Author: CZeitler

We Are Warped

by CZeitler

I now have my 16 shaft table loom warped up completely and I have been weaving on it this week. A couple of threads snapped and a couple are floating rather than separating so I have to figure out what is going on with them. After I finished weaving the first towel, I decided to take each shaft off of its rail and take off the extra heddles that I had on the end. This was going very well until I reached shaft 14 and then the shaft decided to snap on me, essentially the bottom came off before the top was out of the rail, and it snapped. I was able to glue it back together using gorilla glue, however, that happened just this morning so I will not be able to put it back on until tomorrow morning.

I know that the gorilla wood glue worked because after half an hour the shaft stayed together without the clamp on. I did manage to get all of the extra heddle off and shifted where the last shaft is going to be by adding the pieces onto the other heddle. Essentially now only the 16th shaft is missing the part that keeps the heddle rods in place. Do I regret doing all of this, while the loom is completely warped up, not really. Considering how much time and effort it takes to warp up the loom, loosening the warp from the back beam and allowing the heddles to shift in place seems to be the best way to do this. That being said, I have not found out where the sticky warps are nor whether anything is shifted or twisted, so wait and see if this actually works or not. Since I am having a Weaving Guild meeting on Saturday and they asked us to bring our own place setting, I’m going to wash the towel now that I’ve hemmed it and see how it works.

There is one more aspect to this saga and that is the paper that I used to wind the back warp. Since it was not exactly the same size as the back warp beam, it wound up crinkling and wrinkling. Those crinkles and wrinkles cause the warped be held at a different tension which completely messed up my front tension. I should’ve seen this coming however, I did not. I am still debating different ways to potentially resolve this issue. The back warp reel is actually quite wide, though it isn’t 36 inches wide which is what I think the paper is.

I believe taking off the extra heddles will give me room to figure out which of my warps are crossing or doing other things that cause me to not get a clean shed. I also believe that if I can find some way to wind the warp on with even tension I will solve my loose warp problem, though I do not look forward to unrolling the entire warp just to try to roll it back on the back beam with even tension. Perhaps unrolling the back beam and pulling it through the front reed and heddles will help me figure out my threading problems, then I can concentrate on the tension problems. I hope to get both of those problems solved this week, though again it will all have to wait until tomorrow morning when I can get the last shaft fixed.

As you can probably tell, this has been my all consuming project this past week. The quilt as you go project went well, not everyone finished since I had between 16-18 (I lost count) people wanting to do the project. As a result, even though Wednesday-Sunday I’m supposed to be off, I will be coming in to work for 2 hours to set up and help everyone finish their potholders. Each person will be making 1 and I have enough supplies for 12. I’m also teaching Scissor Fobs on Saturday, so I will really have Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday off. That is alright, I will use the ‘on days’ to run other errands and take care of other chores around the house.

I think that is it for this week, so until next time remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!

Storage and Organization Ideas

by CZeitler

This post contains affiliate links that will cost you nothing to click on but might provide me a small stipend.

this post is designed to give you an idea of some of the storage units that I use in my crafting practice. These are not exactly what I’m using except where I state that they are, however, they are what I would use if I was setting up a brand new crafting studio .

Storage Desk

I am a very firm believer in making sure that I have exactly what I need to start crafting on hand at all times whenever possible. To make this as accessible as possible I love having a desk that has plenty of storage already built in within it. This storage desk is not very big as it is just over 3 feet wide, however, it does have a lot of storage on the shelves.

Clear Plastic Storage Bins

I am a visual organizer that means that if I cannot see something it might as well not exist. I understand that this is hard for some people for which visual clutter causes them a lot of stress. If visual clutter bothers you I recommend some closed baskets, however, if you were like me, I recommend having clear storage. I have been trying to cut out plastic in my life for ecological reasons however, there are circumstances where I have not found a better solution. So that I know where everything is and that I can keep it corralled I recommend using clear storage boxes, such as the ones above.

Daylight Ceiling Light

Good lighting is absolutely vital to good crafting. This light bulb can be screwed into any normal socket and it provides three fan type appendages that have daylight LED lights. I love how much light this adds to any area, since I have a lamp with bendable heads I can adjust this light to shine on what I need it to. I also find during the winter having a daylight limp keeps me from feeling quite as down.

