May-hem

Normally May would bring beach trips and sunshine, but this year it's started with snow and autoimmune flareups.  Beltane and still no plants in the ground.  It's been rough!

When I lived in Arizona, I followed the wheel of the year, but it all felt out of sync for me, very passive.  The celebratory signs of life seemed absent.  I didn't celebrate the return of the Sun when it meant heading toward 120 degrees.

Since we came here, I feel that same sensation.  I'd celebrate early spring on the west coast with blossoms, buds, muddy backyard planting days, breathing in the waking woods.  Here it's May, we're rushing toward Midsummer, and snow.  Still.  Very little sign of life, a few buds.  Nothing is blossoming, nothing is growing.  Nothing has been planted.  The feeling of life that would shake off my seasonal depression in Oregon, usually around mid-February, has yet to show here.  And the holidays slip by with a cursory glance and a heavy dose of melancholy.

But May brings the celebration of my May flower's birth.  Elowyn Rose turned 4 this morning.  So very bittersweet.  We didn't do much, she's happy without much, truly she thrives on simplicity and is happy with everything.  She got a few dollars and was so excited to have her own real money, so I made her an impromptu coin pouch/wallet from handwoven scrap.  Big sis was jealous and she was so proud.

It has a linen lining which I think is really too fragile for a toddler, but it went together in under 10 minutes and she was thrilled.

The morning started off a bit of a mess though.  Sweets off the Wheel on Ravelry is doing their Mayhem spinalong, and so I set up the symphony (Josephine) to start the spin.  The kids have been VERY rough with her, especially Linden since learning to walk, and the front maiden leather is totally worn out, and won't support the flyer anymore.  (He pulls off the poly band and yanks off the flyer, and the memory in the leathers has just started to allow for the flyer to pop right off).  Ugh!  Many tears.  Kromski north america would only help me if I felt like a free replacement was justified - a warranty replacement - otherwise to go through a dealer.  There are no dealers local.  Double ugh!  I did have my jumbo flyer still, but the orifice is so huge that it caused MAJOR chatter - consistent drafting was near impossible.  Carl took the measurements and in just a few minutes whipped up a custom orifice reducer on the lathe!  Mayhem spin is back underway.  It's Juliespins targhee, I'm going for a true 3 ply for Linden woolies, and going for maximum barberpoling to see how it ends up.  It was dyed almost gradient so we'll see!

Mayhem is happening!

orifice reducer from Carl

Juliespins "cliffs"

Fangorn Forest

Have you ever done something that is so incredibly representative of YOU, that it just kind of falls together?

I made Fangorn Forest up years ago, as a colorway to be on fiber, and I mostly pulled from areas of Champoeg State park near my house in Oregon, and a little bit just from my head.  I had 2 variations of it, maybe even 3, but ultimately they were all very similar.  Dark, rich greens, deep browns, and pops of golden leaves, as the trees waned.

I've made clothes for my babies with it, I even dyed it for a hap blanket for Linden (THE neverending hap blanket from 100% handspun).

I knew, just knew, that I had to do a Fangorn Forest baby wrap for us.  My first ring sling was "Betula" by girasol, which was greens and browns, and I loved it to pieces, but ultimately I wanted darker greens, richer shades.

Every step just kind of fell into place.

As far as the yarn went, the only problem came up when I was dyeing the browns.  For some reason the water at our short term rental was really reacting with the brown dyes, even trying to filter the water first.  I dyed the fiber at our Oregon house, and had spun it before moving, but the cotton for warp I didn't dye until after the move.  Our water was rusty and silty hard well water, and left an orange gold tint on everything we tried to clean.  Yuck.  The problem with the brown though, was that after rinsing, the color was more of an olive green, which was fine, but I still needed to achieve brown!   I ended up overdyeing parts of it in orange and it was perfect.  Mixing orange with the dye at the beginning didn't seem to work, but overdye did.  Since moving to our big house, brown sets fine by manufacturer instructions, thank goodness!

