Craft! Bang! Boom!

Toby step for in the bedroom! This was something I’ve been meaning to get done for forever, and yesterday the weather was nice enough that Travis dragged the box out to the driveway for me to paint and got a lid cut for it. We’ve got this big sheet of 3/4″ MDF we’re working on using up – my god is that stuff heavy! Anyway, we were able to put a dent in it yesterday.

After the box was painted and the lid was cut, I did some quick math and then we got a warp on the loom. I used some handdyed cotton as the warp, and my 4-ply handspun from earlier this year as the weft. I added about 3″ to each side for my warp to allow me enough extra to fold over and staple, and that turned out to be the perfect amount.

The weaving was done this morning:

…and it only took me about 15 minutes to get it off the loom and stapled to the lid. Hooray!

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This was the quickest scarf ever to weave! The whole thing probably took me about 2 hours from start to finish. I used my Applejack handspun as the weft, and some leftover handdyed Cherry Pie yarn for the warp. The finished size is about 8″ by 74″. I really like the way the fabric bits wound up looking in the finished scarf. It’s pretty drapey, too, since I didn’t smash down the weft during weaving.

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I made another rug! This time, this one is for us. I had bought what wound up being the weft yarn in this rug in December of 2006, pretty much a few weeks after Travis bought me my loom. I had always intended on using it for weaving, but it wasn’t until last week that I finally wound up dyeing what would be the warp yarn for it. All of the yarn used in this rug is cotton, which I thought would be good since we’re going to have the rug be in the kitchen, and it’ll probably wind up getting funky and needing washing from time to time. It came out a touch thinner than I expected. Both the warp and weft yarns are textured, which kept me from beating down the weft as much as I wanted to, but it turned out feeling like it would still be okay to use as a rug.

The finished size is 27″ x 46″.

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I reupholstered the cushion on our dining room bench with the Craftstravaganza shawl! Crafts that take about 10 minutes and a staple gun to do rock! It’s also nice to finally put the Craftstravaganza shawl to good use, since it turned out a bit too scratchy to wear. Let’s just hope Bela doesn’t tear it up immediately (she stands on the bench and looks out the window – that’s why the one edge is all scratched up, from her claws).

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I wove a rug today! Weaving goes so fast, I can’t even believe it. I also used up some meh yarn that I’ve had hanging around for a while. It’s nice to make something I like a bunch from individual things that I really didn’t care for.

The rug is 55″ x 28″. I think my warp was around 92″ or 95″, so I need to remember to make my warp a little shorter for the next time I want to weave a rug. I wove at pretty much the maximum width for my loom, so anything longer than this rug at that width is going to start looking kind of weird, unless I want to make a hall runner or something. I try to account for about 40″ of waste when I’m warping, so a warp of about 80″ or maybe a touch longer would probably be perfect.

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I wove a shawl today! I’m calling it the Rustica shawl, because it looks pretty rustic. It’s about 18 1/2″ wide and 64″ long, not including fringe. I gathered up the yarn used in this shawl last summer, and have been wanting to make it since then, but have been too afraid, mainly because there are a lot of different yarns used in this, from thread-thin silk to the fattest, slubbiest wool yarn. Finally, I just decided to go for it. Travis helped me warp the loom this morning, and by mid-afternoon it was completed.

There are some yarn used in here that was dyed by Travis and myself, but the four main focus yarns come from Bjorn at HBC Weaving (I know, the website says something else, but trust me, it’s the right link) and Karida at Neighborhood Fiber Company. Due to the variations in the yarn, the shawl has some areas where it’s pretty loose-woven, which made me nervous, but it seems like it’s going to hold up just fine.

I’m pretty happy with it.

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Scarf. I think it turned out about 7 1/2″ by 70″ or so, same as the last one. I’ve got a spot that I pull our dining room table out to when we warp the loom, so the scarves normally come out about the same length. This one may be a bit wider, though, maybe 8″. Woven using this handspun as the weft. It has great big blocks of color in it, which is kind of cool. The handspun was one of those skeins I spun where I was combining some different batts I had carded on Terry’s drum carder and then plied it with some weirdo yarn that didn’t come out at all how I wanted it too. I’m not crazy about how I did the fringe – I added extra yarn to it with a crochet hook and then made these big chunky braids, and it looks kind of meh. But overall, not too bad. I love weaving scarves because they’re done in such a short time.

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Scarf. Only took me about 3 or 4 hours to weave, I think. Made from some yarn I dyed, 90% wool, 10% nylon. 7 1/2″ x 70″ without fringe.

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Here’s the second piece of fabric I wove for Ellie’s kitty bed. It wound up being about 11 3/4″ x 73″. Uses two big rough-feeling skeins and a bunch of small handspun odds and ends for the weft.

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My weaving project of the new year is done, a piece of fabric to be used for making a kitty bed for Ellie. Measures about 28″ x 56″. The weft yarn is a bunch of various small skeins of handspun that have been accumulated by Travis and myself.

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