Compression Bags

I have a lot of yarn. I just do, and storing yarn takes up a lot of space. I have recently started using compression bags because I can vacuum out the air and squish down the yarn that I am not going to be using immediately, but still have it safe from any insect or other problematic concerns. Honestly, I love the fact that I don’t have to worry about any kind of dust or anything else getting into my yarn, especially my wools. I cannot recommend this storage option for things like fiber storage. If you’re planning on spinning your fiber, this will probably compress it down too far and cause matting.

Plastic Bookshelf

Yes, these are very inexpensive plastic bookshelves. That being said, for my small bedroom, where I do some sewing, and I wanted to partition off a space to put a reading chair these have worked beautifully as partitions and storage. I have actually managed to put quite a few magazines and books on the shelves without worrying about them breaking. For complete honesty when you are beginning make sure that you have all of the pieces fastened properly be careful that you do not twist the rods too far as I did have a connection sheer off. Other than that minor issue I have had no problems with the shelves, and as long as they are tightened, decently they do not wobble. If you’re looking for an inexpensive storage or just some inexpensive shelves to partition off an area, I highly recommend these.

Reading Chair

This is the reading chair that I wanted to add to my craft room. Since it’s only around $150 I was a little concerned that it would not hold my 250 pound plus weight however it holds up beautifully. The legs and frame are metal and so they hold up the weight just fine. More importantly, the cushion is beautifully comfortable. I have to be very careful that I do not spend my entire day just relaxing in my beautiful reading chair.

Broom with Scraper

The unfortunate fact of life is that if you craft you’re going to need to clean up at some point. Actually, that probably does apply to people that do not craft as well, but I cannot speak to that. When I had a contractor in to do some work in the house, they brought this broom in and I fell in love. One of the things that always drove me insane was that the way that I was taught to sweep is that you sweep everything up and then you lift the broom over the garbage can and use your hand to brush every extra bit off which seems disgusting. With this kind of broom, the little plastic teeth managed to scrape off all of the extra nasty stuff, and you just have to lift up and empty the broom pan.

Seasonal Storage Bags

The final thing that I will recommend, is these seasonal storage bags. If you make quilts, crochet, or knit, afghans, crochet, or knit things, like hats and gloves, and scarves and mittens, then these are going to come in handy. These are great for seasonal storage or just storage of any completed blankets and quilts. They zip up and there is a window so you can see what you put in. I always make sure to put in a few cedar discs and some lavender pouches just to make sure that nothing is going to be tempted to come in and mess up my stuff. If you’re looking at some longer-term storage of things like well, afghans in Quilt, then these are a good solution as well. I am tempted to ship items like afghans and quilts right in these bags so that people have storage options when they receive it but I think my shop will have to takeoff a little bit more than it has presently for me to be able to afford that.

If anybody is interested, I could start a set of blog posts regarding what I would recommend for beginners, sewers, quilters, knitters, crocheters, or whatever else you’re going to get into even resin art, but until next time, I hope that everybody remembers to live life a little more abstract.

Severely Sidetracked

by CZeitler

Crafting content will begin after the ******.

I went outside this morning to get my 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, also known as using my old fashion lawnmower to mow my lawn. I love my old fashion mower because it is not nearly as harsh on the grass as an electric mower, or a gas powered mower, it also is very environmentally safe, and the blades do not need sharpening. I had mowed my front lawn on Thursday because I had a little bit of time and I knew that since it was forward facing I wanted the front of my house that everybody could see to look nice. I had decided to leave the backyard that nobody except one neighbor can see alone until I had time on Sunday. Imagine my surprise, when my beautiful, plush lawn was scalped. I know that someone thinks they were helping me and giving me a hand, however, all I feel is devastated and violated. My lush green grass is now almost down to the dirt and it looks horrible. Somebody came into my yard without my permission and did what they thought was best without consulting me or talking to me or anything. I know that the short way of thinking of this is that somebody mowed my lawn for me, however, all I really feel is violated. If they think it’s OK to mow my lawn without permission what else do they think it’s OK to do without my permission on my property? I’ve been trying to slowly do some landscaping, last weekend I put out some new, stepping stones for my pots and other things.
because of this, I wound up going to my local hardware store to buy a blank sign. I put the sign out after I wrote down something to the effect of ‘Thank you for mowing my lawn. Please ask permission.’ I plan on keeping it up for a week. While I was there, They had bushes half price so I did get a bush for an area that I was planning on putting in the back and a nice lilac bush that I put in a pot out front. In total, I spent all of what I earned teaching yesterday on some of the yard work as opposed to saving it as I had planned to do. I also think that I might need to put out some cameras on the backyard so that I can keep track of what’s going on. I didn’t want to be that kind of paranoid person, however, I don’t want people thinking that they can do whatever they want on my property.

