Another Aturah!

Well, here I am working on another Aturah. I love doing double weave, and here is an opportunity for me to do double weave with pick up. I spun silver thread with the blue and red wool that provides the base surface. I am using pickup to bring the white wool background into letters on the blue and red surface. You can tell that when I took this first picture I had started into the blessing. The first letters provide "Ah-sher" and the next part is the "Gid-sha-no". 

Ok, The double weave place mats are done!

Ok, I finished the double woven place mats and I'm now working on an Atturah. I'll have some pictures as soon as I have something working. Right now I am trying to survive the high heat. Also, working at the school is taking far too much of my time.

Anyway, when I finished weaving the place mats I washed them, sewed up the edges and laid them out on the kitchen table. There are four different basic colors. They match each of the different chairs, Green, Blue, Red and Orange. They all have white and red on one side and either green, blue, or orange on the back side. The pattern worked out pretty well. It was also a good way to get new place mats for the kitchen!

It's Sunday and school is starting soon!

I can hardly believe that its Sunday and that the schools are going to start soon. This coming Thursday is the first day for kids to be at school! The next couple of days I am sure that I will be very busy making sure that all the classrooms are ready to go! Meanwhile I am working hard to get the new place mats done. You can tell that they are wrapping up as I work on them. The next one will be red, white and blue! Not much else right now! I need to go back to weaving! I'll talk to you soon. As I make progress.

New place mats

Well, I finally decided it was time to make some new place mats for use in the kitchen. We have four different color chairs and I wanted to work them into the kitchen. So... Here is the start of a set of double weave place mats. It is a pattern recently listed in Handwoven. I am using green, blue, orange and red that match our chairs. As you can see, I am just starting to weave and there is lot's of weaving to keep me busy!

I went to Solvang and got stuff for projects!!

We took a drive out to Solvang and visited Marsha and John. They have the best place for buying materials for weaving. I got a lot of cotton because I am planning on making new place mats for the kitchen table. I want to make a set of flatter place mats. Also, I got new white wool and silk to make a new tallis and I got a pile of multi died silk for a tallis for Steve. I think it has the colors for which he has said that he prefers. Now I need to sit and do some design before I go to work!

The drive to Solvang was a little slow and the fire behind Santa Barbara darkened the sky. When the car was parked in Solvang we found it covered with ash from the fire. I should have taken a picture of the car, but I forgot to take my camera with me. 

Also, we got to see the area that John and Marsha are moving into. Actually it will just expand the area that they care currently using. They have opened an entrance area between the two stores. They have started using that area as a storage space. They have moved all their looms to that space, but they really need to clean it up and reorganize everything. Right now the problem is that the person doing the rebuild is also a fireman so..... right now he is fighting the fire rather than working on the room. I am sure that he will get back soon!

Well, time for me to go to work!!

The Rabbits are eating my grass!!!

I got a picture of this guy this morning. There he was eating the grass in the back yard. There he was eating the grass. I think I startled him when he heard me open the window and take the picture of him. I used the long range of my camera or he would not have waited long enough for me to walk up to him and take his picture. After I opened the door and went out, he ran away, but now that we have reduced the watering level because we are having water problems here and are only allowed to sprinkle 3 times a week the grass is browning out and the rabbits are getting bolder about eating from the grass. There aren't enough coyotes out there anymore. We built all the houses and there aren't enough open spaces near by to support he coyotes. Obviously we do have enough open space for rabbits though!

Starting to use Kumihimo.

So I may not have mentioned that I took Deborah's class on Kumihimo. It is a Japanese braiding technique. It is an ancient Japanese art. I thought it would be fun and it gives me thinking to do while I am waiting for airplanes, etc. Here are some of the first few braids that I have made. The one on the left is in process right now. I had to go out and buy some material, but it does not take much. Only some cardboard and some thread are required. I also got started thinking about making some scarves. So I pulled out some material and I am thinking about designing some scarves with interesting color combinations. I have lots of brown so I think I will blend brown with some other colors and see what happens. I thougth that using a little gold and white will put a nice contrast to the browns and tan. I also have some strong red and I am thinking about putting a little red in the contrast. If you see colors you like, let me no.

I won a prize!

I can hardly believe how excited I was to find that both of the things that I submitted to the Ventura County Fair won either 1st place or Best of Show. The tallis won Best of Show. It is a pure silk Tallis and a pure silk bag, all hand woven. It also has a double hand pickup atturah make of silk and wool. The wool is woven with double pick up to create hebrew letters for the tallis blessing. It really turned out beautifully. Unfortunately the displayed it in a case with the bag on top of the tallis rather than the tallis on top of the bag. You can see the pattern I used in both the bag and the tallis. It looks like stars! Then I used had woven stars in the corners. The Jacket was nicely displayed. The pattern shows well and the size and shape was comfortable. 

It's a shape that this picture does not give you a good look of the jacket. I will have to take some more pictures that have the proper color. But you can tell that the weaving and sewing was well done and shows up well. I could hardly believe that it had the 1st on it when I found it! In any case, it is nice to see that people think my work is good and well worth it's effort. Now I am relaxing and looking forward to seeing what happens next!!!

It's another summer Friday!

It's another summer Friday! I finished the white cloth that I have been making. It has an interesting double diamond pattern. I washed it and now I am drying it in the back yard. Now I am relaxing at home and worrying about what to make for dinner. I hate the fact that summer is almost over and I will soon be working at school again. I dropped by the school yesterday because the power was cut off.  Seems that the power company was rewiring the power grid here at Thousand Oaks. Now I am getting ready to sit and go to work on the latest cloth. This Sunday I will be weaving at the Ventura fair in the afternoon. I'll try to get some pictures of the newest cloth in a couple of hours and add it here. Then I think I am going to go to work on some more scarves.  

Fabrics

I have been working on making lots of new fabrics. They are blends of rayon and silk and wool with blended dyes. I am trying to make several yards of these so that there is enough to make clothing of either dresses or skirts. One of the biggest problems is make widths of useful form. Even if I set up the original width size of 48", after washing and drying the cloth always shrinks. I usually end up with only 38" to 40" in width.  The shrink is not a surprise, but I often wish that I could better control it. In any case, the fibers should produce interesting clothing.