Weaving in 2023 – 1

I saw a blog post the other day in which the writer had recorded everything she wove within that year. That gave me this idea. I’m taking photos and keeping notes all the time. I may as well use them. I won’t try to fit the whole year into one post however. Maybe I’ll post weaving, then I’ll post lambs, then weaving, then lambs. How’s that?

My warps are all numbered so I can find the info in my binder. This one is 1299 from January 2023, blankets on the AVL loom. My notebook shows that I wove 11 blankets on this warp, some of which were Year to Remember blankets. These three use temperature data from 2022 so the stripes are all the same, but the colors are very different. I weave custom Year to Remember blankets and use a sparkly yarn to distinguish the special date. I think I have enough warp still on the loom for one more of these this winter, so contact me if you want to know more.

This is 1301 a scarf using all these crazy yarns. I teach a class in weaving a scarf using a mixed warp wound with a paddle, “Mix it Up”. I haven’t taught that class in awhile and I probably need to change it from a 1-day class to maybe 1-1/2 days. I don’t know if people want to pay for an extra day, but I always forget that it takes longer in a class setting than I take if I’m just warping and weaving my own scarf.

Two more mixed warps on the loom. The one on the right is a shawl, now at the Artery I think. I wove 5 or 6 of these in different colors.

In February I demonstrated weaving at the Sacramento Weavers Open House. I missed it this year because lambs were coming earlier than the previous year. I wove a chenille warp on Saturday and a wool warp on Sunday.

This is the warp after I took it off the loom.

Warp 1317 was a handspun Jacob wool scarf. Two Farm Club members spun yarn from wool that was accumulated from years of samples sent in when registering rams. Each ram application requires a few locks of wool. We have been digitizing the papers and that means those baggies of wool are discarded. I decided to do a project like this and then donate the scarf to the Jacob Sheep Breeders raffle. I wove two scarves using wool two different people had spun.

Clasped Warp is a technique that I wrote about for Little Looms a few years ago. It has been used with rigid heddle looms to design warps that change color midway through the length. I decided to do the same thing on a floor loom, adding the woven in pattern to the elements of interest. This is a shawl woven on a 4-shaft loom using handspun yarn. I will have an article coming out in the next Handwoven on this technique.

I wove fabric for 4 bags to use in an article that was published in Little Looms last year. These are hemp and woven on a rigid heddle loom. The bag uses a length of fabric that is 8″ wide and 4 yards long. Folding it strategically gives a shoulder bag with and inside and outside pocket.

This was part of that last blanket warp. It used up odds and ends of the Ashford DK yarn that I use for the Year to Remember blankets. The shape isn’t exactly right because that warp is designed to weave throws that end up about 45-50″ wide. I wove random stripes and sewed two together for a bed-sized blanket. I should have woven them longer and then they’d fit the bed correctly, but I didn’t have a plan at the time.

More to come if I’m going to finish out the year.

Today on the Farm

There was a lot I wanted to accomplish this morning before people came for a dye day. So when I woke up at 5-something I got up. I went to the barn for chores.

The sunset really was this intense this morning.

Every so often the Wednesday Weavers meet in person instead of just on Zoom. I know this isn’t Wednesday, but it was the day that several people could come for dyeing. I had planned to wind some warps to dye, but ran out of time after catching up with email and computer stuff and hemming Year to Remember blankets and photographing them.

This is a custom blanket for the birthday year and place of the recipient. Each color represents a 10 degree range of the high temperature for the day and I weave two threads for each 365 days of the year starting with January. This customer chose her colors.

These are three more blankets on that same warp. In this case, they represent 2023 in Vacaville and show how the stripe pattern will be the same for a given year and location, but the colors can be completely different. These will be listed on the website when I have time.

This is one of the three blankets in a “lifestyle” photo.

I think seven people came for Dye Day. I don’t do this for this group as an official class. They have all become friends and I can provide the space and materials to have a fun day. Fortunately we avoided rain today and even had a bit of sun at times. Usually we choose to do either protein fibers or cellulose because they use two different dyes and procedures. This time I got it all out.

I ended up dyeing some chenille warps that I found in a bag when I cleaned out the dye corner a month ago. These are four 7-yard warps of 4 to 5″ wide each. I think I must have wound these years ago to use up white and light colored yarns that I don’t usually use for my chenille scares. The narrow width means that I intended to wind solid colors to mix with these painted warps when they go on the loom.

After we finished I finally came to the house to sit awhile and immediately got a text from Dan to say that there was a sheep with a coat problem and the other sheep were all panicked. I found April with the coat neck behind one front leg with the rest of it wrapping around underneath. She couldn’t get her foot away from the part on the ground so obviously wasn’t walking correctly. The sheep would panic and run away from her. But she wanted to be with the rest, so she’d follow.

That is one reason that I am not a big fan of coats, but look at the fleece underneath. We are only three days away from shearing and I wasn’t about to risk this fleece at this point. I had changed coats a few weeks ago. The point of changing coats is to go up a size so that the fleece doesn’t cot (felt on the sheep). But I guess this one had a leg strap that was too loose and eventually April got tangled up in it.

I found another coat of the same size. I wanted to tighten up the leg straps. Here are the tools.

The solution is to tuck a small rock under the coat and hold it in place with an elastrator band.

Now the coat fits just right.

The day isn’t over. I need to do chores right away and then I’m presenting a slide show to a weavers guild over Zoom. Got to go.