Happy Christmas

I had a great time decorating for Christmas.  I even put up a tree this year, the first time for a while.  I especially enjoyed putting up my Christmas Star.

I hang my glass star from the ceiling.

I enjoyed bringing out my favorite ornaments and I have a few new ones to add to the tree.  We got an ornament from the museum in Florence.

Ornament from the Uffizi

I got some more little houses that had belonged to my Great Aunt in the 20's to add to my little village.  The figures were made from pipe cleaners by my sister about 50 years ago.

Little Village of hand made figures and my Great Aunt's houses.

I stitched some new ornaments for my and my children and added several from the recent trips we had done.  In addition to the Uffizi ornament, I also have a couple of boats from places we have visited.

Ship from our visit to Plymouth, MA.

I have quite a bit of greenery that I put up - no none of it is real, but we have several candles and essential oils that we use to give the house that evergreen smell that we like to have.  And this way I can enjoy the green without the mess.  

I have three cabinets that I add greenery, I have red balls and glass icicles on two of them and one has my collection of nutcrackers.

Nutcrackers and Christmas dishes.

I spend a month listening to Christmas carols (November), then decorate and enjoy my things.  I get most of them down around the 12th day of Christmas.  But some of them stay up longer because I want to just look at them.  One year I got a painting of St. Nick that stayed up for a year because I liked it so well.  I had wanted a copy of it for years, so when I finally got it I enjoyed it for a while.

My old fashioned Santa picture.  It is a pleasure to get it out each year.

I love seeing my things and spending time with my family.  We mostly cook and eat together.  We have a finger food and movie night Christmas eve.  Then Christmas day starts with eggs benedict.  We have been cooking that breakfast for years and we all love it.  Christmas dinner varies depending what we are interested in.  This year (since my husband retired he has been doing most of the cooking) my husband said traditional - turkey for Thankgiving, roast beef for Christmas and ham for New Years.  We got to have Mom for Christmas Day dinner and we all enjoyed a great meal.  Sharing time and food with the ones I love is my favorite way to celebrate.

At the Pioneer Craft House, where I teach weaving, we did an overhaul of the studio this fall.  We started by pulling off the bulletin boards and painting the walls.

Gray wall from current color and green from under the bulletin boards.

The walls had not been painted for a long time, I thought the cleaning would brighten them up but the color was just so dull.  We painted over with something warmer and then put shelves up on that wall.  

Shelves in process with old bulletin boards in front.

We moved the yarn from the closet and the equipment from the cabinets on the west wall.  We needed the closet space to store the table looms when they are not being used.

Old cabinets, they had been there for 10-15 years.

The moving happened while I was weaving a commission on the loom in the fore ground.  I had class members and weaver's guild members coming in to get the work done.  I was overwhelmed by all the help and at times at a loss to find what items needed to be done.

Shelves partly filled and looms still in a mess.

I have been slowly getting things put together, we got the looms set up after three tries.  and the boxes of yarn on the wall labeled.   Now the yarn is out to be used by the students and the place looks clear and bright.  I am really happy with how it looks.  There is still areas that need to be cleared and drawers that need to be organized but the table looms are now out of the way and have a place to be put when they are not being used.  

The rug commissions that I was working on during the room improvement got finished and I was able help finish up the studio re-arranging.

The natural colored alpaca rugs.

Dyed alpaca rugs

I decided to clean all the table looms and get the heddles corrected on them before the new classes start in January.

Looms getting washed and oiled.

I fixed the heddles and drilled some of them to fix the apron strings and beaters.  I am very pleased with the improvements on the looms.  Hopefully they will be in good working order for a couple of years.

Yes there has been a lot going on.  I do hope to weave some pieces for me this year and also have some work to show everyone.

What have I been doing since December; everything and nothing.  I still feel "off", but I set the May trip as my turn around point.  Now that the trip is over, I'm starting the health things I should have been doing for a while.  My knees gave out during all the walking on the trip, I had a panic attack because of them, but now I am able to see it is time to make the life style changes to get me on track.  Eating better could help my low energy problem and help me get back on track.  I have a couple of doctor visits coming up and I am watching my food intake, I need to stay healthy and able to enjoy my life.

