new bowls on etsy today!

a selection of new bowls just went up on etsy today. you should probably go check them out.

a stitch in time

sometimes, when you are waiting at a stoplight on your bike, the weird second pocket of your new work pants gets caught on the horn of your saddle and then the light changes and you rip your pants.

or maybe your old jeans are getting a hole where your cell phone rubs.

both of these examples are great times to use my favorite patching method- adapted from a method taught to me by sarah who learned it from a fellow who learned it from his housekeeper in south america... 

a shawl pin

while in washington several weeks back, allyce's awesome mom described to me what would be required for a very nice shawl pin. after leaving a little sheet of yellow paper with my notes on it next to the lathe for about a month, i finally whipped up this prototype.

the ring is of sycamore, my current favorite wood (for its honest, even grain and its gentlemanly way of not overpowering the colors and textures around it), and the pin is of walnut.

the pin is a bit heavy- just under a quarter inch at the thickest point- but i was still able to get it through my current knitting project, a cabled scarf knit on #8 needles.

i assume it has not been delivered to susan yet, so i don't have a review, but i think it is a solid start.

weaving

quite some time ago, my auntie lucy gave me a loom. she had gotten it from somebody, played with it some and had decided she was over it. then it sat in my room for a while. then it sat in the basement for an even longer while.

the problem was that it was pretty crappy. the reed was rusty, the legs were wobbly, the ratchet had come loose from the beam and a lot of the strings were all chewed up. and who wants to learn a new process when you can't tell if the troubles are your mistakes or the machine's?

but i really did want to give weaving a try. for a while i thought i would build a new loom. but how could i design something for a process i had never tried?

so finally i figured it out. i tuned up the old one well enough to be comfortable learning on it- bought a new reed, made new legs and replaced a lot of strings and rusty hardware- and then i warped it (that means i tied it all up and got it ready to weave).

all i've made so far is this test/practice run out of cotton warp. it is somewhat uneven and has some tension and selvedge issues, but the pattern is consistent and, hey, it's a piece of fabric. that i made. and that is really cool. (unfortunately it is about 6 inches short of being a scarf.)

and now that i have a little experience and have found a lot of little issues with this loom, i think i might build my own. but i think i will do a little more practicing first.