I'm still here

I never meant for this blog to slowly fade away. I did intend to keep it up and to post all the lovely things I do and make.

However, life got in the way. More accurately, a small wonderful little person got in the way!

Turns out my son is not a 'sleeper'. He doesn't take long naps during the day. He doesn't like to play alone. He doesn't like for me to be busy in another room or working on something he can't touch. He wants me to play with him, to talk to him and interact with him. He is curious and loves to explore. This all means my grand plans to make things for him (and myself!) while on maternity leave have not really happened. Instead I've been playing games, going for walks and singing songs to my son. 

I've made very little but I'm trying to work on a little bit of something every day.

Slowly I made my son a cardigan. I mixed four different yarns together to get a dappled effect. 

I'm back at ceramics. This time at the wheel, not just hand building. After almost 300 hours at ceramics I'm starting to make nice things that turn out how I want them to.

This bowl is wood fired in a dragon kiln. The colour comes from the ash in the kiln. Its magical.

I also look for workshops to attend while my husband baby sits.

I've taken up tapestry weaving and I love it. Its so exciting to see a piece develop.

This is the third part of a triptych I made for my living room wall.

Rather than blogging, I'm posting images of my work on Pinterest as Ellen Blue Triangle.

I'm still on Ravelry as Mrs Teapot. I just began updating the last 2 years worth of work!

And still working on my own little design collection now on sale in Japan.

And the exciting thing: my son loves texture. Its fun to watch him exploring with his hands, fingernails, teeth and tongue and even feet. He gets into all sorts of fabric and yarn and materials. He loves highly textured watercolour paper and paper string and things that crunch or are fluffy or smooth.

Maybe a love of yarn and fabric is genetic...

A scarf for Nanna

So I made a scarf for my Mum for Mother's Day last year. My grandmother saw it and began hinting to people that she would like her own scarf. So I got to work designing a scarf for her. After quite a bit of deliberation, I settled on a blue tartan and used some online tartan designer websites to help choose the proportions and colours. The websites are rather fun too!

In the end I chose a dark blue wool for the majority of the weft with accents of cream and light blue wool. The warp is a mixture of light blue and cream cotton. So in total the tartan uses 5 colours. I wove in a simple twill pattern as it gives a nice drape which is important if you are going to wrap it around. The wool and cotton means the scarf is not too hot and suitable for spring and autumn wear and can be washed easily without worrying about felting.

I tried to be as accurate with the proportions of the squares as possible, but I'm not sure if this constitutes a 'real' tartan or not! 

Anyway, my Grandmother was really pleased with it, so that's the main thing.

A Winter Scarf for my Mama

I wanted to make my mother something special for Mother's Day. So I decided to weave her a scarf as amazing as she is.

The red (warp) is fingering weight merino while the colourful weft is chunky weight hand painted wool which I brought in Canada (though the yarn is from Germany!).

This is the third thing I've woven after my sample piece and I'm happy with how it turned out. As I was doing the calculations by myself for the first time, I wasn't quite sure that it would turn out nice. I was worried the fabric would be too stiff, but it is just nice.

The colours are really lovely too. I enjoyed weaving with the colourful weft yarn because I enjoyed seeing the colours emerge so much!

The Project

My studio project was to design a picnic. I was inspired by my research on the history of the picnic. I looked at how picnics were held, what people ate and what people did for entertainment at picnics during the Victorian & Edwardian periods.

This text was one of my chief inspirations:

“A picnic, to serve its true end, ought to be a season of healthful recreation ; but seemingly, in the general acceptation of the term, a picnic means an occasion for a big dinner composed of sweets and dainties, wines, ices, and other delectable delicacies, which tempt to surfeiting and excess. The preparation necessary for such a dinner usually requires a great amount of extra and wearisome labor, while the eating is very apt to leave results which quite overshadow any benefit derived from the recreative features of the occasion. It is generally supposed that a picnic is something greatly conducive to health ; but where everything is thus made subservient to appetite, it is one of the most unhygienic things imaginable.”

- A Batch of Dinners: Picnic Dinners. In Mrs E.E. Kellogg, A.M. Science in the Kitchen: A Scientific Treatise on Food Substances and their Dietic Properties, together with a Practical Explanation of the Principles of Healthful Cookery, and a large number of Original, Palatable, and Wholesome Recipes. Modern Medicine Publishing Co, Chicago, 1893.

So I held a healthy and wholesome picnic, taking the recipe prescriptions and instructions for appropriate behaviour.

I wanted thus to have a 'proper' picnic set - plates, knives, forks, teacups & saucers, teaspoons, tablecloth/placemats and jars. The picnic set worked out well except the jars turned out too small to use and the cloth I was to wrap the bread in was too small! (hence the nice plastic bag and jam jars you see in the pictures!).

