips (they really should be smaller, but the fabric is rather worn and thin). Then, I tied bunches of them together to get ready for the dye pot.


Now, this was the first time I tried to dye something a) old and b) a cotton blend. Yes, that's right. I've only had acid dyeing experience, which involves protein based fibers: wool, alpaca, mohair, silk, etc. Now don't get me wrong, it was a blast to do, but holy crap the results were less than wonderful. But at least the process shots were pretty cool:

See how the color is variegated? Different dye colors take depending on time exposed in the dye pot. In this case the first to get absorbed by the fiber was the red based hue, and lastly was the yellow-based ones. 

So what did I learn here that I would like to pass onto you? Dyeing old stuff is difficult to do - if it's been through the wash a million times or if it's just pilled all to heck it's not going to take dye well. The reason is that washing, especially with the alkaline soaps we use, will break down the fiber. In turn, it's less likely to take on any sort of dye. Also, procion dyes* tend to be less vibrate in general. That is, I have difficulty getting even virgin fiber to take on vibrant color.


Also, I did something I haven't done in a while - I didn't follow the directions to a T. I'm much more of a cook than baker, and this has even gotten me into trouble when following food recipes. I skimmed the directions thinking I knew what was going on since I've done so much acid dyeing, but low and behold it is a bit different to use procion dyes. I didn't use the wrong ingredients - I wasn't being reckless - I just didn't soak things properly and added the color kicker at the wrong time. Oops.

Anyway, after I set the color in the rags, I washed and dried them and the color faded even more. Next time I'll follow the directions. 


Even so, I wove them into a rag rug. All in all, it looks alright!

*Procion dyes are dyes used to create color for cellulose fiber. Cellulose fibers are plant based fibers: cotton, bamboo, rayon, etc.

Gray Day

We had some amazing days last week in NYC, although it has quickly turned into nasty grayness.

Funny how my experience affects my work. I was feeling kind of blah, and decided to reflect that feeling in my weaving: an undulating twill in 50% merino/ 50% silk, in a gorgeous light gray color:

Originally, it was supposed to be a shawl. But you all know how much of a perfectionist I am, the edges weren't quite right and there's a tiny tie-up error (which I thought I caught!) so I'm currently deciding what to turn it into...