A new shawl.

I got a recent request for a large shawl. I like the color choice and size.

I think I'll have to make a few more of this size with different color groups.

I have the feeling that it would be warm to wear and it certainly looks dramatically beautiful. The color group is perfect for fall and into the winter. The only problem is heavy rain would not be good for the chenille.

Working bags!

So I had some cloth that was not being used and I finally decided to make some bags. These are really nice bags. I must admit that I got the idea from a bag made for me by a friend. The underlying support is some plastic based Cat Screen. The material is used to make window screens that cat's can not ruin. That is a strong support for a good bag. I used wool based material for the edges.

In these pictures you can see how well they ended up. They each have strong grips for carrying good heavy contents.

I may soon try using one for carrying grocery when I go shopping soon.

A new dress and top.

The past several days I have been working on making a dress and a matched jacket.

I finished the dress two days ago and went to work with the rest.

This dress was a lot of work.

Matching the lining was a lot of work.

I have also been working on making bookmarks.

These pictures were taken this afternoon outside.

The sun was shining and the picture came out ok.

Recent Clothing

I spent this week making long skirts out of two different yardage that I made on my big loom.

I have been holding this material for quite a while well I thought about the pattern to use.

Unfortunately, I photographed these this morning and

there is not very much sun today. These pictures don't give all the extra gloss and shine that are available in this material.

Anyway, I now have a pattern set that works well and exactly works for my wife.

She has tried them both, and they fit her perfectly.

Now it's time to work on some different patterns.

I have more material, and I think I am going to start working on some simple long dresses.

I'll let you know as I make progress.

Here are some new pictures!! Now that the sun is out, I can take new pictures.

It is surprising how much better everything looks once they are taken in the light of the sun.

Went to the fair!!!

Like every year, I went to the fair today and worked at the guild meeting demo area. It gives me a chance to meet people and talk about weaving. Why weaving is fun and comfortable and why it is worth their opportunity to get reconnected to fiber. I also get the chance to go and look at all the other work too. I saw two things that I really liked.

This item was called "Green Eggs and Ham". It is make of stone and metal and was submitted as a multiple materials art piece. I liked the presentation of the components and it caught my funny bone.

There were a number of other items that I also really liked. Near this one, was a stone Giraffe. It was very beautifully executed out of stone.

In addition to these items I also liked the three things that I submitted to the fair. The three things that I submitted all took 1st prizes. Obviously I was glad to win.

I'll have to put pictures out soon!

My new robe!

There it is! I built this robe out of my recent big loom work! I had some variable cotton and I turned it into yard after yard of cotton cloth. Then I decided to turn it into a new robe. I definitely needed it and this one is spectacular. It's mine!

Now I am ready for new work. I am going to start setting up for a new cotton collection. Next output will be fresh kitchen dishtowels.

A new blouse!

Well, today I was busy! I have been thinking for some time about a design for a blouse. I wove some beautiful cloth a while a go, but I have not been able to figure out the design for quite a while. I have made about three or four different designs, but I have not been happy until this morning. Today it came to me so easily. I took half of one design and half of a different one and together the appearance works. I used the arms of one and the front and back of another. Together the appearance is perfect.So today I cut the cloth and put together the blouse.

Now I can start thinking about the next project. I have some wonderful white cotton that I think will make great things to but on when going to the swimming pool.

Now I have to go to work on the design.

A new Tallis!

Oh my gosh, it is surely summer!! School is out and now that I am not working on the schools it is fun to be back to putting all my time on weaving and making clothing. I just finished making a new tallis today.

It is made of blended wool and silk. The color is blueberry.

The atturah has the complete blessing.

In the second picture is a close picture of the cloth so that the pattern in visible.

The pattern is a cloth weaving pattern that looks like woven threads.

It is good to be back on this work. After working so much on scarves, it is nice to be back working on a tallis again.

List of available scarves!

I am taking the break to update my web and bring the webpage up to date.

It is hard to believe how much time it takes to get everything up to date. I shot pictures of all the scarves that I have available and added them to the web page.

However, I'm on vacation!! Now I get to spend the time walking on the beach and enjoying the warm temperature.

Yes, I'm still making a tallis.

I just finished a new tallis design! I started with hand dyed silk and organized the warp with colors matching. The matched coloring gives me a better color structure for the tallis.

Then I went to work on getting a better atturah so that the blessing is better readable. The stripes are make of jewish stars. It is one of the best I have made so far. It has a very gentle color appearance. I think I will have to make a few more of this design.

Learning how to make a basket!

What a great class! We learned how to make small baskets. The class went very well and really was a lot of fun. These baskets were done by the group that was working together. We all had fun and learned together. We were making "garlic" baskets. It was nice that every basket was a little different.

Now I am looking forward to the other basket classes that I will be taking in the future.

We added fans to the house in Port Hueneme

We have added lights and fans to the dining room and our bedroom. The two rooms look good.

Nearly done with the closets!!

Well the under the stairs looks great!

The rooms look great to!

What a pleasure to get the study room library set up so that it will look great and hold all the library books with no problems!

We also have the visitor's room closet done so that it wi

ll hold visitors clothing!

The color chosen looks good too.

I am glad that we made the choices. California closets did a really great job!

It's still winter here!

