Daily Gripe - Craft fail

You talking about me?

I've been slacking on our guest bedroom reorganization.  Husband's back won't permit him to do a ton of moving furniture about, so when my brother was briefly visiting a couple weeks ago, I had him assist me with moving the bed, TV and entertainment stand.  That went relatively, um, smoothly.   [OK, in reality, we moved the TV onto the bed, didn't prop it up properly, resulting in it falling face first off the bed and making a dent in the door.  Good news is that the TV still seems to be working.]  I need to decide how to reorganize the bookshelves and set up my sewing machine, hang stuff on walls etc.  I swear I will eventually get around to that.  Deuce seems to like the new set up of the room - by that I mean he enjoys that he's allowed in there right now because he can't get into any trouble seeing as all my craft supplies are packed away.  It's amazing how much space a 13lb cat can take up on a queen sized bed. 

Anyway, last night I was itching to pull out my loom, which has been hiding in the closet where all my craft stuff was packed.  I set everything up and started to warp the yarn onto the loom with Deuce carefully watching.  Considering I was winding multiple strands of yarn 6 feet across the room, I was very impressed with his restraint....until the warping peg that I was using to hold the lengths of yarn came off the entertainment stand and dropped on the floor.  The yarn immediately fell off the peg and into a pile, and cat pounced straight off the table into the middle of the yarn and promptly started trying to eat it.  So there's me, 10pm, with a gigantic pile of knotted yarn and one very satisfied furball sitting proudly on top of it.  Needless to say, it's back to the drawing warping board for that project and I have learned my lesson when it comes to tightening the necessary pegs during this particular process.   

Happy Friday all!

Daily Craft - All done!

One beautiful thing about weaving is that it takes a fraction of the time to make a scarf compared to knitting, or even crochet.  Last night, after only a few hours of actual weaving, I finished up my first scarf on my Cricket loom and made the super cute twisted fringe. Something went slightly wrong with my tension in places as there are slight wiggly spots in the center section of the scarf (between the two blue stripes), and I wonder if that may have been a result of switching from the grey to the blue and back while warping the loom.  Seeing as I used acrylic for the scarf, I decided to steam block it using a damp pressing cloth, which helped straighten it out a little bit at least.  


I'm probably going to pass this along for donation to one of the various charities that we collect for at work as they often request synthetic fibers because they're easy to care for.

I definitely made a few mistakes while working on this scarf, which I'm grateful for as it gives me more knowledge to attack the next project with.  Now I just have to decide what yarns I want to use!

Daily Craft - My first woven!

So in usual slacker fashion, it took me a while to take photos and post about this, but I am excited to share my first woven items.  I had originally warped up for some cotton dishcloths using some cotton cone yard bequeathed to me by a co-worker who no longer weaves.  I used a little store bought cotton (which I always have to snap up when it's on sale) to make stripes and these dishcloths are the end result.  There's actually 7 or 8 of them but I figured you didn't need a picture of the whole batch to get the idea.  It was kind of funny to see how the last ones I did are so much better looking than the first couple.  I got to try a couple of different techniques with them though - including hemstitching and using a separator between them.  After I cut them off the loom, I hemmed them with a zig zag stitch on the sewing machine so hopefully they'll hold up to the task.

For those of you that don't use knit/crochet/woven dishcloths at home, I thought it was a bit of an odd concept at first - using something pretty and handmade to wash dishes; however, we're converted in our house and they get the job done without getting completely gross like sponges do.  They can be tossed in the washing machine, and come out ready to go again, thus pretty eco-friendly (yay me!)

In the meantime, I've warped on another project.  This time I'm going for a scarf.  The yarn is a grey acrylic for the warp (length), with a couple of blue stripes, and I'm using a mohair-style acrylic in a matching grey for the weft (side-to-side).  The result is really soft and my edges are much straighter, although I specifically chose this yarn because imperfections are being nicely hidden by the slight fizzy halo at each side.  That's not cheating, it's ingenuity.  :)

Daily Craft - I-loom-inating!

I am a total slacker for not posting earlier. I'm going to blame it on preparations for Judgement Day, although as rapture's go, it was a total disappointment.

So, my new loom arrived last week and I was thrilled to start playing with it. Deuce gave it a good sniffing while I was building it, just to make sure he approves. This picture makes it seem as if he's being helpful, but it's a lie. On account of trying to make him stop, I wasn't able to get the shots of him chewing on the apron strings or trying to steal the screwdriver.

Despite the cat, I was able to get the loom warped and ready to go pretty quickly.  I decided to work on some basic dishcloths to get started, figuring I won't really care if they're crooked seeing as I'll be using them for cleaning dishes and counters.  I'm already seeing a huge difference between the first one and where I am now (which is about cloth #6).  I have a couple more to go before I can remove them from the loom and share the finished product, but here's a preview.  Once I'm done with this, I'll probably try a scarf.  The stash busting possibilities seem as if they may be endless...which is a good thing!

Daily Craft - Being patient

According to Fed-ex, the birthday gift that I bought myself is somewhere around Pheonix, AZ.  It's supposed to be here on Thursday (which coincidentally is payday, so good things all around).  I'm being patient, I swear, and repeatedly checking the Fed-ex tracking info online doesn't count as stalking. So, what did I order?  In typical fashion, I ordered the tools to yet another craft to distract myself with - a weaving loom!  

I actually purchased a vintage toy loom from eBay a couple of years ago.  It was older than I am and functional, but definitely needed a little work done.  I did weave a scarf on it before shoving it in the cupboard with the best intentions to take the time to deal with the necessary modifications (which I apparently never got around to).  I should add that I was actually really happy with how the scarf looked.  I used 2 yarns that I'd recycled from a sweater and dyed with Kool Aid in complimentary shades.  I was even pretty happy with how my edges looked! 

I have been wanting a better loom to work with as I definitely saw the potential of how much fun I could have; so when I found a great deal on a Schacht Cricket Loom from a Ravelry member, I snapped it up!  It doesn't have a super wide weaving width (10") but that's pretty perfect for me so it doesn't take up too much space. 

While patiently waiting for the arrival of my new toy, I shall sit and dream of scarves, bags, pretty blankets from well designed panels, and oh so much more.  Is it Thursday yet?