Embroidery

I went out to the Stitcher's Corner yesterday because both Spotlight and Lincraft are absolutely useless for embroidery supplies. They have almost no DMC threads, and the only 28 count even weave stuff they have is just called cloth, no composition whatsoever. Anyway, it's at least worthwhile going all the way out to Vic Park. The lady that owns it remembers me and got all excited when I came in, because she really liked my little pouch. She couldn't wait to see the pattern for this project. Anyway we had a good chat and $50 later I had all the things I need, including a new embroidery hoop. I bought a ridiculously small one for my pouch because it was a ridiculously small pouch. I started working on it last night and here's my progress:

Tada! It took me ages to choose colours, but so far I'm happy with my choices. I also decided to just go over each stitch once like I did for my pouch, because double stitch would just take too long and I got really sick of doing it on that other panel that I never finished. I used two strands for my pouch, but that was silk and seemed to have better coverage than this cotton. I started with two strands, but I wasn't happy with it so I pulled it out and started again with three strands. You can see the coverage isn't as good as my other ones, but it still looks ok. It looks better as I fill in more of the background, so I'm going to keep going like this.

The pattern is bigger than I expected, which is a good thing since that means not so many repeats and not so many chances to get sick of it. My pouch had a really small pattern, and I guess I expected this one to be the same. The gold is three inches from top to bottom. I think it will suit the bigger project a lot better than a smaller pattern.

Brilliant Plan!

I have a brilliant plan! It's not at all ambitious and stupid. I've been thinking about Pennsic and how my pilgrim bag is probably too small to carry around all the things I will need to carry around with me and all the things I'll be buying. It was too small even before it shrunk in the wash. I've been thinking how I really like my little pilgrim bag, and I don't wanna make a bigger one and put all my pilgrims on it because that will be like replacing my little one. But I can't have a pilgrim bag without pilgrims. So what if I make a different sort of bag? An awesome giant bag of awesome! I WANT TO MAKE THIS:

Yay a giant german brick stitch bag! I'm not gonna worry about a drawstring or anything, I'll just leave it open at the top, but I'll weave a strap for it. I'm sure I could try out a 3/1 broken twill and design a pattern that matches the bag. At the moment I'm thinking I'll just embroider the front of the bag and use some plain dyed linen or something for the back, because it's going to be giant and embroidering the whole thing is just stupid. I think I'll use cotton, because I'll need a lot of it and silk is expensive. Besides, The Stitchers' Corner only ever has a couple of packets of each colour, and I hate having to drive over there to get more of something. I'd rather only do it once. I'll have to go to get some evenweave linen, unless Spotlight happens to have some. I think I'll use 28 count because that worked for my little pouch and if I go any smaller I'll kill myself before I get very far with the embroidery.

But the most important thing to think about here is colours! What colours should I use? Mitchell Wymarc says red, purple, dark gold, gold and white. I'll leave the white how it is, and I like the purple bits around the white. I might change the dark gold to green around the other white bits. I like the red squigglies, but not sure about gold around them. I kind of like orange, but not sure if I like the idea of red next to orange. Maybe I could find a light orangey sort of gold. There's tons of DMC colours so it's not like I'll be stuck on options.

I was toying with the idea of tablet weaving the edges and having it extend out to the strap instead of splitting and going along the top, but I don't want a skinny strap digging into my shoulder, so the edges would be really chunky. Then I was thinking about having the flat band go along the edges so I'd have sort of a walled bag rather than a large pouch, which would mean more space! But then it would be even more open at the top which I'm not sure that I want. But I can think about all that once the embroidery is done. I think I might buy some embroidery floss after work on Monday, and hopefully Spotlight will also have linen evenweave. Then I can start working on it on Christmas night when I'm vegging in front of the TV.

Christmas

Tada!

I just finished the snowmen. I think I've had enough of Christmas bands now. I want to go back to period techniques and stuff. I'd like to try doubleface. I'd also like to try 3/1 twill. I'd like to make another belt with one of these techniques, so I have a belt to wear with my purple and green cote. I'm a little bit over my leaf and motto thing, but I have no idea what sort of pattern would be 14th century and fit with my garb. What I need is Peter Collingwood, and I think if I don't get it for Christmas I'll buy it myself.

I've also done absolutely no sewing from my fix-it basket. The red cote fits properly now, but one of the sleeves has started coming apart and needs repairs. My man cote needs taking in and new sleeves, my blue wool surcote needs a lot of work done, and my green brocade surcote also needs looking at. I'm just feeling very uninspired. It'll probably take until next winter to fix the wool stuff, and it'll be when there's an event coming up and it's gonna be cold, so I'll be all rushed. At the moment there's not much happening in the way of events. There's a couple of feasts happening early next year but they'll be inside in airconditioning, and anyway I have lots of light linen stuff for hot weather. I'd like to make a couple of new cotes for Pennsic, ones like my brown one that are comfy and I can just chuck on over a chemise, and hopefully I'll have the blue wool and green brocade done to throw on over the top if I get cold at night.

Maybe after Christmas I'll get motivated to do things.

Christmas

I finished my Santas on Thursday, and warped up my loom again for Christmas trees!

I like the colours of this one better. I should've used this blue for the Santas instead of the really pale grey/blue, but oh well. Hopefully I'll finish this band today and then I'll be up to Snowmen. I've decided to give the bands as gifts to some of the ladies at work. I mostly just work with two older ladies and my department manager, so that's three bands. Then there's another department manager who I think will really appreciate one, but I'm not sure that I'll have the time. We shall see.

