Trying to overcome procrastination

Ok, so it’s February and my ideas of trying to blog regularly have gotten a tad waylaid yet again. But I have been busy procrastinating and creating various things in the meantime.

First of all, 3 sheep decided to come into my workroom.

These sheep were quite demanding and asked for shawls as it was a bit nippy outside. Being the kind person that I am I obliged.

One has now found a new home, but the other 2 are waiting for new homes and can be found in my Etsy shop.
I have been continuing with my weaving and wee Doris came to help out one day whilst I was weaving my new bathroom blinds on Vicky the Viking.

This is the first time I’ve woven with linen, and as usual with my weaving I’ve learned a few things along the way, like linen really loves to slip in the warp under tension. Also, the sett wasn’t quite right as the washed fabric didn’t pucker up as much as it was meant to (it’s meant to be and M’s and O’s pattern) as I should have done more weft picks between each repeat. However, it’s done and the blind is now up in my bathroom and looks much better than the blind it has replaced.

Being a true believer in children being put to work I made Thom help me make his moebius scarf that he’s been wanting since he saw the one I made for myself. He chose the colours and helped with measuring the warp, and he even wove a few bits himself. How the children of the 21st century are going to survive when they’re older I don’t know as he got fed up with it fairly quickly and left me to do most of it.
It looks fab and just fits over his big head. I really need to make some more of these soon, especially for selling as I’ve also managed to get my head back into business mode and hoping that I can finally get Knit 1 Girl 1 off the ground this year.

My main achievement over this past month has been to finally get my first sample woven for the Certificate of Achievement in Handweaving through the Guild of Weavers, Spinners, and Dyers.
I decided to use a merino/alpaca warp that came from the stash of yarn the my lovely gran gave me years ago (the main reason why I got into knitting and weaving was to get through it all). I wanted to see how the warp held up to weaving as I wanted to use the grey I had in it with the shiny sparkly handspun that I’ve done from the lovely batt I got at Christmas. It all was going so well until I decided to try and add some more warp ends whilst drinking one Friday night. It took me a week to look at my table loom again as I was frightened of the mess I had made, but it was amazingly fine. Again, drinking wine/cider whilst doing yarn/fibre things can be achieved.
So here is my first sample.
I’ve still to wash it but I’m quite chuffed with how it turned out. I just need to do lots more but I’m now ready to plough on with it all.

Finally, I came across an awesome shawl pattern – Ovate.
I frogged back a shrug I had made in Rowan’s Alpaca Chunky as it was too big and decided to make this shawl with it.
[flickrset id=”72157629205765557″ thumbnail=”medium” photos=”3″ overlay=”false” size=”small”] It knits up easily in 2 evenings and is a really nice and simple pattern. And it looks fab on. Think there may be another of these in handspun at some point.

This month my aim is to get some more samples done and make some handwoven items for selling.

Oh, and I forgot, I just bought a Tapestry loom which needs played with as I’m going to be showing people how to use one soon. It’s a hard life:)