This week has been a disappointing week for the weaving thing. I’ve applied for two grants in my life, and didn’t get either of them. The first rejection hurt more than this recent one…so maybe you just get used to it. But like applying for a job, you have to commit to it’s fruition in some way. With this grant I thought I could combine my weaving skills with my work in disabilities but it isn’t meant to be. Hopefully someone else will get a grant on a similar project as we’re all in this life together and it certainly doesn’t have to be me specifically.

At such times, I go on my usual path of questioning the meaning of weaving and my textiles, why do I do it, why have a blog, why join guilds, why, why. Maybe I’d be better off selling up my studio and going to the gym each day. But in the end I come back to knowing it’s all good. I do it all for myself because I gain something very rich out of it. So rich that I don’t have the words to explain to others.

So why have I got socks as my feature photos? Well I think I have found success in socks, at last! This pair is almost complete thanks to Sensational
Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch. This book really sets out how to knit socks for people like me, who knit but need tight guidance to ‘get it’. Charlene also has very explicit instructions for using 4 or 5 dp needles and 2 circulars. If you’re using circulars, don’t bother buying from Spotlight (Australia) as their circulars fall apart. IMHO, just go straight for Aldis at Yarns Galore. They make knitting pure joy. For dpi’s I like Caseins or Ivore from Swallow.

Sock yarns are really getting interesting. Opal now have a collection based on one of my favourite artists Hundertwasser I got this yarn from Ecoyarns and they have several colourways based on his work. Just imagine what other artists we could use similarly to paint our warps and slivers.

My last warp was gasping for air. I took it to the very limit and could be termed extreme warping. Everytime I moved the warp on I had threads snapping all over the place. So I just **calmly** retied every one to push it to it’s last.

You can see in the first photo just how close the end of the warp is to the back of the heddles. In the second photo the snapped and repaired ends in their disarray. But it was really worth it to push this warp as I completely finished five full length scarves or rather scelts.

The main problem with loom weaving is you can’t sit with your family watching TV at night. So I knitted a so cute hat for a new baby in a couple of nights this week. It is so cute that I wish I could handle making a pair of baby socks to match.

I’ve also come across this amazing weaver site. Cathy Bolding’s Digital Atelier Her work is Jacquard woven using her own photographic images, manipulated in Photoshop and prepared in ArahWeave. Truly inspirational and amazing.

So cute knitted hat with hand dyed bamboo embroidered
flowers.

The other little project I finished today was a fleece hat for a baby. As I don’t actually have the baby for measurements I had to search a bit but found that newborns to 6 months average a head circumference of 14-17" and a crown of 8-10". This helped when adapting this fleece pattern for the hat but, as always, the second one will be better than the first.