Loom

Back on Track (For Now)

by CZeitler

On the mend and on the go once more. I was able to visit my cousin, though I managed to forget all of my medications at home. It was a good way for me to better notice how much of an effect the anti-depressant is having on me (a lot of good effect!). I only cut my trip short by a few hours, so things went very well. I took my pills Sunday night and by work on Monday I could already tell the difference. When I spoke to my Psychologist he mentioned that I was likely going through some form of withdrawal as well.

I was feeling better, though not at 100%, last week so I took it easy until I felt that I was mostly regulated. While I was giving myself the grace and rest I needed some organizing and cleaning up did occur. Since we are heading into winter I am going to keep up with the oregano and garlic oil supplements until they run out, though I might cut back to twice a week.

This week I have found myself diving headfirst into crafting again, though some of them seem a little more like procrastinating crafts, I have gotten quite a bit accomplished! I had a large piece of faux fur left over from when I tried to make a sensory quilt, it was just the right size to be a cushion for my weaving bench. It is about 5 foot long and very puffy so I hope it will work. My house is a little too messy for me to take a picture of the enormous pillow. I have decided that this winter I wanted to weave a ‘bog jacket’. This is a lovely piece of clothing made from whole cloth with minimal cutting and seams. It is my plan to weave about 9 yards of cloth on my rigid heddle loom that can make 31 inch pieces. I am going to use Knitpicks dishie cotton for the warp and likely the weft as well since I have a 7.5 dent reed. I already have 2 inches of warp wound off, when I have a little extra in pay I will buy the rest of the yarn I need. Fortunately Dishie is very standard and I don’t need to worry about dye lots. I am currently debating about whether I want to buy all white to dye myself or buy some colored yarn.

In the middle of November I am going to be a part of a murder mystery show and I need to make progress on the dress I wanted to sew for it. One of the items that I have started is the tulle petticoat, photo below. Honestly I’m not sure it’s going to work out but this is so much fun. I pinned the tulle in and did a rough basting stitch for the first batch. I plan on pinning and sewing in the elastic today, followed by sewing down the waist band and then putting in a hem for my pull on elastic petticoat. the library had a lot of tulle left over from other projects and I am supposed to be a flamboyant medium so I chose my favorite color purple.

There was an amazing sale on cotton muslin so I have 10 yards of natural cotton muslin that I need to cut apart to dye for a dress. I need to make the first try with the pieces I cut out of a tablecloth I purchased at good will. I did wash the muslin however it is going to need a good iron before I do anything else.

My library was getting rid of a ton of receipt tape while we were doing construction and no longer have the right machines to use this tape. I have been wanting to try spinning paper for some time and I did spin a large piece of this paper tape, it turned out amazing but it is such a pain to create with my wheel. When I am feeling creative and bored again I will try a spindle to see if that is any easier. If that is not possible I can use it for some sewing projects or coloring projects. Maybe even just writing lists out.

The last project is working with watercolors on fabric. My library purchased a circuit maker 4 and one of my co workers found a great price on a light board so I bought one for myself. I was then inspired by a picture of a shape painted onto a linen cross stitch fabric then stitched over with sequins and beads as accent. That picture was of a dragon, amazing, and I decided to do the same with a crow outline I had. I taped down the paper to the light board and then taped the fabric over top. I started with blue, then red, the black over all of it in an attempt to add some depth. I took the fabric off of the light board after I had the outline completed to avoid any bleedthrough onto the board, it is a good thing I did so. I hope to do some stitching over top of this then add embellishments like sequins and beads. I have not painted over the crow with fabric medium yet since I am afraid I will blur the image and I love how it turned out. I plan on getting my guts up and putting the fabric medium on today before I start stitching.

I am making strides to keep my productivity up this weekend, here’s hoping I can keep it up. Until next time remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract!

So Much Fun at H&H Americas

by CZeitler

Before I get started with this post, I’m going to put two very important caveats in here: 1. I am not sponsored by any of these organizations and any freebies that I received were welcome to everyone that was attending. 2. While attending this show, I made every effort possible to ensure that I did not distract attention of the vendors from their actual retail customers, not doing the ‘I am an influencer’ thing or anything of the sort. If someone is tempted to go to this or volunteer in the future, please make sure that you are being respectful because many of these individuals are basing their livelihood on getting customers from this event.

I drove to Chicago on Tuesday, May 6th so that I could attend H&H, Americas, Wednesday and Thursday. I was lucky enough to be able to volunteer at the HGA HandWeavers Guild of America booth. As a volunteer, I brought my ladybug spinning wheel by Schacht, which I so cleverly named Lady. Lady was an absolute hit, people just loved her stickers which was validating because in the past some guild members (not HGA) have been not as thrilled with the stickers.

For my first “shift” volunteering I was loaned out to the Louet booth. David was just lovely and setting me up with their E spinner because most of their wheels had not arrived. He was wonderful about answering all of the questions and in case you didn’t know, Louet just acquired Schacht and David will become the president or company head, CEO of Schacht. This spinning wheel was just a delight to spin on, they have a wonderful feature where the leader thread actually gets nestled inside the bobbin so you don’t have to worry about it just spinning around, usually on an E spinner I have to tape down the leader thread. Also, oh my goodness, the new Harmony loom! The beater is on a track so that you get an even beat every single time! Totally mind blowing. If I had anywhere near a budget, I would be getting that immediately because having an uneven beat is a reason that I don’t weave a lot because I always angle to the right when I’m beating. Louet also purchased the yarn line Venne which comes in a huge variety of colors as well as some very fine weights. The one that sticks out in my mind that was mentioned to me was 32/2 however, I can’t even dream of what kind of a set that would be I do plan on researching and exploring these more in the future as they seem like an amazing yarn to work with.

It was so much fun to be surrounded by weaving and spinning related booths, and everyone was so friendly. The Ashford and Schacht booths were a little kitty corner so I did not get to spend as much time ogling their merchandise. However, the Kromski booth was right across from me. The woman running the booth was absolutely delightful and I had so much fun chatting with her. The products were amazing. I am so jealous that they are coming out with a purple wheel! And I mean a royal purple wheel. Their looms were amazing and I loved how they had their drop spindles displayed in so many different colors. Their entire booth looked like a candy store.


Speaking of candy stores, the other booth across from the HGA booth was a silk producer, Spun Silk World, They not only produce silk yarns, but they also produce silk fiber for spinning. They were generous enough to offer me samples, both days, as well as samples of their Mulberry and Eri silk to take home to run an experiment on. Each set of samples came with three little puffs of fiber, and I was able to spin them so much faster than I’ve ever been able to spin silk before. I am so excited to ply those up and I will be showing those skeins off in the near future.

I will have more posts in the near future until then remember 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.