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due to circumstances beyond my control, I have not gotten around to creating the organization post that I intended to. Since it is mirrix, weave every day month I have managed to get some weaving done almost every day. The most exciting achievement that I’ve managed is that the reed on my 16 shaft loom is completely threaded, and I have almost half of the heddles threaded as well.

I did have to take a break in the middle of my project to create my own lease stick so that I could attach it to the back roller of my loom. For the life of me, I do not know what happened to the original, however, with some para cord, an impact driver, and some ingenuity, I did manage to get the lease sticks for the front and back of the loom finished. I have been having some trouble with the lease stick on my rigid heddle loom as well so I am not sure if I’m going to just use para cord to attach it to the front and back beams or if I am going to use the slightly thicker wood that I purchased to create my own lease sticks.

I did manage to get all of the pieces cut out that I need for the quilt as you go potholder class I am on Thursday, that did take quite a bit of time and playing around with the machines to make sure that they were going to work. I also had to remind myself that fold over binding is just fine because I am not going to try to teach 13 people on the fly how to do regular binding. I am not that much of a masochist.

I know that this is not the post that I promised you, I do hope to get to that before the 11th. I hope that everyone has a wonderful week and remember to live life a little more abstract.

Room Re Organization and More

by CZeitler

Hello Everyone! The first part is information about my mental health so if you want to skip to the crafting content skip to the ****************.

My site and store have not been updated in a few weeks due to a slight adjustment in my anti-depressants (anti-anxiety for me) and the time at which I was taking them. I was taking them in the morning, this resulted in my consuming more caffeine to keep myself awake and not taking my ADHD medication (which is a stimulant). By changing my anti-depressants to evening I am able to sleep better and not spend my entire day trying to stay awake, I am also taking my ADHD daily to see the difference it makes. After half a week I have more energy and I am able to better focus on accomplishing various tasks.

I also had a friend visit to see my new house for the first time, it was so much fun to catch up with her!

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My new desk has re-ignited my desire to ensure that my first floor work area is optimized, or at least I can access everything I need. This of course means that I have to move everything out into the open before I can store it away. I did find my shuttle tatting supplies about 6 weeks before I am set to teach needle tatting to a guild, so that is going to be great to demonstrate the difference between the techniques. Right now the room looks a fright, I did manage to finish weaving off the warp I had set up for coasters that I plan on giving to the guild as prizes for the EGLFC (Eastern Great Lakes Fiber Conference) in October. This allowed me to push that loom to a wall and put items that I use more frequently in front of it.

There is a cubby that I built years ago, not very well admittedly, that had been against a wall but hidden with items in front of it. That is now next to the loom against the wall, mostly accessible. There are 3 cubbies that have longer term storage items that I placed a small end table against. I then pushed my desk up against that end table to create a seamless corner of work space, where I can still access most of the cubbies, that I feel will be very functional.

These moves allowed me to better access my 16 shaft table loom, which brings me to one of the reasons why I started all of these adjustments. Mirrix Looms had a program where they invited everyone to weave every day in April. It was such a success they decided to bring it back in July. This has resulted in my spending the first three days of July finishing off the coasters, so I could put that loom away, and making my 16 shaft loom more accessible. Much earlier this year I put the warp for some towels through my reed, and found out that despite what I thought my warp is wide enough to fill the entire loom…this means that I need to go back and start at the beginning to rethread my entire reed. I thought I could ignore this and just leave the extra threads off of the warp, so I began threading the heddles, however the truth is if I do that I will always hate these towels. I checked with Mirrix and warping up my 16 shaft loom does count as ‘weaving’ toward their goal. I do understand how ridiculous all of this sounds, however I need that external motivation to get myself working on this huge project.

All of this does not mean that this is all that I have been working on! Last Monday I taught a guild how to make scissor fobs, and I will be repeating the lesson with another guild this Saturday and yet again on the 22nd. The first class was such a success I am very excited to see what creations the other guilds come up with given the supplies available! I purchased a lot of supplies for these scissor fobs and I am hopeful that I will get the supplies cost back so I can invest in teaching another class next year, though I am not sure what in yet.