We can clearly tell that it is still winter. We know because we can still see now on the mountain. It is quite fun that we can see the snow out there on the mountain while we walk along the beach on the sand. We can also tell where the heavy winter storms have worked on the sand. After the storm, rain and heavy wind, today was beautiful. It's still cool, but the wind was not bad and we were able to go out and walk along the beach. Yesterday, there were very few people on the beach, but today there were a lot of people on the beach and enjoying the sun. Some people had brought their chairs and were out there sitting on the sand. We stopped and watched some of the surfers. A group of four kids came down to the beach, stretched into their wet suits and started surfing. We were sitting on the sand on the other side of the pier than the area where they were surfing.

What a relaxing thing to walk out on the beach every day. Now we are waiting for a little bit warmer weather. Just a couple of days and it will be March. We are surely hoping that the spring will come soon!

Got our new table!

There it is! The new table for our dining room has come! We definitely wanted to maintain the beach house theme so we went for teak material. We can easily serve up to 10 at the table. Now I need to get to work making brand new place mats.

We finally have a bathroom that has also goes with the beach house theme. You can see we have bathroom mats with beach house theme.

Today we also went down for a walk on the beach. Yesterday it rained an the storms were outstanding. Today when I woke up it was beautiful and sunny. This afternoon we decided to go

out and see how windy it was. When we walked out the window things were fine, but by the time we got to the ocean it was really windy.

I took a couple of pictures to catch how much the wind had changed the sand. We could not stand the wind to walk the beach, but we did walk out to the end of the pier.

I took a picture of the sand from the pier and you can see how the strong wind was changing the surface of the beach. I also took a picture of the water.

This picture clearly shows how strong the winds were on the water.

You can see that it was a beautiful sunny winter day on the beach. As we spend more time here, I will slowly get to know more about the weather here on the beach area.

Garage Envy

This weekend we had the garage repaired. Now we are ready to start putting "stuff" into the new house. I took a couple of pictures when they finished working. On the left of the garage is storage and a swing up work space. On the right side of the garage are storage spaces where we can keep things. Both the appearance and strength of all this work are designed to keep things clean and out of way. This was clearly the first stage of our move. The other thing I did this weekend was the removal of all the closet setup from the initial build. The two lower level closets have now been cleaned out and the walls have been repainted. Those two empty closets will now be rebuilt by california closets soon.

Amazing what a difference a day makes!

These two shots were from the same basic area between Saturday and Sunday. A day of rain followed by a day of sun and shine. The beauty of both days is one great reason for living at the beach. The cold and rain reduced the time we spent walking. The beautiful sunny day had us out on the beach twice.We walked much further now that the sun and warmer area was easily worth spending the time in the sun. Good thing we brought sun block. I think the ability to daily walk along the beach is well worth it!

We knew that the Port Hueneme harbor was active, but yesterday we were able to watch a boat come it with material to be downloaded.

Walking by the ocean!

What a rainy cold day at the beach! It still has a unique beauty! We watched the storm headed at us from the off shore islands. We were one of only two pairs out there walking on the shore. We watched the waves crash at the shore.

The other thing that we notice is that the boats are leaving oil on our beach.

Usually our beach is clear and beautiful, but with the heavy rain and storm the black line of oil on the beach is a clear direction of all the big boats coming by and leaks from the nearby oil tankers and oil drilling near the islands.

It is a small ugly mark on the ocean. We hope it will disappear quickly when the storms are gone and the summer weather comes.

And now the day after the storm we have snow in the mountains! Living halfway between the mountains and the ocean gives us a choice of visits. Today, after the storms yesterday gives us a beautiful view of the snow on the mountains. Later on, we have to go and look at the ocean and see how it looks this morning!

What a great show!!!

What a great show at the SCIART gallery. This is work by Russell McMillin and David Elder.

Their work is really interesting. One of the actors has focused on clothing that looks like models of people.

These objects appear a lot like something from Japan or China. I really find them fun to wander through and look over them carefully. At first, I did not realize how close they are and how similar they are. The fine similarity between them is really fun.

In addition to the models of people are objects that are models of clothing. The clothing items are made out of wood and other interesting materials. These items appear to be painted with really fine pictures.

When you first walk into the room you think they are clothes, but they are made out of carved wood. The whole show is dramatic and definitely worth seeing. These clothing designs are really fun.

The show is definitely something to enjoy. If you are here in the Camarillo area, you should definitely drop by and enjoy.

New Tallis.

This tallis is being created for a young man who will become a bar mitzvah soon. It is primarily a royal blue with agua edges. It has been woven, but now needs to be sewn together.

Happy New Year!

It's been a long time. I have not been updating my blog for far too long so I will put a collection of pictures and stories all into one big blog update in not any particular order.

First, It was pretty enough yesterday to take a few pictures of the front of our TO house. The plants we chose for the front desert area have gotten a lot of water this past fall. I had not really been paying attention to how fast they are growing.

Here they are before on the left and now on the right. The pictures are all of one year apart. Clearly the plant choices were really good.

Next, We chose the retirement home! Having wanted for a long time to end up living at the ocean has finally become possible. House prices have dropped and we have taken advantage of the drop to buy a condominium in the ocean area. We got our keys at the end of December. Now we need to worry about furniture and details here and there in the house.

Finally, this year I started developing patterned scarves. I produced a set just in time for the holiday period. Here are pictures of some of the scarves I have produced. I am working on producing better color choices and better pattern groupings for these scarves. I will keep this development up to date.

I am also working on the "seeing red" project for Designing Weavers. I will have to tell you more about it in the next blog update!

Have a Great New Year!! Welcome to 2011!