Multi looms

Hey lovlies, I have been weaving like mad all week.   I sent for the next two looms I needed from Teresinah at Wild Colours and now I think I have the complete set of these.  I suppose if I need a different size that will have to be ordered separately from Hazel.   Anyway here are all my square / oblong multi looms.   So this week I have weaving with James C Brett Monsoon yarn  which is 70% acrylic and 30% wool and there is 196 yards or 180 metres in a ball.  Now being a complete idiot I forgot to take a picture of the ball of yarn, but it comes in various colours in one ball.  All the squares you see below came from one ball.

This is the 6inch square loom and the weaving that comes off it.  I do like this loom it’s a good size and it works up nice and quickly.This little baby is one of the new ones that I received this week, this is the 4 x 6 inch rectangle, again very quick to work up.

Another new loom, I love this one the 6 x 2 bookmark loom,  this one just whizzes along.

I think this was one of the first one’s I bought, the 4 inch square, it takes no more than 10 minutes to make this square, this is the loom I used for the pink and grey blanket.The 4 x 2 loom, this one fits in really well with the others as you will see in the final photograph.The little mini loom, 2 inch square loom. honestly the squares just fly off this one.

Ok so now you have seen all my square multi looms,  I do have a 4 inch triangle loom, but I’m not using it with this project.

So this is what they all look like together, I plan on making some sort of throw/blanket using all the square/rectangle looms.  One of the problems I have is that I don’t know whether to sew this lot together and use this particular pattern of squares, or to make them all different.  Out of one ball of yarn so far I have made 1 6 inch square, 2 6×4, 3 2×6, 15 4inch squares, 14 2×4, and 18 2 inch squares, and I still haven’t finished the first ball yet.

Would love to know what you think, thanks for reading.

This morning I was here at Spoon, I am so lucky that this brilliant little bistro is actually at the end of the road that I live on, it’s all of about 100 yds from my house.  I was meeting a friend that I hadn’t seen for a while – we are actually friends because we both have the same kind of dogs Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.  Here is one of mine, this is Rufus, and he is 7.   Of course he is in charge, or he likes to think he is…

So, at the weekend I went to Wingham Wool Works and bought myself a peg loom, its 36 inches long and very well made,  I also grabbed some recycled sari yarn. I’m sure I can find something to do with it.I had a little play with the loom and the sari yarn – just to get a feel for it.  I really packed this down and it makes such a firm fabric, not sure what I will do with it, probably just keep it as a sample but it was fun to do and I have some very interesting ideas floating around in my mind on what to make on this loom. I love the colours in the sari yarn and although I used my Swift to wind it into balls, it still managed to twist in on itself, so I spent ages untangling it.  Just need to keep a tight hold of the ball to stop that.I used crochet cotton for the warp, in fact I used it doubled as it was only a fine one. It seemed to work ok, but as this is just a sample it doesn’t really matter.

Thanks for looking.

Pink and Grey Hand Woven Blanket

This is the blanket that has been sitting in a box waiting for me to add a backing finally finish it off.  I hand wove this with my 4″ Hazel Rose loom.  It takes about 10 minutes to do one square, so its pretty quick once you know what you are doing.  The size of this would do for a cot blanket or just a lap quilt. I must admit, it is very snuggly.   I backed this with pink fleece and I sewed pretty shell buttons in the shape of flowers and hearts on some of the squares to hold it all together.  The yarn I used is James C Brett  acrylic, I’m not a huge fan of acrylic really, but this yarn is quite exceptional.

What a week!

I really don’t want another couple of weeks like the ones I have just experienced!  It started out okay, a week last Monday I was looking forward to going to the embroiderer’s guild meeting on Wednesday night and was collecting my threads for the Norwich stitch experiment.

Wednesday night arrived and the meeting was great, apart from a text I received from my husband about 10 minutes before the end, telling me that he was at the hospital with my 16 year old son Daniel.   Dan’s leg had been really hurting over the past few weeks, and we had been to physio who said that one of his femurs had grown more than the other one, which meant that one leg was longer and that was why he was having trouble walking.