If you have not gotten the gist yet, I never have just one or two projects on the go at a time. I have also been doing some work on my house, my front garden is planted with new blocks for my potted plants, they are a dye garden plus a couple of vegetables, so I look forward to seeing what hues I get out of my garden this year. I’ll try to get a good photo of my straw flowers by next post. I also went a little too far at the 70% off fabric sale at JoAnn Fabrics, though I hope to make a couple of lap quilts in the next week or so, yes I know I’m getting a bit too ambitious again!

I think that is all of the progress I have to report on for now, if I like how the workroom looks by time I’m finished I’ll try to add a photo to this post. I’ll probably have a post about organization products I use in my house in time for the Prime Sale on Amazon with affiliate links by next week. Clicking on the affiliate links will not cost you anything but I might get a small stipend.

Until Next Time Remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!

New Storage and New Photos

by CZeitler

As you can probably tell, I managed to get my light box set up to take some new photos of the items that I have and will have for sale on the etsy website. I love how the lights and white background work together to make the items look more visible. I know that I still have a little bit of editing work to do on the photos but for now I love how they look and hope to have the listings updated by next week. There is an update to my setup however!

My family gave me a (very generous) gift card to Michaels. Last week Michaels had a half price sale on their storage items. This means that I got the two storage units for $30 out of pocket. Then I had a coupon that arrived from Michaels for $10, due in part to my recent purchase, so the table top was about $20 out of pocket. As you can tell I adore this set up and already have it fixed up to take my photos and work on some projects.

I think that is all for this week, I have not had time to do much crafting between getting my desk set up and working on a minor plumbing issue. Here is hoping that the plumbing is fixed for now.

Until next time Remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!

Checking off Life Goals List

by CZeitler

I had the amazing opportunity to visit my cousins in New Jersey for a long weekend. Though the primary goal was to spend time with my family they also planned events that accidentally checked off two of my life long ‘to dos’. First and foremost, it was amazing to spend time with that part of my family, I have not seen them since last July and one of my cousins has had a child since then. The first full day I was there started off with a High Tea, my cousins children were just adorable, then visiting another cousin to see their children and feed baby goats. I have always wanted to experience a high tea, and it was just as amazing as I thought. This also reinforced my knowledge that I love Chai tea. The next day I was able to see another cousin and have a picnic at an arboretum, as well as visit a Raptor Sanctuary. All of these events were punctuated by amazing snuggles with my cousins children, playing games, catching up, and generally having an amazing time. On my final day, after the children were off to their respective schools, my cousin and I each took a nap (though mine was accidental), then they took me out for an amazing Dim Sum lunch before dropping me off at the airport. The Dim Sum was another check off of my life long list. I am sad that I had to get back for work and missed a show that my cousins child was going to be in, however I love how much time I was able to spend with them. All of this ties into crafting, I swear!

Aurifil has partnered with several artists and other organizations to bring about a summer project where you use particular sheets, assign colors to specific topics/events, and document your summer by creating shapes that look like sea glass in the colors that represent that event/topic. I think this is an amazing idea…that I would never follow through. With the exception of my past weekend I tend to keep my life relatively low key, though that might change a bit in the near future given how much fun I had. Instead I like the idea of documenting my year in 10″ squares with highlights or particular circumstances represented in each square. June would probably be a 9-patch with sections that explore the amazing aspects of my vacation. This is just a conceptual project for now, though I am eyeing my fabric stash and trying to figure out the major events of the first half of my year.

I am still working on getting photos ready for my etsy shop, I will have those ready to show off (and a link to my shop) in the next post. Until next time remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!

Time Consuming But Fun

by CZeitler

I guess I did not realize that the most involved part of creating an Etsy shop is putting up the listings. Since each item I create is pretty much one of a kind, though I do have some rainbow bottle necklaces that are going under one listing, each item has to be put up and described individually. Not only that, there is nothing like putting up photos that are supposed to show how amazing your work is to make you realize just how bad your photographing situation is. I ordered a light box and hope to create better photos this week for my listing already up then work on putting up new listings.

