sweetgeorgia

Random pre-wedding insanity.

So after about a year and a half of planning, Josephine is getting married to Norm this Saturday. We are all heavily involved in some way — from Michelle, DH and I who are in the wedding party to Jen who is pretty much single-handedly taking care of all the decorations and day-of activities. Oh, the cake tasting meetings… the invitation making parties… the ribbon tieing parties… Crazy times. It also doesn’t help that I have major deadlines for the end of July, but when it rains, it pours, eh? Here are fibre-y photos today because next week will likely be wedding photos.

This one is for Betsy who won my little contest last week! She asked for something in darker colours, maybe blues… so here is the new colourway, “Stillwater”.

More new colours…

Heh heh. This yarn makes me laugh. We had dinner at Blue Water Caf?¬© last weekend and they had a “Kill Bill” vodka martini on the cocktail list. Jo and Norm are using a song from the Kill Bill soundtrack for their wedding reception entrance music. It seemed fitting that I dye something inspired by the same. These four skeins will go in the package to the Make One Yarn Studio in Calgary this week.

When Jo’s wedding is over, this is what we have to look forward to…

We lucked into three gently used looms plus an Indian Head spinner and a whole bunch of other weaving and spinning accessories and books. Serious luck. Michelle has a lovely 24″ 4-shaft table loom tucked away at her house. Jen is getting the 36″ 4-shaft Nilus Leclerc loom on the right and Jo is getting the 35″ 4-shaft Leclerc on the left.

Jo’s loom is interesting… It’s called the “Initiation Loom” and is a four-shaft direct tie-up loom with four treadles. So basically, if you want to treadle shafts 1 and 3, you’ll have to use both feet. If you want to raise three shafts, you’ll need to put one foot on more than one treadle. So really, any combination is available and you don’t need to worry about tie-ups.

But whoohoo, the girls will hopefully be taking weaving with me in the fall at Place des Arts! Ok, now back to those deadlines, packing yarn, and generally running around in circles.

*Silly Cameraphone, Silly Me: Thanks for your funny cameraphone stories. Happily, my phone dried out and I realized that it wasn’t turning on because I had the battery in upside-down. Heh. The screen on the outside of the phone barely works now, but the inside screen is just fine. It’s how I managed to get that photo of the looms off the camera. Yay.

cameraphone malfunction

Okay. So the Sam Roberts/BSS/The Stills/Jets Overhead concert at Deer Lake Park yesterday was amazing. The weather was a perfect 25 degrees and sunny. Like Venus said, Sam Roberts live — amazing. Broken Social Scene live — also amazing. The fact that I didn’t get a sunburn or tan lines after spending six hours in the sun — very amazing.

Michelle, Lindsey and I found our way to the very front of the crowd and I swear I was not even ten feet from Sam Roberts — close enough to see those sparkly blue eyes… Like every other 14-year-old girl in the crowd, I went to get my cameraphone but discovered that I had spilled water in my bag and on my phone! The screen was all fogged up from the moisture and wouldn’t turn on anymore! Gahhhhhh. I completely fried my new-not-even-a-month-old cell phone… and at such an inopportune time.

Has anybody else ever soaked their cell phone and had it survive? Please, I need hope. =)

“A good day for playing hooky…”

That’s what the weatherman said this morning on the radio. That lovely (or terrible) hot weather everyone else is enjoying is making it’s way to Vancouver and today will be a lovely 26°C. But no playing hooky for me today — there is a ton of work to do.

Congrats to Betzig of Stitchcounter who was the randomly-drawn winner for the contest! And thanks to everybody for the lovely birthday wishes!!

It’s funny, a few years ago, I was trying to decide whether or not I should go to art school, full-time (after having already completed a Bachelors at UBC — because I’m crazy about school?!?). In the end, I decided against it since I would have graduated at 29 and I really, genuinely felt that by 29 I shouldn’t be “starting” my life… that I should be “complete” with a proper career, proper husband, proper family and lifestyle, blah blah blah. Well, life just doesn’t turn out as you expect, eh? If, at that time, someone had told me that I’d be dyeing my own yarn with ground up bugs, spinning yarn from raw fleece, or completely obsessed with weaving… I would have laughed.

But here is the beauty of where things are at… inspired, energetic, passionate and unfinished:

By the way, spinning cotton? So humbling.

Weaving Water

The first warp is off the loom now.

I finally found the watery turquoise blue silk warp that I was looking for and managed to dress the loom (back to front) almost entirely by myself (the DH helped hold the warp while I wound on the back beam)… but not without some hiccups along the way.

The Louet Spring comes with some screw eyes at the back, below the back beam, so that you can tie your lease sticks there and keep them there during the entire weaving process. Well, I tied mine there with crappy lightweight yarn and the lease sticks kept falling off and somehow I ended up pulling the lease sticks out entirely before the warp was threaded, thus losing the ever important “cross”. To add insult to injury, I managed to spread out the warp nicely and cleanly through the lovely built-in raddle on top of the castle … then accidentally pulled a whole pile of warp ends out of the raddle causing silk yarn mayhem. Yarn, yarn everywhere… not in sequential order… oh! the horror!

The silk (20/2 cultivated silk) also pills like crazy when winding on the back beam. So frustrating. That kind of stuff makes me want to switch to cotton or wool, but I can’t get over the beautiful sheen and gloss of silk… the drape… the crunch… I guess it’s worth it.

For the first scarf (twill) I used an entire 50g skein of 20/2 silk for the weft and the final scarf measures 8.25″ x 71″ (not including fringe, before washing). The second scarf was woven in plain weave (tabby) and so it measures slightly wider — 8.5″. I used a half skein of 20/2 slubby silk that was dyed in Procion MX (intense blue) for the weft and ended up with a short (!) scarf at 42″. It’s so short, I’m thinking I might make it into a little pillow for my weaving bench. The lesson here is that I need to figure out a way to keep track of how many inches I’ve woven…

Now, I just need to do all the twisted fringe, wash and press them and they will be ready to wear! Maybe I can wear one to the Sam Roberts/BSS/The Stills outdoor concert next week… 100% silk woven at 30 epi should be dense enough to prevent sunburn, eh?

And thanks to everybody for leaving such fantastic comments for the contest! There’s wisdom in them there internets. The contest is still open until midnight tonight, afterwhich I will be a turquoise-handdyed-and-handwoven-silk-scarf-wearing-grown-up.

Angel at my feet

Somehow, I managed to finish a pair of socks this week. Now that I’ve finished them, I also notice that somehow, I managed to goof one of the heels.

Anyway.

I have finished socks!! Here are the finished Jaywalkers in “Angel”…

The best thing about turning 30… Contest

So, with this post I have the rare completed object… and the FIRST EVER sweetgeorgia blog contest! That’s right. That’s like two for one. Lucky you.

In the spirit of my upcoming birthday, I’m hosting a little contest and the prize will be either 2 skeins of superwash sock yarn or a braid of BFL fibre — your choice! You choose the colourway and I’ll dye it for you. All you need to do is leave me a comment starting with “The best thing about turning 30 is…”. The contest will close at midnight on Wednesday, July 19th (i.e. 11:59:59 PM) and we’ll randomly draw the winner.

Happy thoughts, people. Send happy thoughts. =)