Wednesday night however he was in real pain, and the only place for him was the A&E unit.  I had to go home from the meeting to look after my mum and so had to rely on text messages and phone calls to find out about Dan.  Eventually he was allowed home at 2 a.m. only to be told to get back there at 8.30 a.m.   He had a blood clot due to an anti-thrombin III deficiency.  This is hereditary from his grandfather and we were told only that if he had surgery during his teens that the Dr should be aware of it.

To cut a long story short he was in hospital for a week – came home yesterday – and has to take Warfarin for the next 3 months.

Meanwhile I on the other hand developed a horrific cold – I mean lets face it we have all had rotten colds, but this one was something else!  Never have I felt so ill with a cold, it also meant that I could not visit Daniel in hospital which was a complete bummer for both of us!  My poor John was run ragged coming home from work cooking tea and rushing out again to see Dan.

You can imagine that not a lot of sewing, weaving or anything else was done by me, but I hate doing posts with no pictures, so here are a couple of bits that I found in the bottom of a drawer when I was clearing things out a while ago.

I cannot remember what this yarn is called, I got it in a sale a couple of years ago but I do remember it is by Noro.  I crocheted these three pins and then forgot about them!  I love the pink and green one best.

I designed this little lamb when I was thinking about making a nursery quilt and somewhere I did three others for the rest of the seasons, this one is Summer.  So somewhere in the house are Spring, Autumn and Winter.  When this cold finally goes – at least I almost  have my voice back today – I will find the rest of them.

Have a great weekend and thanks for looking.

Rosie x

Blog Giveaway

I was looking through some of my favourite blogs this evening, and over at Nataly’s Needle Creations, some fantastic goodies are up for grabs. So go to my blog roll over on the right, click on Nataly’s blog and sign up to see if you can win these lovely stitching goodies.

Weaving a shawl/wrap

I have just started weaving this gorgeous shawl by Jana Trent.  Jana put this pattern up on the online weaving magazine WeaveZine (see blogroll). The yarn that Jana used is Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool.

However being in the UK this yarn was not known, so I bought some yarn that I thought would do and gave it a try.  I used a bamboo/viscose and wool mix called Flirt by Sirdar, and the plain squares came out very well.  I could see it was going to drape beautifully.   However the lace squares were not too good, because of the smoothness of the yarn the lace pattern just sort of slid together, and I could see that I was going to have trouble blocking this.

Sooooo, I went mad and ordered the Elsebeth Lavold yarn from, Wool & Company – see blogroll.    This was the company that had the cheapest price at $7.95  so that plus postage from Illinois amounted to about $56 (£35).  I thought this was pretty good and the yarn is lovely.

A funny thing happened when I ordered the yarn, I got an email saying that they hadn’t got enough of the green I originally wanted, and Neil who wrote the email, said that my address was very familiar as he used to live a couple of miles away from me 20 years ago!  Woodseats,  Sheffield in the UK is a long long way to Saint Charles, Illinios, but somehow it’s a very very small world!

So here is the yarn I orderedI went for the gorgeous juicy orange, the photo does not do it justice, its more of a goldy orange than what you can see.  The pattern takes five skeins, but by the time I had come to take the pictures, one whole skein had been used, and I had fun with my Swift and ball winder making them into balls.  Here is what I have done so far.It takes 22 plain squares and 23 lacy squares, I think I have done about 8 of each so far. I need to get it finished by the 9th of Feb so I can take it to the next meeting of the EG.

Oh by the way, the yarn took only one week to arrive, so that’s definitely a point to Wool & Co.

Thanks for taking a look at my blog.

Count twice, sew once!

This is my very first biscornu.  I have admired these for a long time and now that I am back enjoying needlework I thought it might be an enjoyable and fairly easy project to begin with again.  It has been quite a few years since I did any X stitching, it must be about 15 years since stitched with any quantity. I went along to Wye Needlecraft in Bakewell, this is about a 30 minute drive from home, and as I don’t drive it means I can only go at the weekend when dh is about.  I have put Wye in my blog roll so take a look, they will send anywhere and they do have some really lovely things.

Anyway back to the biscornu,  so much for it being an easy project!  Well it probably is, but I forgot the motto of X stitcher’s  ”Count twice, sew once”    I thought that the material would not be worth sewing on at all by the time I had undone my errors for the millionth time!

At last I finished it!  and although I did make some ridiculous mistakes I thoroughly enjoyed making this little pincushion.

