This category details experiments with different types of fibers
As the temperatures drop and the leaves turn I get an almost overwhelming urge to nest. For me this usually means copious amounts of baking and the laying in of craft supplies for the dark winter days. In order to facilitate this my creativity jumps in to overdrive and the start way too many projects. […]
Read more "Flying Squirrels"The last few weeks my loom has seen a flurry of use. SAFF (Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair) happened at the end of October and I brought back yarn for a commission project. After I posted Keeping with a Theme last January, I was approached about doing something similar, but in a blue jeans color pallet. […]
Read more "My Blue Period"Using the lessons from my test piece, I decided to move forward with a more challenging project, and weave a pair of winingas. Winingas are a piece of clothing common to men’s attire in the early medieval Norse and Anglo-Saxon cultures. They appear again as puttees in British military garb in the late 1800s. Typically […]
Read more "Winingas"As this very cold winter begins to show signs of thawing, I have been working on a number of projects. I lost my computer last fall and so the pictures of my husband’s display board for his Cthulhu themed Chaos army have been lost. Most of my current projects revolve around the SCA. I have […]
Read more "This Sprang has Sprung"Several months ago I taught a class on finger loop braiding to my local SCA chapter. In preparing that class I relied heavily on the work of several excellent websites. On one of them I came across a reference to some medieval instructions (in Middle English) for making these braids. Curious, I searched out and […]
Read more "Fingerloop Braiding"Late this last spring I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a lecture given by Carol James, author of the book Sprang Unsprung: an illustrated guide to interlinking interlacing and intertwining. This is one of four books currently published on the subject. (I currently own three of the four). I was introduced to […]
Read more "Spring into sprang"Once the felt had been made, and was mostly dry, I cut out a large circle. Using my teapot, I carefully steamed the center of the circle until it was too hot to touch and then stretched it over the hat form, pulling it evenly on all sides. Then, since I did not purchase a […]
Read more "Mad Hatting Part II: The Hat"Some of you may remember that way back in March, I generated my first wool bats off of my drum carder (see “Never felt this way before”). At that time I was really excited about making felted hats, but I didn’t have a hat block, so I had to shelve the project. Turns out getting […]
Read more "Mad Hatting Part I: Making the Felt"This week’s craft was silk painting. Unlike my previous post, this is most definitely not stupid simple, and I can safely say that I learned a great deal including several things in the “what not to do” category. Still, I think I can be said to have been moderately successful. This silk painting, unlike what […]
Read more "Sun-day"As those of you who know me, or who read me on any kind of regular basis know, my professional training is in science. So when faced with a problem, in this case, my less than enthusiastic feeling for my last knitting project, my immediate approach to figuring out what went wrong, is to experiment. […]
Read more "Science of Knitting"