A bonus day in the studio......

A weekend of cold rain and a first little dusting of snow kept us indoors.  Feeling just too cozy, Patrick and I did not finish the fall clean-up as we had planned.  It is a task that really needs to be finished before serious snow flies but the weather was not cooperating.  The bonus, of course, was that I took advantage of the wet weather on Saturday to spend the afternoon in the weaving studio.  

I had a set of log cabin placemats waiting to go onto the loom.  This is one of my long time favorite patterns which I have used many, many times.  I have made runners, both long and short, placemats, coasters and even some rugs.  Sometimes I use rags for the weft filler like this runner above, but these new placemats will be woven with a creamy, white cotton rug filler - very Scandinavian looking!

This very traditional warp-faced threading is 30 ends per inch and can be laid out in varying width blocks in the warp and weft to create endless variations.  These mats will be patterned with a stripe and block border along both the ends and the sides, creating a solid color block in the center.  The bonus of log cabin weaving is that the colors are reversed on the back side giving you two different colorways!  I will post photos of these when they are complete.

Threading 30 ends of yarn per inch through 12 inches of heddles and a 15 dent reed in the beater can be a daunting task.  My neck and shoulders get sore and my tri-focals are a focusing tricky- wicket!!  So I have learned to break up the task with filling the shuttle spindles, winding the cotton filler onto the boat shuttles and a coffee break or two.  But it is, oh, so satisfying to get a warp like this tied onto the loom, ready to weave.  What a great afternoon!

I did also have a little time to play around with some paper collage - some fun stickers.  And the never-ending, always intriguing boxes . . . . .more map paper cut to size for folding, black and white recycled envelope paper cut for the "take-to-work bag" to fold at lunch breaks.  Then I put together white cardboard trays for the box sets and made an adorable "Cheerios" tray that just screams to become the first of a graduated size set!  Yes.

Not a bad day's work!    Garden clean-up . . . . . . another day.