Winter Remedy

Since our long and dreary winter still showed no sign of stopping I gave in to an impulse buy about a month ago. Completely impulsive and totally not the kind of flower I would normally go for even. I went to get groceries and the store had a huge display of orchids. Yeah pretty and expensive and so not me where are the daisies? Then I looked at the price! OH MY GOSH! They only wanted $10 for any of the orchids in the display. Hmmm let me look again... Long story short this beauty came home with me.

And here is is nearly May and it is snowing outside sigh. Sunday I went shopping, it was sleeting not snowing, and well I picked up two more orchids. These are smaller plants then my first one but I think are just beautiful. Grin I was actually only going to get one but I couldn't pick between these two so blush bought both.

Looms, Looms, and more looms

I feel like my house is being taken over by looms. I have been looking at all the loom types and the numbers here and WOW is all I can say.
I have two Mini Tablet looms. Think small inkle looms with out a heddle bar.
Then there are the 4 or 5 Mini Inkle looms I got from one maker that really don't work well for anything. The sheds on this particular makers looms is too narrow to make them easily useable. Those should go.
Then I have a nice med size Inkle that works well. This is another eBay buy and one I would repeat.
I also have a Tinkle or tiny inkle from Spanish Peacock that I like and of course the largest of my Inkle looms the Schacht. So for inkle/tablet weaving that gives me at least 9 looms which is a few too many.

Then I got into the Rigid Heddle looms. I have three of those, a 13" Glimarka Emilia, a 24" Ashford, and my pride and joy a 32" Beka RL. Those at least I have been reasonable about. Each loom fits a specific nook in my weaving.

We wanted to have a multiple shaft loom. So we got a 25" wide older 4 harness table loom
Then DH learned to weave on a floor loom. OOPS back to the market and we came up with a used Baby Wolf for him last May. Last month the Baby Wolf got joined by another floor loom that weaves a wider width. That is Mystery who turned out to be a Leclerc Artisat built in 1971!

Emilia

Boy am I excited! I got my Glimarka Emilia in the mail today. This is a very sturdy little rigid heddle loom for me to use at demos. The Emilia has a 13 inch weaving width and is designed and built with all the care and attention to detail that Glimarka puts into their larger looms. It did not take long at all to have the Emilia ready to warp and weave on BUT it is time for me to get some sleep so the warping and weaving will have to wait until tomorrow.

Summer and Winter

It is done finally! This is the last of the three scarves I was weaving with variegated yarn. This one has the same variegated yarn for both the warp and weft. I think the pattern it made is very interesting.


Now on to more intriguing things. Toli and I will be doing a Weave along/workshop on Summer and Winter weave. We found a really nice towel pattern that uses that weave structure in a "Best of Interweave".


We have our threads here for the towels and have been waiting for me to get the Beka empty so we could warp up both looms at the same time. We are in love with the colors the towels call for. If nothing else they should be pretty ;-)

This will be my first attempt with (gulp)double heddles. I will also need a pickup stick for this project. Toli with his four shaft Baby Wolf will only need to thread his loom right

Look at my loom bench :)

Scooted under the Beka RL
Originally uploaded by spindledreams

My wonderful DH made me a bench to sit on while weaving on my Beka RL. The Beka has a weaving width of 32 inches so stays on the stand permanently. Up until now that meant I had to haul a chair into my craft room to weave and haul it out when finished.

My bench is designed to scoot underneath the Beka when not in use. In the photo that is where it is but grin I have it turned around so you can see how pretty it is. The seat has a lip over the side of the bench and lifts for storage. The slanted end sections provide me a place to set my shuttles etc while working at the loom.

What makes my bench even more special is he used all salvaged wood in it so the bench looks old and used. :) He also put in cabinet hinges on the seat. They are hidden until you open the lid and will hold it up while I fetch things like shuttles or threading hooks that I need from inside.

Finished!

varigated wool scarves
Originally uploaded by spindledreams

Yep the variegated wool scarves are now finished. They got a bit more fulled then I had planned on but are still nice. Compare the finished scarves with the picture in the last post which is of them before fulling.

The variegated acrylic scarf is still on the Beka and I really need to get it off in a hurry. My yarns for the Summer and Winter weave along will be here next week...

Immersed in weaving

Grin I am still weaving to the exclusion of almost all my other crafts. I finished weaving one of my variegated scarves and am half way through the second scarf from the same variegated wool. These have been a lot of fun and are VERY different as you can see from the photo.

My next project is part of a weave along/workshop to learn a weaving style called Summer and Winter. More on that one later.