Part of what I really need to do is create a general phrase for my stitch markers/progress keepers, resin pieces, and quilted work before adding in additional deatils about that particular piece. I hope to have a new shop update and listings updated by Sunday June 18, 2023.

Other than figuring out the problems with my etsy shop I have been busy getting ready for Summer Reading at the Library, and dealing with vertigo from my allergies. Fortunately I was able to get the correct medicine and now that there is less fluid behind my eardrums the vertigo has gone away, being dizzy is not fun at all.

Sorry there are not any photos in this post hopefully I can add some into my next post with my new photo setup. Until next time Remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract!

Personalized Bookcase Quilt

by CZeitler

Welcome Everyone!

I have always loved the look of bookcase quilts. I have decided to make a personalized spin on a bookcase quilt. It is one of my annual goals to try to read 100 books each year, I have recently started to allow rereads to count. Otherwise, I will never make that goal. What is more fun than combining those two goals? To do that I have started embroidering what will be the book spines with the titles and authors that I have read. I discovered that I can fit eight to ten spines on a fat quarter. I used a peel and stick wash away stabilizer so that the fabric was stable enough for the embroidery machine. I made sure that the stabilizer was on the far side of the fat quarter, so that there was plenty of room to cut the spines a part down the middle.

Since I do not like changing the thread, I decided to ensure that there were at least one or two other books in between each so that I will not have a huge chunk of the same color spines. There are a couple of series that I decided would be OK if they are the same color, so that is why all of my Shelly Laurenston books are on this fat quarter. I have decided to give myself about half an inch to an inch around each spine so I measured that out and cut each one out individually.

Since we have not even reached the halfway mark of the year, I am not going to worry about sewing the spines together quite yet. It’s probably going to be a couple of months before I do another batch of spines, so that I have enough titles to avoid embroidering a whole batch of titles right next to each other, on the same kind of fabric. When I do assemble the quilt, I plan on assembling the spines in the order that I actually read the books. I have trimmed the tops and bottoms of the spines, so that there is plenty of room just saw them together yet the books are not all the same height.

For a few of them, I have experimented with adding a different color to sort of look like fancy spines. Right now I have them in blocks 14 inches wide and I will eventually add a background color to the top so that the actual block is the same height. This is as far as I’ve gotten planning this quilt, it has been put on hold for right now, until I have read more books and until my Etsy shop is open. My Etsy shop will be opening June 2, 2023 and I hope to see everyone there.

Until next time, please remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract.

Promised Update Post

by CZeitler

This post my contain affiliate links.

I know, I promised you an update post a couple of weeks ago, but here we go. There will be crafty content, most of this post will be around how I am monitizing my crafting.

The first two steps I took, after getting in contact with my local small business association to figure out how to legally set up my business, were to obtain a Federal Employee Identification Number (this cost over $300 if you are looking into the startup costs for a new business however they do state that it is deductible on your next tax return), and to obtain a New York State Tax ID. The New York State business website has a checklist of the other steps you need to take to start up a small business. In total it took me over 3 hours, and a few phone calls, to make my way through the paperwork. I still have to send in the ‘Doing Business As’ paperwork to my local county if I want to sell at craft shows. Another aspect is that I will be filing business tax papers quarterly starting in September since my business will open June 2, 2023.

The next steps were to set up an etsy site, which I still have to complete this weekend to open on June 2nd, and become an amazon affiliate. For now the amazon affiliate links will be primarily on my book review pages, ayearofbooksinreview.wordpress.com , though as I start putting togeter tutorials I will be linking to the supplies so that people will be able to complete them with similar supplies to what I will be using. That is a another surprise for this site, I am going to begin posting tutorials for various types of crafting with step by step progress photos. Some are going to relate to items that I will have for sale in my etsy shop, but some are just going to be FYI, this is how I do this, type posts.

To begin promoting my business I set up separate Instagram and Facebook pages where I have been posting updates and some photos of merchandise I have been creating. Now to the actual crafting!

I have been busy creating Ear Cuffs and Progress Keepers. Right now each ear cuff and progress keeper is going to be completely unique, as I see if some styles are more popular I may be expanding into some items as production items.

This is not all, have you ever known me to stick to one type of craft?

I have also been making some lovely book page holders out of resin.

Also I have been experimenting with my brand label for a special product I will have coming out when the store opens, the version that Instagram decided they like the best is shown below, though the final product should be on spring green fabric.

Until next time, remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!