Last Day of 2015

What a day to do the things I love: spending time with my dear hubby & doggies, baking bread & cinnamon buns, watching a movie and spinning for my Olds in depth study. 

Perfect. 

Happy New Year to all.

Mittens

New mitts for my granddaughter, Megan. 

Christmas Eve Day

I got together and spent a great part of my day with a couple of friends, both Olds College Master Spinner program students, Linda and Marion. Linda now resides on P.E.I and Marion came from a few miles north of Kitchener.
Nice to see them both and be able to talk about spinning and weaving; knowing they know exactly what I mean. I shared some of my weaving experiments; showed off my new to me loom; and found out what they have been weaving or spinning. Marion brought her tansy dyed mohair/silk bumblebee shawl and some beautiful silk scarves she wove; plus we got to see some pics of her past weavings.
Thank you girls for the lavender and flying Christmas angel.

Here's a pic of us on Dec. 24, 2015 in my kitchen.

Left to right: Suzi, Linda, Marion

Merry Christmas everyone. Have a safe and happy holiday however you choose to spend it.

P.S. The weather today was about 8 C, 38 km/hr winds and bright sunshine.

Bath Towels

I've been experimenting with one warp (cotton/hemp blend. Hand dyed) for bath towels. Wefts have been comprised of  hand spun woad dyed linen, 8/2 cotton, cotton chenille & mop cotton.

Width in reed: 35"

10 epi of 8/2 cotton & hemp blend

Woven length approximately 55"-57"

I've varied the pics per inch (ppi) & combined different weft material and had a lot of fun weaving the towels & seeing the washed results. 

The one I really like is one in which I used thrums for weft. I just used a square knot to tie about 45" thrums together. The colours used were limited to black, white, a dark red, turquoise, light blue,

wee bit of yellow, & a dark dull pink. The tails were trimmed to ¼" after washing. All thrums used were cotton & a tiny bit of hemp in a few. I used no particular order. 

The result resembles one of my rag rugs.

From left to right-cotton & linen, cotton chenille, 8/2 cotton & mop cotton; thrums. 

Yes I could look up a pattern, but I like doing my own thing and seeing what happens.