Not dead yet

Hey look, I made something! Well, several somethings, only I haven’t posted about them either. Oops.

Anyway, here, look, I made a bag to hang from my loom and keep tools in!

Oh, didn’t I tell you? I got a loom! I had one before, but I’d gotten it for free and it turned out to be too badly cracked. I bought a loom from someone I know from online, and swapped the pieces of the other one (as spare parts) to her for some nice heddles to use with it. (The heddles are the things you run warp threads through; when the heddles go up and down, so do the warp threads, making it easier to weave.)

Here’s my new-to-me loom in an earlier stage of being fixed up.

I’ve done some work on her since I took that picture: wiping everything down with diluted Murphy’s oil soap, rubbing in some Wood Beams, getting the rust off with wire brush and naval jelly, moving the treadles around to the back where they started out, and replacing the rusty and pitted lower warp beam. I have a little rod stock on order to replace a rod in one of the harnesses. Finding metric rod stock in small quantities in the US is hard to do. I wish I could say I was surprised. After that, the only thing I need is tie up cord. I’m waiting until I can afford the fancy TexSolv tie up cord, because I gather it’s worth its cost.

And then I can start warping the loom (putting the warp threads on) and get to weaving.

She’s a Lillstina 46″ floor loom (means I can theoretically weave 46″ wide fabric on her)—a counterbalance—and her name is Diamond Lil.

Other bits I already have that I’m going to need: a tall chair that I hope is the right height, a warping board, shuttles and bobbins, and lease sticks.

First steps in slip stitch crochet

I got a pjoning hook (that’s the traditional flat hook with angled sides) from Lacis for doing slip stitch crochet.

I really like it! It slips into the stitches really easily, and while I was worried about getting correct gauge because of the angled sides, it turns out that the angled sides are there to help with correct gauge!

At least, that’s my hypothesis.

Gauge is established with the foundation chain; I admit, I used a regular crochet hook for that part because I was worried about evenness.

With slip stitches, the size of the last loop you made is determined by where the angled hook sits in the stitch from the previous row, except that I want the loop to be a little bigger because it’s also going to hold the next stitch I make and so I need a little slack. Having the loop of the next stitch formed below that on the hook means that it will be just that little bit larger.

There’s a sneaky thing about knitting stitches that many people don’t realize, and I think it holds true for slip stitch crochet as well (probably fiber arts in general, now that I consider the matter): the size of the stitch I just made is partially determined by how I pull on the yarn as I make a new stitch. I think it might actually be more important in crochet than in knitting because there’s no needle sitting in the stitch until the end of the row to keep it from shrinking too far.

So, after I make a new stitch, there’s a loop on the hook, right? It could end up being any size depending on what I do next.

I insert the hook into the next stitch from the previous round until the stitch is tight around the hook. You see how the loop on the hook is underneath?

Then I pull gently on the yarn as I make the next loop on the hook so that the loop already on the hook is snug but not tight. This will keep my gauge the same. Or it will once I’ve practiced enough that I pull the yarn consistently after each stitch. But it’s pretty clear to me that consistent tension will lead to consistent gauge because of the angled sides of the hook.

Oak leaves in winter

Sometimes the light catches something in just the right way and I have my camera with me. Look at this vivid red, the result of sunlight shining through dried up oak leaves:

I ran it through the palettes app I’ve been using on the iPad, and came up with this, that I sorted by value (I read this very interesting post today):

I recently was going through my fiber arts books and discovered that I own a Dover book called Folk Designs from the Caucasus by Lyatof Kerimov, which has some interesting charted designs in it that I want to use in conjunction with Sara Lamb’s book, Woven Treasures.

I combined the palette above with one of the designs in there and came up with this combination, which I quite like. It’s also a fairly common traditional color combination, but the book I was working with was in black and white.

On further reflection, I think it’s truer to the original photo if the background is pale grey:

I also played around a bit in Percolator, which I’ve recently been having fun with, and which I think might be a good way to pull out a palette:

grass seed

from http://flic.kr/p/buwg4B

tilt shift wall

learning my way around Snapseed
from http://flic.kr/p/btE1aR

Sea anemone

I think this might be the penultimate Monterey Bay Aquarium color exercise. Here, have some striking sea anemones:

I used Palettes for iPad to pull out this set of colors:

And then used Sketchbook Express to paint in squares of color in a grid. I used a design from Sarah Don’s Fair Isle Knitting, sample 11 on page 37.

I didn’t care for the grid lines, but I realized while cropping the result that I could have fun with the preset filters in my photo editing apps. I was actually kind of surprised by how much easier it was to visualize a finished product based on the result.

Bridge

my favorite park.
from http://flic.kr/p/bt5zMk

Uphill shadows

from http://flic.kr/p/bs2Ss8

Carolina clay

from http://flic.kr/p/boBEcM

Eno River State Park

I have a thing for paths and stairs – this covers both.
from http://flic.kr/p/bowFrB