Fiber Monday - In need of some color

Always in late spring I feel starved for color. Whole there are a few things blooming (thank you, forsythia), it is still pretty a monotone of brown things outside. This explains my newest weaving project. My loom had been empty too long, and I decided I just wanted to weave something pretty. I went through my stash of weaving yarn and found somethings that will satisfy my need for pretty and colorful. 


It was those variegated skeins on the right that I needed to work with. I'm now working on planning the color changes and doing all the number things, then I will be set to start measuring the warp. It will be a throw... or maybe two depending on how the amount of yarn holds out. 

One of the reasons why my loom was empty for so long is that I am consumed with my English paper piecing project. I have a lot of little octagons basted, so I decided I could start playing with them to find a design. (I think playing with hundreds of little pieces of color is one of the biggest draws for me.) So I did. 


Doing this I learned a few of things. The first is that I have quite a few octagons. The next was that I need a far bigger work area. After that was that I needed some red in the mix. And finally, it probably won't be really possible to do much of anything design-wise until I have all the octagons made because it is impossible to add things in without moving everything. 

But it is still fun to play with them. I now work with them on the floor to give me more space. 


I'm working on the back of a plastic tablecloth because the fuzzy backing holds the pieces in place and I can roll it up when I'm done to get it out of the way. 


While I have probably 400 octagons, I'm going to need at least twice that number. 


Which brings me to the other reason I am currently so taken with this project. I think it's because it is the perfect balance of attention and handwork. It takes very little mental effort to baste the fabric around the paper. And like so many others these days, bandwidth is not always something I have in abundance. And a stack of ten little octagons is big enough that it feels as if I've done something in the past twenty minutes or so. My goal is to try to get as many basted as possible before my whims turn to others things. Because I know they will. 

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