Ordinary Time

I'm dithering and need some input. I wanted to use up the scraps of handwoven fabric from the jacket I'm making to add some design elements to the big blocks of dark denim. I tried it out today using invisible thread to secure it to the fabric. (This is a practice piece, not the actual jacket.) I was kind of thinking I would go for a loose design, but having done the trial piece, I'm wondering if it's too loose and just looks a wee bit sloppy. The rest of the jacket is pretty classic in its lines. So what do you think? Is this cool and striking or just odd and sloppy? I've been staring at it too long and have lost all perspective or design sense. 

There has not been much to share this week. I've done exciting things such as clean the kitchen (multiple times), comb snarls out of several horses' manes, laundry, and repeatedly drive back and forth to the library. At least it feels as though I repeatedly drive back and forth since I'm currently in a go every day phase at the moment. None of it warrants a blog post.  Today's big event was some of the horses getting their annual teeth floating and vaccines and the sheep all getting their yearly vaccines. I did get this cute picture of Clark while he was waiting for the others to be done.  I also spent quite a bit of time sewing because that has become my go-to avoidance activity this week. I sew while I watch The Great British Sewing Bee and it does a lovely job of blocking out current events for that moment of time.  Plus, I'll end up with a jacket. Eventually. Sewing with handwoven fabric is a wee bit slower than using commercial cloth because there are some extr...

Because this is a lot even for me. I'm going to start with my decisions as to what I'll be making for the holiday market.  First are guest towels.  I finished my exploratory warp and hemmed and washed everything. Here are what I've decided to make. A red patterned towel, though I'll probably make some in a forest green as well. They will be one of three patterns. This one: And these two: All the towels are hand hemmed. There will also be two types with border patterns on a natural color. Trees: And a red flower-like design: After I weave a bunch of the guest towels, I'll put on a striped warp and make more napkins like these: I'll probably weave a variety of patterns.  Now that I've done the trial run, I'm happy to take orders. I know some of you have expressed interest.  Along with weaving, I needed to do some dyeing because I have a couple of Sheep and Fiber classes coming up and I needed to replenish the fiber I use to teach spindle spinning. Over the...

Last winter L. announced that she wanted to learn to sew. When I asked what she wanted to see, she finally settled on jeans, because finding jeans that fit the way L. wants them to is becoming increasingly difficult. Jeans are not really considered a beginner's project, but since I rarely start with appropriate beginner's project myself, I took a deep breath and ordered a jeans pattern. It would be really fantastic if we could get a jeans pattern to work.  Last month, using this pattern,  L. got a practice pair all cut out. The practice pair is some phenomenally ugly fabric that somehow made its way into my stash. This is very much the best thing to do with it. Things have been going swimmingly until this afternoon.  Today we tackled... or attempted to tackle... the fly front zipper portion. Now, at one point when G. and L. were babies, I took a class all about putting in zippers. I kept my notes and still refer to them when a zipper comes along. But it's been a very long...

This morning when I went out to the barn I discovered a pile of pony poop in the aisle but all ponies were in their stall. It was baffling. Was Buddy getting out and then going back in to his stall before I made it to the barn? If so, how long had this been going on? Ponies.  The mystery was solved when G. mentioned that Buddy was in the aisle when G. went to get hay for the sheep and was returned to his stall. This was good, except that is meant I really and truly needed to do something about the pony stall door guard. It was on its last leg and I had been babying it along by tying all the broken ends together. Clearly, we had reached the end of that road.  I had a little make it due moment this afternoon with the door guard and my sewing machine. Here is my finished product.  I'm pretty proud of it. I restitched the two straps which connect the long, horizontal pieces of webbing. Then I dug out some upholstery material and lined the area between the two long straps to m...

