I got there eventually, right?

The towel is finally washed.



Still no word on when I can put the loom back together though. I'm managing to get some non-weaving stuff done though, so I guess that counts for something.

Starting to have plenty of ideas for what to weave when the loom is back together, I'm not yet sure which one is going to win.

And something on the weaving front

My weaving is finally done!


No finished photos yet, I haven't washed it or anything.

My loom is now in pieces leaning against the lounge wall:


And the reason why:


And a close-up:


My timing appears to be good though - the deconstruction happened yesterday, and today the EQC inspectors turned up. And now to wait for the next part of the process...

More dyeing photos

The new dyeing from the last post has turned into this



(Hint - it's a bag. It's not finished yet, still got lots of edging to go, and felting.)

And more dye has happened:


It is destined to be some sort of shawl, and I think I've worked out what I want to do with it.

More dye!

Firstly, the shawl in the last post is finished


I had 0.8g of yarn left over(about 7m). I call that success.

And on Tuesday some more dyeing happened.

I intend to get better photos when it has finished drying, and after reskeining. In theory there are three skeins in each of those colours, which may or may not make things Interesting.

Fun with dye

A while ago now I did some more dye experimenting.

The main target started out like this:

And turned into this:

(Pattern is Vernal Equinox (sorry, I could only find a Ravelry link) by Lankakomero)

The other part of the dye session was an experiment to try and create a gradient yarn. This was the result:

The reason I'm finally posting about it? I've started knitting it to test whether it actually works. Pattern is Echo Flower by Jenny Johnson Johnen.

I think I've done nearly as many repeats of the main pattern as I can get away with, and will be starting the border pattern soon.

I've decided the yarn colour is Magnolia:

And to show how it's coming out so far:

I was a little disappointed by the first couple of colour changes, and then I got up to the pink section. It seemed to be going on for a long time until I noticed that it had sneakily changed colour while I wasn't looking...

A bit of excitement

At 4.35 on Saturday morning we awoke to this:


Well, that's actually a lie. We awoke to darkness, and made a quick dash for the door. This is the aftermath - the chests of drawers fell after we reached the door. (Bedroom door is visible open at top left, the door on the right is the wardrobe).

Somehow our emergency torch had managed to stay on top of the kitchen bookshelf. Next stop was into the library:


We had guests there that needed rescuing:


(Okay, we should have had the shelves screwed to the wall. We hadn't quite got that far...)

A brief investigation into the dining room showed that wooden wall-fixed wine racks seem to work much better than metal free-standing ones:


Impressively, there were only 3 broken wine bottles and one broken whisky bottle (nearly empty anyway). There was also a wine bottle with a cracked lid, which was only discovered later.

The loom appears to be perfectly fine. I'm not particularly surprised though - I think it would have taken something big falling on it to even have a chance of denting it.


We then had a while of sitting around listening to the radio. The reports started with some helpful observations like 'Possibly an earthquake, maybe somewhere in the South Island'. There were also people phoning in with descriptions, and I think the most accurate (although possibly not very helpful) was that it was like the Napier earthquake simulator at Te Papa...

As the sky started to get lighter we managed to listen in surprise to the continuing lack of fatalities. I had been a bit worried about my workplace - playing with molten metal is a fairly important part of it, and that didn't seem like a good thing to be doing at the time. (Apparently they ran through it, and were not very badly affected at all).

After it was light we went and had a look outside. A bit of minor house damage, a few cracked windows etc. The houses on our street seem to look okay too, although the street has developed some terrain:



There is a quite impressive slump in the road (no actual cracking) a block further on than these photos too.

In conclusion: Wooden buildings are fabulous. Our Civil Defence and local authorities have been doing a Very Good Job. I prefer not to wake up before dawn. It's important to have an accessible emergency torch. It's surprising how quickly you can come to ignore tremors of around magnitude 4-5. It's not surprising how quickly you can get sick of said tremors. The weaving will probably be delayed a bit longer.

If you want more actual detail, try here

Excessive photography...

Tea towel (unwashed)!


Shrinkage was negligible on the width - maybe a few mm, and 2cm over the length (65cm shrank to 63cm). I still need to hem, but I'll wait until I've finished the warp, then I'll use some of the loom waste as sewing thread.

And post-washing:

and the other side


Close ups on the brocade sections:
Castles


Flowers


Unfortunately the blue cotton shrank a bit, making the edges draw in on the bands (I'd hoped it wouldn't, being an embroidery thread). It's not much shrinkage, but enough that I now know to be more careful on the next one.


The awful lines I was getting with my too-coarse reed have mostly gone (thanks to the tedious on-loom manipulation I was doing that took twice as long as the actual weaving). And as of today I have a new 16dpi reed. I'm half way through re-sleying, and I'm changing it to 64 epi (down from 70). That way, even if I do get lines they'll at least be regularly spaced in terms of the pattern.

Something off the loom

I finally finished up the tea towel that I've been working on for far too long. I then very cleverly failed to take photos.

Results:
I have a new tea towel. I also have a new reed on the way, and will be resleying at 64 epi when it arrives (was 70). I'm hoping that the 16 dpi reed will help a lot with the nightmares I was having with 8 or 9 ends per dent. And I've started charting up a new pattern for the decorative bands for the rest of the warp. I'm still deciding whether to make tea towels or one long runner/towel though.

I'm mostly happy with my edges, but the last brocade band I did pulled in a bit.

Embroidery photos!

Well, it's taken me a while to get the photos of the finished cushion off the camera, but it's finally done. I finished the pillow on the Saturday morning at about 9.30, the wedding was midday. I had hoped to get it finished a bit earlier than that, but various unforeseen circumstances conspired against me.



The colours in this photo are not quite accurate - the ribbon and edging cord were a little closer in colour to the silk, but other than that the colours are pretty good.

I enjoyed making this pillow, although I was glad to take a break from satin stitch when I was done.

Embroidery progress

I'm definitely making progress now - I feel like I'm about a third of the way through the M. I'm having to be a bit careful of wear and tear on the thread, but I do feel like I'm getting better at this satin stitch thing. (I'm not feeling inclined to do any more any time soon though).

I did manage to remember to take a photo when I stopped stitching last night, so here it is:


The bottom half of both legs on the M are done, the top of the right leg is padded. About half of the rest is outlined - and in this photo you can actually see my yellow guide stitches, and the long tails where I'm pulling them out as I go. There is a little bit of unevenness on some of the edges, but I'm planning to outline everything with couched gold anyway.

I love the way the satin stitch looks, which I guess is probably the redeeming feature of the stitch. I'll try and get a daylight photo in the weekend (here's hoping for some not-too-gloomy weather).