My hands are looking awesome after all this weaving. The patterns are so simple that I've been moving really fast, so I have blisters in the creases of some of my fingers and some spots on my fingers where the skin is really dry and flaky. Wednesday was awful, my fingers were so sore, but since then I think the blisters have developed into callouses.

Time for more weaving!

I win!

I won!

On Friday night I was 10cm away from finishing, when my weft snapped three times in a row. It was very frustrating, I wanted to have finished it before dinner so I could warp up my loom for christmas bands. I decided that it was getting too close to the end up the loom, and shifted it forwards as far as I could. WELL it didn't like that, and I couldn't get the tension tight enough after about an hour of trying. I gave up when my fingers started bleeding and sulked off to bed. I was upset because I was so close to finishing and it just wasn't working. Then the stupid string sorted itself out overnight and when I picked it up on Saturday after work it was fine. UGH. Anyway, I finished it and cut it off the loom on Sunday morning, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. There's a line of bubbly bits on the back about a third of the way through the middle where I was having tension issues, but they're on the back so it's fine.

I spent all of last night warping up my loom for Christmas bands! I've hardly done any threaded-in patterns, so I still haven't gotten the hang of the whole S and Z thing. With the stuff I've been doing I've needed alternating S and Z, or blocks of S and Z, or threaded all the same but it hasn't been vital which one is which. Anyway, I stared at my thread and my cards for ages, figuring out which was which, and started threading. Then I got all confused and checked again, and realised they were all backwards. So I rethreaded some cards and kept going. Then I got all confused again and went and got out a picture of the different threadings, and realised all the cards I'd threaded were backwards. UGH. So I just flipped them over and kept going. This means that instead of my cards all facing the left, how I like them, they all face the right. I thought this would be ok, it just means that Santa's feet are on the left of the band instead of the right. John Mullarky threads his cards clockwise and doesn't specify which way they face. In the end it was ok, it just took a bit of fiddling to realise that the A corner has to start at the far top, which it usually does if my cards face the left, but not if they face the right. Anyway, it's working!

My Santas a quite a lot fatter than John Mullarky's, but that's ok, Santa is supposed to be fat. My tension is also working itself out and the third one is skinnier than the first. I think they're cute! Right now I have to go to work, but I have all day tomorrow to weave, so I should zoom through, seeing as it's such a simple pattern in good old #5 cotton.

This is just getting ridiculous

On Saturday I took my weaving to Nathan and Catherine's house, and tackled it for a couple of hours. First of all I wound a fresh shuttle from one of my other balls of leftover black cotton. Then I dug out the end of my snapped weft, and went to tie on my new shuttle. Because I'm very clever, I put the new shuttle on the floor right next to the old one and couldn't tell which was which. I clearly picked the wrong one because it snapped straight away. So I threw it far away so it wouldn't get confused, dug out the end again and tied on the new shuttle. I was doing ok for a while, until the weft snapped yet again. That's now two different balls of cotton that I've snapped, so I pouted for a bit. Then Catherine offered me some spools of various black threads that I might want to use instead, and I decided to give the poly top stitch thread a try. This is the same weft I was using for my belt, and the thickness is roughly the same as the #12 cotton. I tied it on and was going pretty well until my knots decided they didn't want to hold anymore, and went all slack again. UGH. That was my cue to give up for the day, before I sent the loom flying from frustration. I'd managed to weave a grand total of 20 picks, about 3.5cm.

Since then my string has been behaving remarkably well. My tension is perfect and I've woven a good 15cm, almost double what I'd done up to on Saturday. BUT THEN I snapped my weft again. I SNAPPED MY WEFT AGAIN. I snapped the poly top stitch thread. Now I'm thinking it's something I'm doing that's snapping the thread, rather than my choice of thread or a flaw. I've been so conscious not to pull too hard, but it's been getting harder to tighten the weft, it's just not sliding through the shed easily. Maybe this particular cotton is just rough or something, and the constant friction is weakening it.

I'm just over half way through this band, so I can't give up now, but I really wanted to finish it soon because THIS:

CHRISTMAS BANDS! I found them over at the Malarky Crafts blog, and I want to make one! They're just so cute! They're simple threaded in patterns with a 4F 4B turning sequence, so it'd be really quite quick and easy to make one. Mum said if I made one we'd hang it up somewhere as decoration, but I'd like to have a specific use for it. I'd have to make metres of it to wrap it around the tree, although if I make a short one and we wrap it around the top of the tree, then the cat won't be able to reach it. I suppose I'll go buy myself some milford satin and just figure out what we'll do with it later.

In other news, look at this:

It's the end of my belt. AND the end of my wefts. Poking out. Visible. WTF? I used this technique to finish the band, and it has never failed me before. This time it seems it has been slowly unravelling and now the end of my belt is a bit of a mess. I wore it to an event on Sunday and that's all it took for it to end up like this. I showed it to some people and I think my options are to unthread the wefts to the neat bit, then stick them on a needle and thread them back through the band. Then I can whipstitch the end to hold everything in place. OR I could divide the threads back into their cards and tie some knots. Either way the whole thing seems way too tedious for me to tackle right now.

It's getting a little bit ridiculous how much trouble I'm encountering with my weaving. At the moment I just have to laugh at my weft snapping all over the place and my belt coming undone, because it's like everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong, just because it can. I'm past being frustrated at it because of the ridiculousness of the situation. I should rename this blog THE DISASTER ZONE or something :P