Restless Knitter

My evil plan to make others just as project-bouncy as me is working. Janice has been tempted by the dark side of tablet weaving. Mwahaha! It all started innocently enough. I was going through Handwoven’s free patterns for the loom and clicked on the tablet weaving link. I honestly thought tablet weaving would be hard, and useless, but when I saw these leashes I knew I wanted to try it. Go ahead, click the link. You know you want to. Especially if you have a dog. Maybe even if you walk your cat, your rabbit, your llama. Imagine having a custom woven leash or collar for your pet. Tempted yet?

In between learning about tablet weaving, I started a knitting project yesterday with the Brooks Farm Mas Acero that I bought at SAFF. I had to start over 4 times. Three times for not reading directions, and once for picking up the wrong size needle during one of the other going back to where I screwed up times. I’m not saying what it is because I’m still not sure the yarn will work, and I also have a tendency to not finish things I talk about. Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have talked about the tablet weaving.

Just because I haven’t mastered the floor loom, nor the table loom, doesn’t mean I can’t stick my hand in another cookie jar.

Tablet, or card, weaving. It was more fun than I thought it would be. I made my own set of cards using a spare set of playing cards.

This is part of my second attempt and it didn’t take long at all. (The first attempt I messed up the turns, cut the weft thread out to start over, and ended up cutting a warp thread. Oops.) The whole thing is only about 3 feet long but not bad if I do say so myself. The thing I had the most trouble with was remembering which direction I needed to turn the cards. I also tried double faced tablet weaving (both sides look the same, though colors are reversed) but that was a bust. Some cards go one way, some go another, then the cards change and the turns reverse and it was brain overload.

I think I’m done picking up new yarn hobbies.

After my last post, I had to send Janice (who, by the way, was my wonderful roomie at SAFF) some email hugs. If it weren’t for her leaving a comment on fixing the broken piece myself, I would have ordered and waited on new ones. Thanks to her and Home Depot, the harness is now tied up with some non-stretchy nylon cord and I was back in business. Yay! After I got it tied back up, I found some warp threads that seemed loose so I tried to fix them. Two broke. I ended up cutting the warp off and tossing it in the trash. While that may make some people gasp in horror, I’ll remind you that this was a $4 cone of yarn and I still have 95% of that cone left. I think it’s going to be better off as a knitting yarn.

Ever since we moved here, (see that? since.we.moved.here.) Bella has been licking her feet. The first time we took her to the vet, there were some things stuck in her foot. We figured she picked them up somewhere on the road trip across country. Now, it’s a daily thing. She licks so much that she makes her foot raw. She has licked the hair off her thighs. She looks like she has mange. We’ve taken her to the vet 3 times, once to one vet and twice to another, and neither can find anything in the paws. The once $$$ vet did a scraping (no mites), said she didn’t know why she was licking, and maybe put a sock on her. The $ vet gave her a shot both times, which stops the licking for a little bit, and said it’s most likely allergies. Again, today, she can’t put her foot on the ground because she is licking the pads right off her frickin’ feet. I’ve soaked her back feet in epsom salt water (she hates me for that but it seems to help, or maybe that’s just in my head) and now she has socks on.

Let’s take a closer look at those socks, shall we? Of course!

I am So. Mean.

I know she’s a dog and not a fairy but I keep wanting to sing that sock song when I look at her.

When I got back from SAFF, I was exhausted. After the initial tiredness wore off, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to knit with my new yarn or play with the loom. I opted for the simplest of options, playing with the small square loom. If I wasn’t a slacker, you’d see a picture here of yarn squares. Maybe later. I finally settled in on weaving. Oh. My. Dog. What fun!

All pictures clicky for biggy

Clearly I have some tension issues, and some were intentional, but look at those edges. Much better than my first attempts back in the spring. Amazing what an actual shuttle will accomplish, versus yarn wrapped around a paint stick.

Uh oh, what’s that? That thing on the left.

This is a broken warp thread. And if one was going to break, you know it was going to be the one on the very edge. How rude. I pinned it like I was supposed to and carried on. I haven’t attempted to sew it in yet because I’m a big pansy little intimidated by it.

I’m all excited about the weaving. It just so happens that the Southern California Handweavers’ Guild Weaving and Fiber Festival was this weekend. Guess who went.

They stamp your hand with a sheep as proof you paid your admission I didn’t come out of there empty handed. It seems no matter who you talk to, they tell you that A Handweaver’s Pattern Book is THE 4 harness book to have. And now I have it. I also bought 2 small cones of 8/2 tencel, one in black and one in blue, a used shuttle, and 2 large cones ($4 each, whee) of yarns that will be good to practice with.

Armed with my new yarn, I carefully put the warp on the loom, taking extreme care to get it on evenly. I think I did a decent job this time but I don’t usually see my tension issue until I’ve woven for a bit and started winding it forward. Unfortunately, I won’t know how I did for at least a couple of days. Because, see this?

It’s supposed to be here

Waahhh! I called to order new… uh… leather-only-it’s-not-leather-anymore and with the time difference, Harrisville is closed. Sonofaturtle! (You all know that wasn’t the phrase that came out of my mouth when the harness came crashing down.)

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