Making things
A few people received various crafting items for Christmas which they have been busy using this week, but before I show you those pictures, I will share a couple of the gifts I made.
First is this scarf that I wove for G.
And this is the one I wove for D.
Here is what it looked like as I was warping the loom.
That is all handspun. The purple was some leftover that I spun in 2022, the multi-color yarn is what I spun when I first started to relearn how to spin in 2017. Practice makes a difference.
But onto what's been happening this week. L. has been wanting a pottery wheel (or to take wheel classes) for quite some time now. Any classes for teens just haven't worked out for us and a pottery wheel just isn't a remote possibility. So when I came across this, I thought it was worth a try.
It had good reviews in general, but I'm always leery of "toy" art supplies as they tend to be... disappointing. We'll, L. did some research, learned what others did to use this successfully and dug in. Here are her first and second attempts.
And her third attempt from this morning. She is really figuring it out.
Y. received an e-spinner. She has wanted to use one of my spinning wheels, but the treadling is just not a good match for her abilities. One of my students got a very small e-spinner and I was impressed with what it could do despite its size. Y. was thrilled.
Here are her first skeins that she spun on it.
She is realizing that she needs to cone up with a craft she enjoys where she can use up some of her yarn. Crochet is what she is going to try next.
H. received an origami book with new origami paper. She spent nearly all afternoon cutting the paper into flower shaped and adding them to the line sketch she drew on paper.
What have I been doing (because you know I've been taking advantage of our free time this week.)?
I started playing together that yarn I was spinning from the fiber which came with my new wheel. I will probably end up with three skeins this size when I'm through. (This is a 3-ply.)
I wasn't worrying about anything other than getting comfortable with the wheel, so if I ever wondered what my default spinning is, this is it.
I found a new pattern to put on my inkle loom and warped it for the first time. Here is what it looks like correctly warped.
And what the band is looking like. (This will become handles for a bag I made a couple of years ago.)
And finally, I spent some time planning a weaving project. My new loom parts will probably arrive sometime in January, so I wanted a small project to do before then. It will be a scarf using handspun (a polworth [that's a sheep breed] and silk yarn) for some of the weft and mulberry silk for the warp and the rest of the weft. This particular project has been on my shelf for months and I'm excited to get to it.
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