A chenille shawl and some special yardage

Last month you saw this on the loom.  Gus is modeling her latest creation which you may remember was a handpainted chenille warp in a color gradation from dark to light.  She used a couple of yarns in the weft; aqua cotton and an aqua rayon.  Gus wanted to use both wefts at the same time, but finally had to resort to two shuttles thrown one after the other because the rayon didn't behave very well! 

Sue Habegger brought in her finished yardage for a jacket.  She ordered Navajo Churro yarn in charcoal to go with odds and ends of colored wool she had on hand for this fantastic piece of plaid yardage.  The material for the sleeves is not plaid but stripes because of the logistics of plaid matching.  She may even cut them on the bias which would be very interesting. 

Three of us decided it would make a wonderful lap blanket!  There is about five pounds of wool in this piece - what a stash buster project!  Can't wait to see the finished jacket, but that may take a bit longer according to Sue.  She wants to find some synthetic shearling (nice quality) for the lining.  If any of our readers knows good sources, please let us know.

Cane weaving and a tale about a scarf

Sue Robertson attended a cane weaving class at CNCH in Sutter Creek.  The instructor was Thomas Holtkamp who taught himself  by reading instructions from a library book.  Sue says the process wasn't hard  and that she wove most of the top in about 12 hours. She is just about done with the top of the bench seat and plans to add a more open woven piece on the rectangle below the seat.  A tip that Sue learned in class is that when you have a cane woven seat that is sagging badly, set the chair upside down and get a sopping wet towel.  Place the towel on the seat so that the cane can absorb the water for 30 minutes or so.  Then, let the seat dry.  Like magic, the seat will restore to a taut condition.

Marcy had a tale to tell about her beautiful tweedy scarf.  A women's group asked her to attend their meeting to give a presentation on handweaving.  Marcy brought in a table loom and many of the group tried their hand at the process and asked a good many pertinent questions.  Marcy invited those who were interested to visit her home to weave on the big floor loom.  Marcy put on a wool warp and had a weft boucle yarn of wool and probably mohair.  Two ladies showed up to weave and between the three of them, they wove this wonderfully soft scarf.  It is plain weave and the boucle yarn makes a lovely selvedge edge.  Marcy is much more pleased with this scarf than the one she brought to the April meeting.  She thinks that one of the differences is the soft beat she used when weaving her May scarf.

PLaying Catch Up

I really should write all of my blog posts right after the meeting so that I don't forget the details.  I like to spread posts out a bit so that they aren't gigantic and because everything at show and tell is wonderful I want to get the most mileage out of it that I can.   This is a catch up post from the April meeting; I'll start getting my thoughts and posts organized for the May meeting sooner this month I hope.

Jackie is most generous in giving her handwovens to family and friends.  She brought a wonderful alpaca/rayon scarf to the meeting and was looking to place it in a good home.  She wasn't fond of the color and some of the other details didn't please her.  When Ingrid joking said that it would look good with her coloring, the scarf found a new home immediately.  You can see from the photo that the scarf and Ingrid are a good match!

While we are on the scarf topic, during the meeting Carol was twisting the fringe on her scarf woven from a sock yarn called  Tofutsie.  It is a strange combination of superwash wool, soy silk, cotton and chitin (from shrimp shells I think).  This is a self striping yarn, used in warp and weft for an interesting all over design.

Gus was inspired by some towels in Handwoven Issue 154 (Mar/Apr 2011 see page 38).  They are a combination of twill and basketweave stripes.  The draft shown in the magazine is for four shafts but  Gus has eight shafts and decided to put together her own version for the project using PCW software.  Here is the draft and a photo of the towels, in which Gus used up some odds and ends of yarn for the stripes along with the lovely lavender main color which is also the weft yarn. 

And now we are all caught up with April - on to the May meeting in the next post.