Friday, April 29, 2011

Almost May

And we got a dusting of snow last night. I finished tying fringe on the last placemat and someone has staked a claim. I'm new at tying fringe and the first mat took fully an hour. I got much quicker by the end. I asked Hilary how to wash them and she said she didn't recommend it, that it caused the fringe to fray and get ugly.
This is what she was talking about. I used the gentle cycle with almost no agitation and this is what I got. I can't imagine what it would have looked like in a regular wash. So instead of being finished, I had fringe to trim.
I absolutely love the denim mats. All our plates have cobalt blue in them so they are perfect. I made six for the dining room table, which is currently covered with hat kit makings. And by the way, I've placed a link to my Etsy store in the sidebar for the kits I've added. How subtle was that :)
These are the hit-and-
miss mats with strips I had left over from the last rug. These are Ian's favorite. I elected to not weave the 4th mat because I wanted to leave a generous amount of warp to tie a new one onto.

And today I was merry winding that very warp, and when my spool ran out and I went to get the next one, discovered there was no next one. I had a mini-meltdown when I realized that I hadn't read the shipping receipt and my rug warp was backordered. I've straightened that out and rug warp is on its way. Breathe.


Lauren just sent me these photos and I thought you'd like to see high school students learning to drop spindle. She said they did great. I started with her by spinning the whorl while she got her hands oriented and it appears that she has set her students up in pairs the same way. Awesome, Dude.

7 comments:

re'New said...

Placemats are N I C E !!! I just took a roll of narrow rugs off the loom tonite to take along to the weaving weekend I'm going to tomorrow. Maybe I'll get them finished while I'm there. Or maybe I'll stick to weaving on the scarf I've got warped. Or I'll talk someone with a spinning wheel into seeing if we can ply some harvested yarn. -- I'm playing hooky from work to go play instead :) --

Michelle said...

Love the placemats; love the student spindlers! Sorry about the snow; you need to be HERE on Sunday. ;-)

Cindie said...

Thanks for posting your shop link, the hat kits are wonderful, I hope you do really well with them what about next year having more kits only with roving so the buyer also spins the yarn? I can come up with a ton of ideas to create more work! :-)

Theresa said...

The hat kits do look very nice! Love the colors myself.
What wonderful pics of the kids learning to spindle. Must be an awfully fun class. You know you can dispense with fringe all together and just hem place mats. I do that with stuff I know I'm going to want to wash, or braid the trim....
We had snow in OR, 2 inches I was told.

Valerie said...

The placemats look great. Charlie has great taste! Like Theresa, I hem placemats and table runners because of the washing issue. You can even use sewing thread in the weft for the portion that will be turned inside the hem in order to keep the big bump at the hem to a minimum.

Love the student pictures, especially the loom in the background of the last photo.

Happy Weaving!

Jodi said...

The placemats look great! Love the blues. Dealing with all the fringe would make me nuts. I just don't have much patience these days -- too much going on.

BTW, I'll bet that you wouldn't need to put the hat kits in the jars for the online etsy orders. They're really cute and will be a big hit at craft fairs or stores, but I'll bet that people would get enough joy just from opening the parcel. Just my two cents...

Leigh said...

Snow! Oh my. The place mats are great though. Like you, I love denim. It's so great to see high school students trying their hands at spindling too. Hopefully there are several future fiber artists in that group!