I had a vision of stripes in semisolid browns, for tree trunks, with more speckled greens (leaves, with light peeking through) in between.  I had a feeling the targhee would overpower that look a bit, and it has, but it's so unique and deep and interesting.  I can't wait to see how the rest of the project unfolds!

Little by little, we settle

It's been a hectic month or so.  Weaving, just trying to move in and find places and spaces and TIME for everything.  The time is the hardest part.  I started back in my fitness routines, I've been doing p90x3 again since the beginning of January, and that is physically *exhausting*.  I'm really glad I'm doing it though.  7 weeks in now and the strength is starting to be noticeable.


I've made it a goal for the year to branch out my weaving.  The regulations passed on slings and wraps and whether I will continue remains to be seen - I'd love to, but can I make enough to justify testing?  It's hard to know yet.  If not, I'm not going to "quit" weaving though, I'll just continue on doing other things, and that's ok.  My first goal was to learn about band weaving.  I bought an inkle loom and am starting to bond with it.


The biggest thing though will be ramping up my production, basically to test as many structures and yarns as possible before the actual lab testing, and to see if my production can sustain enough income to be worth testing.  Year of testing, 2017.  It's a bit nervewracking to think of that way.

Currently, I'm testing this hand dyed (not by me) in 10/2 unmercerized georgia ringspun.  It's lovely and soft but it has given me FITS!  It's fuzzy, which is causing the small shed to be even more unstable, threads want to stick, and it breaks easily.  So slow going.  I'm sending this out as a tester for feedback, but I might have ruled this one out of my arsenal just by sheer annoyance of working with it.

Easy grain free cranberry muffins

Winter tends to be a time for indulgence for me normally, lots of hot coffee and baked goods.  This year with all of my autoimmune symptoms in full swing I have been much more careful about what I'm putting in my body, in hopes the inflammation will die down some.  But as much as I love cooking a scratch breakfast every morning (hahahaha, I'm the least morning person EVER) I needed something quick I could prepare ahead and nom on with a morning unsweetened coffee.

Enter my favorite winter combination: cranberry orange.  Sigh.

These actually use fresh, whole, unsweetened cranberries.  They're everywhere this time of year, although if you're not paleo you could probably sub the sweetened/dried variety too.  

Ingredients:

2 large eggs
¼ cup honey
3 Tbsp. Coconut oil
1 Tbsp. Coconut milk (the canned variety)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 ½ cups almond flour
½ cup tapioca starch
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. sea salt
3/4 c cranberries
4 drops wild orange essential oil OR zest from one orange

For me, this made about 10 muffins, 12 small might be doable as well.  Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes (mine were done in about 22).

How long it takes to weave a project (part 1)

Like any other crafts out there, there's a lot of misconception on just how long a project takes.  So I'm going to try my best to really track this next project from start to finish and *time* everything.  I'm doing a post-holiday towel swap.  A pick me up after the rush and hectic mayhem of the holidays.  I had an idea of what I wanted, not quite a color gamp but the kind of stained glass window effect that you see from broken color stripes.

I spent about an hour playing in WeaveDesign for the initial mockup.  Approximately another hour deciding on a draft and playing with thread counts.  (I still do not know if I will need to add a floating selvedge but I will play with that after the loom is dressed.

My plan is to warp 15 yards, so I have some towels leftover to barter, sell, or gift.  The first few are for a towel swap and I plan to keep a couple for my house.

Designing - approximately 2 hours, since I had a clear picture of what I wanted going in.

So today, I start the actual measuring!

12/14/16 - I realized that my harnesses don't have enough heddles on them, and need to do some moving around.  Approx. 90 minutes to fix harnesses 2 and 3.