Remember, count twice, sew once!

The Embroiderer’s Guild

Over Christmas my lovely friend Joan came to see me and brought another friend with her.  Kath is the secretary of the local branch of the embroiderer’s guild.  Joan in her wisdom, thought I would like to meet her and maybe get out for an evening to go to a meeting of the guild. While we were having coffee and chatting we were discussing my hand looms and I was able to show Kath how to weave on them.  She liked them so much that she went and ordered one from Teresinah at Wild Colours – see blog roll.

Speaking of Wild Colours, I ordered a 14″ loom from there a while ago, I was dying for it to arrive and guess what?   The post office managed to lose it!  Teresinah and I were emailing each day, wondering if it was ever going to arrive.  In the end you have to wait for 19 days before you can inform the post office that it has not arrived and they consider it lost.

In the end Teresinah decided that it would be best if she came up to Sheffield by train from Birmingham and brought my replacement loom with her.

It was a filthy day when I met her at the station, pouring with rain and so we hurried to the nearest Starbucks for and cup of coffee and to get warm and dry. The photo shows Teresinah with two cushions, the circular pattern is couched onto the weaving using yarn that she has spun and dyed with natural dyes.  The photo does not do it justice, it really was fabulous.  The other cushion is spun and dyed the same way.  With varigated yarns you can end up with wonderful plaids with no effort at all.

After we had done our little show and tell we wandered into the Millennium Gallery and then the Graves Art Gallery, fortunately they are across the road from each other so we didn’t get too wet.

When I got home I started weaving and here is my loom with the weaving still on it ready for me to embroider something on it. I love this loom, but oh my, it does make my arms ache!  It’s too big to have on your knee like the rest of my looms, but find that it works best resting up against the table edge.

On Wednesday I did go to the embroiderer’s guild meeting, I had been asked to take my looms and do a little show and tell, which went well.  There were some fabulous things to look at  that the other ladies had made.  And it was so nice to get out and meet new people.  At the next meeting we will be covering a note book  using Norwich stitch, which looks like this…I am so looking forward to it, and intend to practice this stitch before the meeting.

Punch needle rugs

I think I have just found something that might keep me happy for a while.  After losing my passion for paper and quilling, a passion that lasted over 20 years.

I have been finding it really difficult to find a creative outlet that I love and enjoy as much as what I did with paper. I do enjoy making things with the miniature punch needle and now have just discovered that you can actually make rugs with a larger type of punch needle.

Looking for sites to do with all this I found Amy Oxford, who seems to be a bit of a genius when it comes to punch needle rug making, her website is in the blog roll it is well worth a look at the gallery.

Well at the top you can see one of the freebies from Primitive Bettys – also in the blog roll.  I had some hessian/burlap, and although I started this a while  ago, the needle I was using had some problems and it never got  finished.  However, a new needle was purchased and some Monks Cloth, from this place in Scotland  http://www.ragartstudios.com.  Hessian isn’t really very good for punch needle rug making, the threads may snap with the pressure of the needle going in and out so evenweave  is the best bet.  I am in the process of re-drawing the pattern on to my monks cloth and will let you know how it is getting on.This is an owl which I made this morning, he has no claws on this photo, and he is blue and white because in this household we support Sheffield Wednesday, one of our local football / soccer teams, they play in blue and white and their mascot is Ozzy the Owl.

I am going to try and stuff this owl – he is about 11 inches high – and send him to my son Alex who lives in Kazahkstan.  The last time Sheffield Wednesday and our other local team Sheffield United played together I had to tune the radio to the sports station and place it in front of my laptop so he could listen to the match on Skype!  Boys huh!

At the textile fair I picked up a few of these batts from Wingham Wool Works.  They are from Estonia and are the product of various sheep over there.    I have to say they make needle felting a great deal more fun than stabbing a ton of Merino roving.

This wool just goes quickly into shape and its just nice and fluffy and great to play with.

Sorry this is not a very good photo, I seem to have had trouble taking these, did some yesterday and they were just as bad!  But here you are, one little robin, bob bob bobbing along .   Here is a side view, the wings are not separate, I just used the needle to enhance the shape, quite a performance getting them the same size, but it was very enjoyable making this little bird.