B. and HC decided they would like me to weave them a light throw as their wedding gift. They also decided that they would like the colors to be similar to the ones which were in HC's bridal bouquet.  And here is what I ended up making for them.  The color is more accurate in this picture. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. It looks like what I envisioned. I'm also pleased it is a good weight because for a while I was concerned it would be too thin. The yarn is 50% merino and 50% silk, so it's warm and soft.  In other news, I'll have some more things to share next week. I have a new project for the loom, I'm about to ply a large spinning project, and today L. began working on sewing a pair of jeans. No, she's never seen before, but she wanted to learn to sew and pants were what she was interested in making. I figure if she can learn to make pants, then anything else beyond that will seem easy. I'll be helping her and I chose a pattern with video t...

Stress does slightly odd thing to my viewing habits, and the state of the world feels particularly stressful right now. Usually, my go-to for mindless viewing when I want to turn my brain off is to watch House Hunters. While that is great for short term stress, an endless diet of it is more than a little hard to handle. For some reason, Project Runway is what my brain wanted, so I have been watching that at odd down times. It's kind of perfect in a way: It has very little to do with our current reality, there is absolutely nothing of earth-shattering importance happening, and frankly, it's hard to take it too seriously. Plus, every so often there is a really interesting piece of clothing to look at.  But to be perfectly honest, there are a couple of disturbing things about it as well. The models are all teens or early 20's young women and for the most part they are far too thin and look almost pre-pubescent. When you combine this with some really noticeable misogynism, well...

There's not much to share this week. I'm now a little over halfway done threading the loom for the blanket, but I never seem to have quite enough time to be able to sit down and work on it. The second half always goes faster than the first half, so I'm hopeful that I will finish it within the week.  I've also been working on a commission making three feedbag market totes. I have one completely done. And the other two will be with this fabric for the lining.  That's really been about all I've accomplished this week in terms of fiber related things.  But today was a good mail day and I know what I'll be doing this evening. First, the new Spin Off magazine arrived in the mail. I love magazines. It's like a surprise present when they show up in the mailbox.  And also today a package arrived with four Wild Fiber magazines in it. Someone on a fiber related sales group was selling them and the price was right. I've been interested in this magazine for a whi...

And that would be laughably bad pictures even by my typical bad picture standards. Prepare yourselves. I had a bit of a Give a Mouse a Cookie moment today. A few days ago, since I had cut the horrible weaving off the loom, I had started to sley the reed with the warp for the blanket. (Translation: I needed to put each end of the warp through the slotted metal piece which determines how close each piece of yarn will be when woven.) I was taking my time, working on it when I had a free moment. Except this morning I realized I had some pattern drafting homework which required a flat surface and I needed it finished by Wednesday morning.  The problem was that my weaving project was taking up my entire work table and wasn't something I could move. The only thing for it was to spend a couple of hours today getting it sleyed so I could use the table. Which I did. And then I was able to move it over to the loom in preparation for threading. The threading is going to take a while since ther...

Having cajoled their father into driving them to a store to get bleach and dye, there is a(nother) hair transformation in progress. Because you never know what color hair a child will turn up with.  Then on a totally unrelated topic (so totally unrelated that I can't even begin to come up with an appropriate seque), I listened to this YouTube video today. If you are at all interested in the current state of the garment industry and are concerned about fast fashion, this might be of interest to you. 

A new textbook arrived in the mail today. Now, since we are homeschoolers and we occasionally use textbooks, this wouldn't necessarily be exciting or blog worthy news. But the textbook which arrived wasn't for a child but for me.  (Ignore the cover art, it was published in 2008 and it shows.) I am finally, after years of wanting to, going to get to take a pattern drafting class. It is the first of a series of four classes (I think it's four) that teaches all the ins and outs of drafting a pattern. I really cannot tell you how excited I am to finally learn these skills and not just try to figure it out on my own.  The text is pretty large.  Inside it seems pretty comprehensive, from starting with drafting pattern blocks then moving on to how to manipulate them to create just about any style you want.  I don't know if I'll be able to complete the series in just one year, but it feels good to be actually starting.