12/15/16 - I'm GOING to start measuring today!  Carl made me a new warping board which is my preference for shorter warps.  I set up with an episode of supernatural to start measuring (even though harness #1 still needs heddles).  Sadly, the quick sanding job was not really enough, yarn is snagging.  Winding is slow because I keep stopping.  First 2" measured out during one 50 minute episode of Supernatural.  Plus side, only 22" to go.  That's like a season of supernatural, I might get caught up on my show!

12/16/16 - Speeding up a little, logged another half hour of measuring, and 20 minutes to fix Shaft #1.

12/17/16 - Another half hour this afternoon to do little things like swap out my reed, and finish the first chain.  Because of the setup and my ability to go front to back for warping, I can start doing some of the threading now and break up my work to avoid strain from repetitive motion.  This is great, because of the health benefits, but it's also much more difficult to keep track of.    But as a benchmark, I measured a bit over 4" (out of the 24 I need) in just over 90 minutes.   Total time to get this far:
 4 hours and 50 minutes.

12/18-12/19 was a bit of a loss because of working on weaving the tartan, I didn't really get to touch the towel warp.  I realized though that the clock is ticking for the swap, so 12/20 I picked it back up and put in another 45 minutes.

Today, 12/21, I managed to spend 2 hours and 15 minutes (in 2 separate chunks) and finished the 2nd chain, sleyed the reed for the first, and got 2" into the 3rd chain.  That's halfway!  Halfway through measuring, one chunk sleyed, now we're up to 7 hours and 50 minutes.

The end of the Bergman adventure, part 2

Eventually with some help from people on Ravelry, I was able to move my warp off of the Bergman and back on to the Nilus.  It was not fun, I don't know how I had the patience to stick with the project.  But I sort of got tabby sheds and put in lease sticks, and moved it and warped front to back.

Once the weaving started, it was done quickly and easily.  I was reminded by how very *reliable* my Nilus always has been.  I decided to invest in texsolv heddles to replace my breaking string heddles, and give it one more try.  I wound on some bronze 10/2 to make a handwoven cowl.  The structure needed a first floating selvedge.  It was a nightmare with the double back beam setup.  

I was able to complete the project just fine, but I realized that as fond as I was of the character of this loom, it was not up for the production kind of weaving that I needed it to do.  I ended up selling it as I finished up this scarf warp, and immediately replaced it with an 8 shaft Herald from Eugene Textile Center, and it came with a sectional.  A whole new thing to learn!

The end of my Bergman adventure, part 1

Once the competition was out of the way for fall, I decided to attack a project I'd been wanting to do for a while.  I saw a picture circulating on facebook that absolutely called to me.  Lately when I am inspired it manifests in cloth, it has to.  So I decided to warp the Bergman, give it a test, and make a wrap project to get this need for this cloth out of my system.

First, I needed heddles.  Lots of them.  I read, and read more, and even more.  I ended up buying seine twine and made a little over 1000 string heddles, with Pi's help.

It took a lot of time.  My wrists and fingers hurt.  It was a labor of love, and honestly, money saving, because that many texsolv heddles are NOT cheap.  I was told string would be just as good, if not better anyways.

Well, long story short, lies!  They were twisty and a pain to thread.  When I finally finished, everything threaded and on the loom, it was catastrophic.

I think the whole project was pretty doomed from the beginning.  Warping back to front was painful.  Trying to maneuver to thread from the lease sticks there, into the heddles, it was a nightmare.  My hand didn't fit, and reaching made me ache so bad.  That in itself was just a loom structure issue, not anything I could help, but if I could get it to work front to back later, that would be another thing I could maybe overlook.

But once I got it threaded, the reed sleyed, and was ready to weave, things were not good.

Knots were coming undone.  Heddles were ripping off the bottom shaft.  My knots weren't secure enough.  It was a mess.

Not only that, but there was obviously continuing problems with the uneven levels of the shafts.  I was getting a ton of thread skips.  It was unworkable.  It sat on the loom, skips all over, for weeks and weeks while I contemplated what to do.