But, you know, if I wait for things to "slow down" I will never get to anything.  And I have been doing things.  January found me overwhelmed by the cold and no desire to get out of bed.  I worked on getting Christmas decorations down (I did get it all down by February).  I also wove some samples to see what sett I could use on some cones of yarn that I have had for quite a while.  I probably have several pounds of each color, so could I make lightweight scarves, or denser fabric for towels?  After washing the samples, I found that there was rayon in the yarn and I don't like rayon in towels, they get "limp" after washing.

I taught a six week overshot class and my beginning weaving class in Januay, Feburary and march and I tried a Beginning Plus class for those students who had taken the beginning, but wanted more help before they jumped into an intermediate class.  It went quite well and I will probably offer it again.  

I got a color gamp kit as a gift for Christmas and decided that it was a good one to demonstrate warping for my class and then I would have a good color example to go on the walls in the studio.

The colors are pretty good but the cool colors are quite dark.

The kit had 30 threads per color and in my haste to get it on the loom I sleyed the reed at 30 epi, it should have been 20 epi.  I re sleyed (I had warped back to front so the heddles were fine).  The color gamp worked well, I wove one in plain weave  and one in twill.  There was enough warp on that I wove a towel using a gray linen that I found in the cupboard.  I had to triple the yarn to make it fit, but I like the towel.  I hung them up in the studio, so i will try to get a picture of the finished items.

April was busy.  The local guild brought Jennifer Moore for a workshop.  I have done a lot of double weave, but the workshop was not filled and I love spending three days with my weaver friends.  She threads her double weave different than the straight draw that I learned from the Tidball book, but I think it makes designing a little easier.  She converted me and I need to change all my handouts to teach her method.  (She uses a parallel threading, check out her book to get some great information and project ideas.)

We did her color mixing blocks and I used the dark color kit from Cotton Clouds.  I had a couple friends that dyed the yarns to use and others ordered the regular rainbow or pastel rainbow colors.  There were some interesting pieces.  I was wanting some fringe between these pieces so I just wove in a few shots of weft to hold it, that is why it has the watermark look.

My mother loves butterflies, so the siblings took her to see the new exhibit at Thanksgiving Point.  We took a great picture of Mom and the five of us, but I guess that was put on facebook and I can't get to it.  

They flew all over and sometimes landed on people.

The last weekend in April, I got to take a five day Shibori Dye class with Ana Lisa Hedstrom.  I have followed here work for ages, so it was great to get to take a class from her.  I got some great results with the arashi (pole wrapping) technique.  I am thrilled and have plans to do several more.  I can't believe that I can't find pictures of my dyes.  I guess I'd better get them documented.  I'll try to remember to show you later.

May, of course, was taken up with travel.  My DH and I spent three weeks in Florence, Italy. 

 I feel so blessed to be able to have gone.  Just like every time I do a BIG trip, I feel blessed and don't expect to be able to again.  This time my knees were bad and I was not able to walk as much as I would have liked.  However, I did get to see a number of places that I had not seen before and I had a wonderful time.  Both of my children were able to come over and share some of the time with us.
I managed to get a tour in a velvet and brocade workshop and see the looms in action.

Velvet loom in the foreground and a student working on her project on the loom behind.

Velvet is the queen of woven fabrics.  If you look carefully you see a blue warp running horizontal and through the lease sticks (the ground of the fabric).  Then you see some gold and blue threads running diagonally from the lease sticks behind the shafts and down to rows of spools.  Each thread is weighted separately on the spools and this is the warp pile threads.  I loved watching the weavers and just looking at the old looms.

Jacquard head with the pattern cards.

Each loom had one or two jacquard heads on the top of them (about 6 feet up) and that is how the pattern was done.  You can see the white threads coming down from the jacquard head to lift the shafts.  One of the weaver's told me that when then get a hold of another jacquard, they have to manufacture the parts to get it going.  They had ones that controlled a one hundred thread repeat and some that controlled a four hundred thread repeat.  I didn't get enough pictures, after a while I was just walking in awe of the equipment and workmanship.

There were also several looms that were weaving silk brocade.

This month I will be going to the Intermountain Weaver's Conference and taking a class in sewing with handwovens.  I have several (boxes full) pieces of yardage that I would like to turn into clothing, wish me well.