weaving in my blood?

I received a " my mom loves me " package from my mama in Germany and with all the goodies she send me a stash of cotton kitchen towels.

At closer inspection they did not look store bought so i got on the phone and called my mom to find out where she got them.

And here is the story:

apparently those towels are about 50-55 years old and hand woven by her mom!

I didn't know my grandma was a weaver! I knew she was a seamstress making clothes for the wealthy people during and after the war. Looks like she also wove a lot. My grandma passed away 15 years ago and my mom told me when they cleaned out the house she had a big floor loom with lots of heddles( my mom thinks at least 8-12) and a bigger (she thinks about a at least 40 inch ) table loom.

I was afraid to ask what they did with it but asked anyway:

i shouldn't have :( , i now will forever have the picture of my dad hacking the looms to bits and burning them in the back yard in my head!!

What a crying shame! those looms where at least 50-60 years old.

The towels are woven with sewing thread thin yarn. Some of them have a very tiny waffle weave pattern ,some are plain weave.

I will have nightmares about this for a while.

But at least i got a little more insight of my love for fiber arts.

washed and combed

I got most of the fiber from merry meadows farm washed and dried. i took a few locks and just combed them out with a flicker brush

staple lenght is between 4.5 and 5 inches, fiber is sooo soft, no scratch effect at all against the skin.

even after washing and brushing the hairs still have a lot of crimp in them, this fiber should spin up into a springy yarn, great for weaving shawls,scarfs and knitted socks.

I love it!! got to get some more!!

I can't wait for the long winter nights now, i'll be spinning, carding, weaving like crazy!!!

I used to be very fond of bright colors (and still am) but now i'm really getting in

to natural colored wool.

More ALPACA...

So i finally got to spin up a small skein of this scrumptious chocolate Alpaca i carded yesterday.

I experimented around a bit with different whorl sizes,speeds and yarn thickness.

I ended up with a very nicely balanced two ply with a wpi of 9 ,worsted. The color is just amazing, a deep ,rich ,dark chocolate.Yummy!

first i was a little disappointed about the feel of the yarn, i imagined it softer.

So i soaked it in warm water for a few minutes(with a little fabric softener) , squeezed it dry in a towel and whacked it against the counter a few times.And Bingo!! now it's the way i thought it would feel: very soft, no 'prickle effect ' on the skin and a nice drape. The yarn is light and fluffy, like a cloud but really strong ,i cant just break a strand between my hands, i have to cut it.

Yes, i think I'll be working a lot with Alpaca in the future, and why not? It is a lot easier to process than most sheep wool, is softer than merino(it has been compared to cashmere) and the price per pound is comparable or less than for most sheep wool ( at least on e-bay). It'll take me a while to process all this fiber, i got about 10 pounds in assorted colors (still looking for a good deal for a white fleece on e-bay).After I'm done washing and carding all of this i will offer some of it in my shop but i will safe a good chunk for myself, i really would like to spin enough up to use for weft for a big size shawl i can wrap myself into on cold winter nights (or days ).Maybe a variegated yarn with all the colors in it.

Next I'll be turning my attention to the fawn colored fleece,stay tuned...

Luscious Fiber

After two hours of blending these fibers on my carder i got these two big piles of 'Oh my god this is soooo soft ' batts:

BFL/silk/mohair

and merino,silk,superwash merino

now i have to blend all those together as consistend as i can .

That will be several more hours of cranking the carder,and then... the dyeing.

Pretty Shuttle

I piddled around with the saw and sander this morning and made this very pretty Stick Shuttle:



of course i immediately put it in my etsy shop :)
It's 16" long and has a bevelled edge so it can be used to beat in the weft too.
I'll make some more in different lengths in the course of this week but should someone want one , let me know and I'll make one for you.
I'll also make some inkle shuttles and I'll experiment with a rag shuttle design.
Fortunately we have oodles and oodles of these beautiful cedar boards left so i wont be running out of material soon.

WEEEE...

Just took my first huckaback towel towel off the loom. I used the Two Stick Heading described by 'Dust Bunnies under my Loom" here , because i still have warp left for a second towel but wanted to see how the first one came out without having to wait to finish both.

I had intended for them to be one color each, one blue, one red.

After i started i realized i didn't dye enough yardage of each color so i decided to stripe it , i call it "Red, White and Blue".

I had one warp string break, which i fixed:

and i discovered a threading error about halfway through(fifth square from the left) in one of the squares. It shouldn't be at all noticeable after finishing

and here it is

unfinished size : 22" x 35" its BIG

Spinning challenge

so here is some more fiber i am fixing to spin up for Dave's Summer Spinning Challenge:

I've got about 4 oz of the dark and 8 oz of the light . It's a superwash merino and the colors are light periwinkle? and a medium denim. The fiber is supersoft and has a lovely shine.

