Ahh!

I'm sitting down to post after a very busy and productive weekend. I wasn't in the mood to post last night, so I didn't. I guess that's my prerogative!

My fascination with little woven squares continues. These will get mailed off to Mom this week so that she can turn them in to flowers. I can hardly wait to see what she does with them!

I finished my Raspberry Pink Med Spinning Wheel. Yes, I am still enjoying using size 80 Lizbeth!

I finished another fabric basket this afternoon. This is the project my sewing students are working on. I had purchased some inexpensive hankies a while back, and they seemed like the perfect fabric for the girls to use. I love the little owl buttons!

I also made a fabric basket for Mom using the same fabrics I used to make her pin cushions last week.

I haven't made Origami pouches in a while, but I thought Mom deserved a complete set! I do like the black, red, and white fabric. I may have to go back to Hobby Lobby and buy some more!

Now I'm ready to settle down for the evening with another Spinning Wheel. This one will be in size 80 Lizbeth #712, Kelly Green Med. I love Kelly Green!

Ta da!

I love the way this little Spinning Wheel turned out! It's really too small to be a glass mat (coaster) at a mere 3 1/2". I think this may be my new favorite shade of blue!

I finished some more squares for Mom today. They're made on a 4" pin loom, and the finished size is about 3 3/4".

Mom was busy weaving squares on her new 2" loom, so I decided to give mine a try tonight. It's funny, but the 2" loom produces a 2" square. I'm guessing there's less tension with the 2" size, allowing the yarn to maintain the size.

So why the two different sizes?

Mom is making two layer flowers! Isn't this adorable? I stole this picture from her Facebook post. I sure hope she's okay with me sharing. ;-)

Squares for Mom

Mom has been making flowers on her Zoom Loom, and she has inspired me to pull out my Weavette. Mom weaves plain 4" squares and turns them in to flowers that she passes out to residents in her retirement village. I have quite a few balls of yarn left over from projects, so I offered to make some squares for her. It's a great way to use up scraps of yarn!

While working on reorganizing all the stuff from my sewing room, I found some quilt squares left over from the quilt I made five years ago. Since I had pillow forms on hand, it seemed logical to make some throw pillows to go with my quilt. I have one sure left. I'm sure I'll figure out something to do with it!

I was able to take some tatting time for myself today. With any luck, I'll finish this Spinning Wheel tomorrow.

Rita Richmond has stocked her shop, Shuttle by Design, with acrylic shuttles! She's offering one color and two color shuttles, and acrylic shuttles with designs will be coming soon. I love these shuttles!

Weaving at and for school

Earlier this year, I posted about our library theme for this school year... "Weave your way through the library."


My students started out weaving on an inkle loom. They really enjoyed this, but we had an unfortunate incident at our fall open house... some curious child pulled the weaving off the side. I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet, but all is not lost. There is enough completed weaving to make several bookmarks.


Since open house, students have been weaving on the peg looms I purchased. They're allowed to weave one row for every book or every 50 pages they read. The response has been wonderful! We have three completed pieces,


...and three almost ready to come off the looms. We'll make something for our new principal out of these weavings at the end of the school year.


I took one of my Weaveette looms to school to show the students how a pin loom works. They loved it! I've ordered another one to keep at school for student use. The kids liked the bookmarks I was weaving so much, that I decided to weave some for our Santa's Secret Shop. Our school colors are green and gold. I couldn't find the exact colors I wanted, but the kids really seem to like the Pistachio and Lemon Zest Read Heart Designer Sport that I chose. I started on our road trip last week. I was able to weave 47 plain weave bookmarks from the skein of Pistachio. For the Lemon Zest, I decided to follow the patterns in my book Modular Textures: Patterns for the Weavette & Weave-It Looms by Licia Conforti. I've complete 11 bookmarks so far. My goal is to weave two skeins worth of bookmarks to donate to Santa's Secret Shop.



It takes me about 20 minutes to weave a bookmark. I would dearly love to tat bookmarks for Santa's Secret Shop, but I know I could never tat as many as I can weave!

Playin' around

While Dave has been busy re-roofing the house, I've been playin' around in my sewing room... that's a very loosely used term as I haven't done much sewing in a long time! I'm supposed to be cleaning and reorganizing, and I have done some, but I keep finding long-lost treasures! Saturday I found my Weavette looms, which I've had for at least two years, maybe longer. When I first bought them, it was a nostalgia thing. I loved using my Weave-It when I was a kid (who knows what happened to that loom!), so when I saw looms that fit in the palm of your hand advertised, I heard my name being called! Did I order one? No! I ordered every one made by Buxton Brook, along with the handy dandy tote and pattern book! I was so excited when my looms arrived... I sat right down to weave! The first piece was a disaster. I barely read the directions. What did I need those for? I was an expert weaver when I was 10! Of course since the first piece fell apart, I quickly lost interest. Saturday, I decided to do something really rash... I read the directions. As you can see, this time I was successful!

I thought it might be fun to use up some of my yarn stash to make bookmarks embellished with tatting. Although the pictures seem to show the tatting pretty well, I think my little mini-tats look lost on the coarse weave when viewing it in person. Both tattings are from Minitats: 69 Petite Motifs by Patti Duff. The purple one (Flora size 20) is #1, found on page 21. The blue/green piece (hand-dyed thread, size 20 from Yarnplayer) is almost #6 on page 22. I say almost because the motif in the book has 6 rings, rather than the 5 I made. I just didn't think a 6th ring would fit!

Next weekend is the Lake Country Harvest Art Fair. I plan on going with my daughter Alison, and I hope to meet Marilee (a.k.a. Yarnplayer) and see lots of her beautiful pieces!