The Big Reveal

Not much more to say about this project - I finished the dukagang towel (but ran out of warp so it's one repeat shorter than the other towels) and had a minor disaster (or two) with the loom right at the end, while weaving the last hem, but it all turned out ok.  I just have to do a bit of loom maintenance and we're good to go.

I was really feeling a hand-sewing vibe, so rather than machine zig-zagging between towels, I hand stitched a blanket stitch at the end of all the hems, and then turned them twice and hand sewed them all down.  They look super tidy and I am really happy with them.

Then a quick toss in the washer and a few minutes in the dryer, followed by a final ironing to dry them out completely...  and they look great!  The threads all tightened up a bit and made the designs much clearer and they look so lovely.

Now for the weaving porn - showing both the light and dark faces that give the fabric its name.  They're all the same... but so different!

Let Me Rock You, Dukagang

And so today I began the final treadling for the Summer & Winter towels - this one is a Swedish weaving design, called dukagang (doo-kah-gong), which leaves columns of colour, as you can see.

The vertical element of this particular treadling is very strong, since both the green and white blocks have a vertical stripe.  I feel like this takes away a bit from the overall radial symmetry of the design, but I still like it a lot, and I can't wait to see the other side, which will be mostly white with the design in green.

This is the fourth and final towel, so hopefully only a few more days and I'll have these ready for the wash and then we can see what they all really look like once they're finished!

Third Treadling

It's funny that, having done that bit of sampling at the beginning, I chose the pattern I liked best for the first towel.  Funny because I actually liked the pattern in the second towel better than the first, once I started weaving it.  It's even funnier that I like the third treadling (which I assumed would be my least favourite of the four) even more than I liked either of the first two.

I'm not sure if it's because the colours are more distinct (due to the different way the little contrast-colour-dots are laid out) or the way everything is tidy little squares, but I have been enjoying this treadling a lot.  The only unfortunate thing is how blurry it looks because of the alternating threads at the edges of the blocks.  Well, to be fair, the other unfortunate thing is that the picture is also just blurry.

A New Treadling

As I mentioned last time, I decided to try a different treadling for each towel, so it's time to show the beginning of the second towel and see if you can spot the difference that the different treadling order makes in the pattern on the cloth.

At the bottom of the photo is the original treadling on the first towel - looks like little white Os on a coloured background - and at the top is the new treadling for the second towel - now it looks like little white Xs on a coloured background, and you can see how the little Xs connect together at their legs to make a design more like a lattice.  Pretty!  You'll have to imagine the back side of the cloth, for now.  It will be a light background with green Xs and Os.

It's fun to start the second towel and see how different it looks, but a bit of a challenge to keep the new treadling straight, when the first one is so ingrained already.

Beginning of Summer (& Winter)

In an attempt to break myself of my recent addiction to knitting nothing but a succession of quick and simple stockingette socks, I decided to start a new weaving project.  It's a set of dish towels in a weaving style called Summer & Winter.  The name is reflective of the light and dark contrasts in the cloth - one side of the towel will have a light pattern on a darker background, and the other side of the towel will have the reverse of the same pattern, this time in dark on a light background.

I did a bit of sampling before I started, since there are a few treadling variations in Summer & Winter.  I elected to use one of the variations on a so-called X-treadling.  The little Xs aren't totally apparent in this design, at the moment, but having done a couple of repeats of this pattern, I'm thinking that maybe I'll do a different treadling for each of the four towels.  Once I do another towel in a different treadling, it may be easier to see the differences that different treadlings make in the cloth.  Or maybe not.

The weave is a bit open right now, under tension on the loom (that's why the coloured spaces look like little green brick walls) but hopefully once it's not under tension and has been washed, the cotton will shrink a smidge and the weave will close up a bit.  Time will tell.

SPRING, Gorramit!

This year, spring has poked its warm little head out and retreated a few times already, leaving a long dull winter in its wake.  I finally broke down, mentally stomped my feet like a toddler, and decided to try to entice spring to hang around by knitting with some of the brightest colours I had in my stash - my last two balls of Felici sock yarn, in the Fizz colourway.  It's purely a coincidence that it feeds into my current stockingette sock obsession.