The picnic set was crocheted, fulled and then those items that needed to be waterproof or sturdy were dipped in paraffin wax. I wove the placemats and bread cloth (that ended up as another placemat!) from mercerized cotton. The lines you see on the placemats are a map of the city.

Everyone getting their hands on the picnic set. A cuddly cup or a plush plate is a curious thing indeed.

I made everything white and absorbent to show the traces of use - the history of the picnic. Here the picture shows the 'after' effects of the picnic. The map of the city (placemats) and the buildings of the picnic (picnic set) have been thoroughly inhabited. All that remain now are traces, memories of a picnic past.

(and I made my own blackberry jam for the first time for the picnic and it was AMAZING, I am totally going to make jam again!)

A Weaving Sampler

I've started weaving lessons with Colette and wove up 3 yards of sampler on a 4 shaft table loom. At first my selvedges were wonky and my patterns uneven (I kept forgetting where I was in the sequence of lifting one up and pressing another down!). But by the end of the 3 yards I was feeling pretty good. I tried out a bunch of different things and experimented with some bits of wool I had around and my favourite bamboo viscose. The warp was a linen/cotton blend and I also used this for the first 1.5 or so yards of the weft.

My nice wonky beginnings.

Trying out some colours and diamond patterns. This is the wool left over from the Mr's warm winter hat.

This is with a bamboo viscose weft. It has a nice sheen and turns out really soft. I am really happy with this. It would make a lovely soft drapey shawl.

Zigzags - I love!

The whole 3 yards.

Kermit & Grover go for a Walk

I recently went for an introductory weaving class here and got to try a small rigid heddle loom (a cricket loom by schacht). It was fun and I managed to weave a scarf for the Mr. in less than 3 hours. The class was taught by Collete of Interstitial Spaces who has a weaving workshop. Having had the class I have been dreaming about weaving ever since. Now I'm planning on getting my own loom but maybe a bit bigger than the Cricket as its only 10 inches of weaving space wide. I like the look of Ashfords slightly bigger loom but I'd like to test drive it first... Here's some pictures of the Mr. modelling his scarf which I have dubbed 'Kermit and Grover go for a walk" due to the colours...

Its a little too short for the Mr. (I used all the wool wound on the loom!) but worn like this with a jacket kinda like a cravat should look okay.

Before washing the weave was slightly more open. Washing pulled it together slightly as well as softened it up nicely.

I wove sections of 4 rows green & 4 rows blue for about 10cm then swapped to 3 rows of each so you get a subtle variation in pattern. Most of the pattern is from the way the loom was warped though (the vertical threads) which Colette set up for us. Its fun how just alternating two different colours can create so many patterns.

I think weaving may be addictive.

Weave

I broke out my little rectangular loom again to make some small rectangles. I just enjoyed trying out different patterns with the colours, mostly I tried simple stripes & checks. I do like the plain rectangles too for their simplicity. I'll probably crochet the rectangles together to make something larger.

Stripes, Solids & Checks

Some of the rectangles

The little loom

Some more weaving

I just finished this little bathmat out of old clothing scraps. I made it on my simple rectangular loom with a warp of cotton crochet thread and the weft of clothing scraps. The cotton thread is yellow and white and the scraps are white and green. Its a bit uneven as I think I was pulling too much on the weft thread in the middle so it grows smaller in the middle and larger at the ends! You can also see lots of bumps, but I think that just adds to the charm. Anyway, its supposed to be stepped on with wet feet so it doesn't have to be too beautiful!

Weaving

I finally finished this table centrepiece made from scraps of wool/acrylic of various colours. I'm quite happy how it turned out and the combination of colours makes me happy. I might sew a strip of cloth around the edges to protect them from moving about too much, though I think it will be secure on its own.

More Weaving

Here are some images of the first complete woven project I made, a table runner for my ma. I think she uses it as a scarf because she says its too nice to put on a table. But anyway, I wove all the little rectangles and blanket stitched them together in order of their tonality. The wool was a shaded one so the runner/scarf has a gradient of red from deep black red to bright red.

Weaving

I saw a version of this simple loom in a book and made a small one (picture 1). It produces a roughly 8x15cm rectangle (pictures 2-3) quite nicely, but I wanted to make bigger pieces, without having to join millions of little squares together. So I used this scavenged frame (pictures 4-6) and made a larger loom. I'm about halfway through the piece so far and its turning out nicely. Next time I'll use a thicker pure wool so I can felt the piece once its done and close up the gaps. I hope then to have a sturdier piece of fabric. That said, I'm happy with the colours for this one and they way the mustard livens up the grey and black. It's my eventual dream to use my own dyed yarns for a piece. I'm planning on using this as a table runner or centerpiece for my dining table when its done, or making it into a cushion cover front.