An A for Effort

All my fiber arts and needlework entries for the county fair earned blue ribbons, and one a gold "Best in Section" ribbon, but I don't know what that means, or if it is even meaningful in any way since my work was the only entries in most of the sections. Sunday evening I will pick up my pieces and receive the judge's remarks. We'll see if that sheds any light on the results. Since it looks like my fiber friends did not enter anything, maybe I should wear all my ribbons to the next meeting, or would that be too passive aggressive?

We missed the races

Spinning: I accomplished some spinning this week, and that's about all.

My granddaughter wanted to bake and frost cookies, so that is what we did one day. Despite my trying to inculcate a "less is more" mentality, her motto seemed to be "half cookie, half icing". When I suggested they were inedible, she declared, "They're not for eating, they're for decorating."

For pain relief, I take three aspirin in the morning and three in the evening, targeting inflamation, plus I apply emu oil to my shoulders twice a day. Thursday I neglected this regimen in the morning, and by evening, my left arm was nearly useless. The inkle loom is still clamped to the dining room table, but every time I think about weaving on it, I also think about how much it hurts. I want to keep my skills active, in anticipation of the workshop at the end of September, but I may have to practice in ten-minute bursts.

Maybe not the best laid plan

As the cortisone injections wear off, my shoulders remind me why I want/need replacements. I scheduled surgery for the Wednesday following an inkle weaving workshop, forgetting that I will have to cease all pain relieving treatments about two weeks before that. Already I am having difficulty at the inkle loom, can't wait to see how non-functional my left shoulder will be by the end of September. At least I will be able to continue cortisone injections in my right shoulder.

Spinning: At least spinning doesn't hurt my shoulders. Since I decided to call a halt to spinning all the red Tunis, my attitude toward it has improved.
Weaving: I find twenty minutes of weaving at the inkle loom to be my limit before having to rest. Unfortunately, that left me halfway through one motif and I am having trouble picking up (HA) where I left off.

One of the members of the spinning guild has made inroads in recent years to get fiber arts included in the county fair. I've never participated, but decided to this year. And if you are going to enter one thing, you might as well enter several.

There was no fair last year, thanks to the pandemic, so you can submit anything created in the past two years. Unfortunately, many of my handwoven and handknit items were gifts that have already been distributed, but I came up with five to enter. The judges are not very well versed in fiber arts, so I don't expect to win or even get any helpful feedback. But it will be fun to take my granddaughter to the fair and show her my entries.

I give up (sorta)

I gave it the ol' college try, but the red Tunis just became worse after my attempts to clean it using hand cards. So I decided to continue spinning (and picking as I go) until I have enough to ply. Then the rest of the roving is going to become dryer balls. I want to move on to better things.

Spinning: I did spin a little more of the red Tunis this past week when not tearing my hair out over the hand carding.
Weaving: I finished not only the heddle pick-up exercises in Anne Dixon's book, but also the unheddled pairs and unheddled singles and pairs exercises. Now I am starting the combined unheddled and heddled ones.

The inkle study group met today where I not only learned how to pick up unheddled and heddled combinations, but picked up a few tips to improve my technique. There is something to be said for learning in a group vs being self-taught or learning from YT videos. Next time, we hope to tackle Baltic-style patterns.

The spinning guild met for our annual picnic (no shared food this time) under a park pavilion (it's been raining almost non-stop around here) this past week. I spread out my decluttered offerings and got rid of about half of it. The next day I found MORE bits and bobs of fiber. I plan to keep hauling this stash to meetings until no one wants any more of it.

Closet decluttering

One day I tried to store something in a closet, any closet, but all of my closets were too FULL. There is not a lot of storage in this house besides the bedroom closets. Even though I am the only one living here, in a three-bedroom house, it feels like not enough room. So I decluttered. Again.

After consulting with my granddaughter, I eliminated a lot of crafty things that she has outgrown: construction paper, glue sticks, markers, googly eyes, etc. We also sorted through jigsaw puzzles and craft kits. (Try as I might, I could not interest her in crafts - too tedious.) And then I hit the fiber stash.

The larger bin contains vast quantities of yarn that fall under one of two categories: Project Leftovers and What Was I Thinking? There are also some unused or little used tools, like spindles. The smaller bin is mostly samples of this, that, and the other, bits and bobs of fibers from workshops and swag bags and sampling. I plan to take all this to the next spinning guild meeting with plans to offer everything up for FREE. I may also take a couple of homemade (not by me) frame looms.