These ones were the same old simple design I always knit, with an afterthought heel, but I decided to change things up and do a star heel for this pair.  I'm really tickled that I did, since one of the heels sort of reminds me of a Jayne hat.

My obsession with striped socks continues, but now I have to resort to making my own stripes.  It's just a different kind of fun to come up with the colour combinations.  The next pair are a real doozy.

Violets on Television

Lately, I've been feeling a real addiction to knitting socks.  Nothing complicated, either; no lace or cables or any funny business.  Just a simple toe-up stockingette tube with an afterthought heel, in self-striping yarn.

I'm not sure if it's because it's so meditative, or because sometimes life is too complicated to think about anything but stockingette, or just because I need a dose of colour after the aforementioned neverending winter (which I'm sure anyone in the northern hemisphere is mighty tired of by now.)  There is just something perfect about the simplicity of a sock like this.

Immediately after finishing the pink ones, I pulled out my next set of Felici yarns and began these.  I mourned the yarn all over again, since it's such a pleasure to knit that I had a hard time putting them down.  I love all the shades of purple of these ones, and finished them in about a week.

These colours are a bit more calm than the last pair, and nowhere near the riot of colour of my final Felici pair, now in (peaceful and meditative) production.

Spring Flowers socks

After the long and arduous winter we've had, it's nice to have things warming up and melting, in the last few days.  I've been able to leave the house without a jacket for the first time in six months or so, and I'm looking forward to seeing some colour popping out of the ground.

I made some colour of my own with these self-striped socks from the now-defunct Knit Picks Felici yarn.  I'm super sad to see this yarn go, since I always loved the base yarn and the simplicity of knitting the self-striping colours.  I haven't got much left, but I'm hoping they'll come up with something else by the time I run out.

This particular colourway was called Peachy, and I think it's pretty perfect for spring.

I did the usual, nothing new here: toe up, 68 stitch circumference, afterthought heel.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I do love how the stripes match but are offset from one another.

Happy spring!

Something New

I've been crafting quite a bit in the last while, though you see no evidence of it around here.  I've gotten really lax with taking photos (or making my HLM take some for me.)  There are some real oldies that still haven't ever been posted.

I made a pretty exciting purchase yesterday, though, and I wanted to brag - I finally caught up with (practically) everyone I know and upgraded my old phone to a fancy new iPhone!

This means I finally got to dig out the cross-stitch iPhone case I bought last year (when I originally planned to upgrade) and do up something fancy to decorate my new toy.  I chose a relatively simple Norwegian-style snowflake, and updated it with some contemporary colours.  It's awfully pretty and springtimey, I think, and I'm quite pleased.

I have a feeling the photos around here are about to get a lot nicer.

A New Bag

The old purse I was using was a felted bag that I'd made yonks ago.  The handle started to give out, and then, despite some attempts to maintain it, it finally had to be put to rest some months ago.  I didn't have a new bag at the ready, so I just dug out this old fabric one I had, with a tattoo-print fabric and some plastic handles.  It served my purposes for a while, but ultimately was also an old bag and started to show some wear and tear.  In the last week, the zipper finally broke (on top of various other wear spots and rips in fabric, etc., so I decided it was finally time to stop procrastinating and make something new.

Fortunately I had a pattern and some fabric & notions already for a purse I'd been planning last spring, so I just took my weaving loom down from my crafting table to make room for a sewing project, and threw this baby together in the last 24 hours, natch.

A lovely batik with rainbow colours and a neutral background are paired with a coordinating purple batik handle and lining, matching purple buttons for a bit of embellishment, and a bright blue zipper just to throw everything a bit off kilter.  There are pockets inside there, too, for my phone, my keys, my coffee cup cozy.  It's got a pretty nice shape but is still not quite perfect.  A gusset would be nice, for example, and the outer fabric is a smidge too large for the lining, imho.  I will probably continue to make more purses in pursuit of just the right one to suit me for the next couple of years.  If I ever get around to it.