I'll try to spin it a thin as possible(maybe i can get it in a lace weight?) and then i'll probably ply it with some very thin mohair in a like color (or close to it) so it will full and stick to each other when woven.

I've got some Lyon Brand Moonlight Mohair that i'm going to separate, using the mohair strand to ply with.

Off to the wheel i go...

It's all Dave's fault!

Well, i finally got cracking on Dave's Summer of Spinning challenge.

I sorted fibers ( some of what i got stashed) Saturday and Sunday.

This is about 1/5th of what i got:

Everything from raw, unwashed fleeces to ready to spin fibers.

I picked out about 16 oz of natural colored fibers and some white washed locks which i dyed in more natural colors:

There is some baby Shetland ( soft,soft,soft), Alpaca(soft),Cotswold(for shine),silk(! 'nuff said),

and some mystery x-bred yearling fiber(merino? soft and lofty).
after dyeing and mixing and carding this is what i got:

Nice Autumny colors.

and after spinning it up on my Ashford Traveller:

two and one half bobbins of soft lace weight singles:

I've had problems with spinning thin yarns before , they came out over twisted and wiry.

I took my traveller apart a few month ago to finish it in a dark mahogany. i started but got sidetracked and quit about halfway through.So it's been sitting in the studio since before Christmas.Now with Dave's challenge i did not want to wait to finish it so i just put it back together half done:

and for some odd reason it spins so much better now, i can actually manipulate the settings where i can get a yarn that is thin but soft.Search me!!

Now for the next batch to ply with:

again some Cotswold locks i dyed copper(looks like orange but i will mix it with something darker),the x-bred fleece dyed chocolate brown,natural baby Shetland(man that stuff is soft!)

and merino in dark brown.I'll be busy with the carder for awhile.

I'm going to weave shawl or a very wide scarf (depending on how much yardage i"m going to end up with) in a 2/2 twill pattern, for : my selfish :) i hope it comes out all soft and snugly warm .

In between i pulled out some black super wash merino, mixed it with lots of recycled sari silk bits and spun that up on my Kromski Prelude:

That will make a stunning scarf!

Not sure yet what color warp I'm going to use yet. Maybe black?, or a really deep dark red?, or a very colorful variegated yarn in the colors of the silk bits?. any input greatly appreciated :).

better run, i can hear the carder calling. THANKS DAVE for getting my butt in gear !!

between a rock and a hard place...

my weaving problems are just getting worse.
i've been weaving a little on and off over the last few days, doing everything but throwing the shuttle with my left hand.so, last night my shoulder was a little sore (i'm still working on the huck towels and have to whack the weave pretty hard). i'm laying there trying to go to sleep thinking about my aching shoulder and it hit me...i'm not supposed to do anything with that arm at all that might put injury or stress to it! this is the side i had the lumpectomy four years ago.i'm not even to let anybody take bloodpressure there.
they also removed several affected lymphnodes then. so any stress or injury could cause my arm to swell up permanently. so now i'm really in a bind: do i risk the swollen arm (which is irreversible) or agravate the carpal to the point where i need surgery(which is 15%-90% succesfull, depending who you ask)?
my weaving future really looks bleak right now (there might be a loom for sale in the near future :'(
(Seems after a few days of light weaving my soreness is gone, maybe it will work out to the good !!)

surgery?...

so i went to the bone and joint clinic and after some unpleasant tests was told that ,yes, i have tendonitis in my elbow and severe carpal tunnel syndrom ! the median nerve is not reacting at all.
so now i have the option to wear a brace and hope it will help ,(which will probably interfere with knitting(i know it will) and weaving ,not sure there, would have to try.spinning? i don't know, same , will have to try.
or.. surgery. ahhhh, i dont really want to.... but... if this brace will hinder me too much or the numbness problem will show up again, i probably will.
i am so tired of beeing cut on, poked at, scanned, x-raid, hurting.... this stupid cancer has already changed my life (and me ) so severely that i don't hardly know myself any more and now i cant even knit, spin, weave in peace. dang, i'm pooted !!!....
and then i'll have to get back with my regular doc to discuss what to do about the tendonitis. hopefully she can put me on ibuprofen, aleve,loracept, pot,morphine ... just kidding...or the dreaded shot in the joint :(
i've been weaving on and off since yesterday and so far it's not hurting. i do all i can with my left hand( i'll probably wear that one out too after a while) .
life really sucks most of the time....

sock order finished...on to new project

I finally finished this huge sock order i've been working on for several weeks.
This is just half of it...


now i will try to finish the towels on the loom ( i hope my arm will be ok) and i already have picked out another set of towels using hand dyed 8/2 cotton yarn.
i also want to play with the little diy inkle loom i made a couple of weeks ago.
Plus i need to dye some yarn and card some fiber to stock up my store. and i need to wash all these pounds of raw fleece i have stashed away since last year plus i want to spin some too... so much to play with sooo little time...
i guess i start with the towels and get them off the loom first.
i got an appointment at the bone and joint clinic wednesday ,so i'll stress my arm a little the next couple of days and see if it flares up again, if it does i'll see what the bone doc has to say about it...