Weaving: Almost done with the heddled pick-up exercises from the Anne Dixon book, The Weaver's Inkle Pattern Directory, that I started in the last mini-workshop. We have another mini-workshop scheduled for next Saturday.

There is a basket of cotton yarn in the den beside the Ashford 24" rigid heddle loom that I am itching to weave. Arthritis in my shoulders makes that difficult to even think about. I've tried exercise, physical therapy, yoga, massage, medication, CBD, and corisone shots, but nothing has made much of a difference in the pain and mobility issues. BUT I now have a surgery date the last week of September for replacing the left shoulder. The tentative plan is to replace the right one a year later. With all medical procedures, I'm a bit apprehensive, but in this case, mostly relieved. I hope I am as happy with shoulder replacement as I am with hip replacement.

Pillow top to doll blanket to whatever

A while back (September, 2018, to be exact), I suggested to my granddaughter that she pick out two yarns and I would weave a pillow top with them. She selected the yarn left over from a crib blanket I had knit her, using blank Knit Picks superwash wool dyed with KoolAid, and pink Lion Brand Fun Fur (eyelash yarn). I was a bit dismayed, but soldiered on as grandmas tend to do. I didn't keep very good notes in Ravelry, but I think the plan was to weave the top using soumak stitch; each pass of soumak was divided by several passes of eyelash in plain weave. The problem was the eyelash did not pop through the top of the piece but through the bottom.

Soumak

Soumak reverse

I like the reverse side better, so hemmed the piece that way, using a zigzag stitch on my ancient Kenmore sewing machine (and I didn't do a very good job).

Weave structure: Soumak stitch (the "standard" one - there are a lot of different soumak stitches)
Loom: Ashford SampleIt (I assume)
Warp: 8/4 carpet warp (?) in white
Weft: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Superwash Worsted Bare, dyed with blue raspberry KoolAid, and Lion Brand Fun Fur Solid, in Soft Pink (101)
EPI/PPI: 7.5?/???
Size after hemming: 8"W x 10"L

Soumak

Soumak reverse

At one point, I thought this could be a doll blanket instead of a pillow top, but my granddaughter decluttered and all the dolls were evicted. I suppose I could still turn this object into a pillow top, but she didn't seem very excited about the idea. For the time being, it is a resting spot for some of her air dry clay sculptures.

In situ

This project is one of many almost finished ones in my UFO pile. With the passing of years between start and finish, frequently one's excitement wanes, but I've decided the UFOs either need to be finished or frogged.

Old dog, new tricks

Have you noticed that we learn the most from our mistakes? I've been experiencing that quite a bit with inkle weaving. When I am doing something correctly, I don't always know how I am doing it correctly... until something changes and suddenly I am doing it all WRONG. Figuring out what is wrong and how to right it solidifies the lesson, though.

Sometimes what I am doing is not wrong per se, but could be better. I tend to pull the weft thread too tight and the yellow doesn't show through the heddled design. Not wrong if that is your intention, but if you want to see the yellow, something has to change. (Different colors might have worked better, too.)

Sometimes when things are not going well, we need to ask for help. I am getting my inkle help from fellow inklers - we have another workshop scheduled this month. That blasted red Tunis, though, required my posting a question on my spinning guild's FB page. That resulted in links to two "No Fleece Left Behind" videos on YT:

No Fleece Left Behind
No Fleece Left Behind, Part 2

I will give these methods a try, although I reserve the right to abandon this roving altogether if I so choose.

Spinning: See above
Weaving: See above but also I managed to hem another UFO that has been sitting around for about three years. Separate post to come.

Over a year ago, my dishwasher stopped doing a good job. I reverted to handwashing while I researched a replacement, but then the pandemic hit. Now that things are better, my daughter helped me pick out a new Bosch 800 series dishwasher and my son-in-law installed it last Sunday. OMG - it does such a great job. And it's nearly silent, too! I've been washing all my dishes and glassware as I felt like nothing got very clean with handwashing. I am also experimenting with how best to load the machine - very different from my old KitchenAid, which was over 25 years old and spent most of those years running on softened well water that still contained a lot of iron. I thanked the old girl and gave her a good pat, then kicked her to the curb, literally.