I've warped my Loom!!

After dreaming all night about warping and weft and yarn and heddles and reeds and....and...and...

i just had to try it today!

and it was really not that bad (what good instructions can do , thank you Deb Chandler !

I went through my yarn stash (which is really huge) and choose the most cheap yarn i could find, since this is just for practice i won't use my good yarn.

I used my warping board i made last year to measure out yarn for dyeing (and used it only once for that ). I just drilled a few more holes here and there and layed out my warp on it.

Eventually i'll have a better one but it works good right now.(notice the book right with it :)

got both warps done:

(notice again the book :)
That was really easy!

Next i sleyed the reed :

a little tedious but that was easy too !! I'm using my spinning wheel orifice hook for that,works great.

and then i threaded the heddles ,again with the orifice hook:
halfway done

finished!! :

that was not bad at all,also a bit tedious but kind of fun. I had a broken string in between but i fixed that plus i had two of the heddles that where crossed but i also fixed that(patts herself on the back )

i think im really going to like this!!!

it's now 10:30 and im going to bed, sooo tired ....

more tomorrow :)

New Adventure

Well, what can i say? It's been a couple of month since my last post (I'm busy!!)

With the holidays and sock knitting i've not had time for anything.

I'm really not even supposed to be here right now but i want everybody to see my new addition (and excuse to buy MORE FIBER ).

After weeks of looking and comparing i bought a Loom!

First i had my heart set on a Ridgid Heddle loom from Kromski but then i decided i wanted something a little more complicated( why? i don't know , i'm just that way ).

Anyway's, i thought a four heddle ,25 inch table loom would be just perfect.

e-bay here i come!

I had about $350-$400 to spend (yes, all sock money (knitted about two dozend since beginning november). and lo and behold there was a loom like that up for auction. i bid and i bid and someone else bid...and bid .. until it went over my budget) and i was crushed.

So.... Ravelry, here i come!

i put a ISO in one of the weavers market places and got an offer the same day! A Shacht 4 heddle ,25 inch loom for $250 plus $50 shipping. Used but in great condition .

Boy, did i pounce on that!!

and here it is:

unasembled:

assembled:

That thing is BIG !!

Now i'm going to have to figure out how to warp it and actually weave on it.

Already ordered books and a DVD, theyre on the way.

So, stay tuned for more, i will really try to update this regularly.

Now, back to sock knitting !!

And so it beginns...

Well, I finally did it,I joined the masses and jumped in the blog pool!

I'm probably not going to be very good at this,at least to start with,but maybe as time goes on I'll get better(hope is eternal ).So if you will bear with me i"ll give it a shot.

Mainly i started this blog to share tips, tricks, links and information on anything i found helpful or might be helpful for someone knitting, spinning, dyeing and fiber preparation .

Also i will use this blog to rant and rave about the cancer monkey riding my back and last but not least to promote my little online shop at http://www.skimpysmom.etsy.com/ where i sell my handmade wares.Well you didn't think i did all this just for selfless reasons ,did you?

So, before we go on I'd like to introduce SKIMPY since i get asked a lot who skimpy is and how in the hell that poor child ended up with a name like that.

Behold "SKIMPY" also known as "SKIMPMAN", "SKIMPERS", SKIMPYDOODLE" and some other names i really don't want to put down here(never know when kids might look in).

I started knitting when i was about 6 years old. My mother ,who is a crafty lady( in more ways than one), also taught me sewing and needlepoint/cross stitching.

I got away from needle arts in my early thirty's, until i got reacquainted with knitting during my radiation treatment for breast cancer (more about this black time in my live later). Starting with scarves(about 25), sweaters(4)i finally got hung up on socks.
Of course that branched out after awhile into dyeing my own yarn into spinning my own yarn into preparing fiber from scratch(fleeces, mostly raw) so i can spin and knit it . Of course that involved a spinning wheel, a drum carder,lots of wool and... nowhere to put it. Our little house started busting out of its seams. Wool,yarn,needles,dyestuff covered every flat surface in the house.One memorable afternoon when my poor suffering husband almost sat on a pair of dpn's we decided its time to get a "STUDIO" for my stuff (not the word my husband used).So we acquired a 12x24 ready made cabin and had it set next to our house. It's a diamond in the rough yet,it still needs to be insulated,wired and piped but...it's my little heaven where i spend most of my time until hubster gets home or it gets too freaking hot in here (no air conditioner yet either)

I got all my "stuff" in here now,except my dye things,since i have no water in here yet.
Speaking of dyeing, i better get to it.More later....