Catching up

These are little bags that I filled with lavender and
made a kumihimo cording for the tie. The fabric
is also handwoven

Look at those Swedish stars!

Yes I am catching up with everything since I have been sick for the last week. I was sick last month with stomach flu and couldn't eat for 3 days and this month I have had a deep ugly cough. Not sure what could be waiting for me in February. I have been working on a few things. My husband and I are doing a little bazaar in a couple weeks and although we have many rugs, we don't have much else. So I "tied one on" and replaced the blue bamboo warp with gold tencel and I am now doing advancing twill in bamboo and tencel.
Amy

More Sewing

What do you do when your husband starts weaving a scarf and stops in the
middle? You cut it apart and make a pillow. 

What do you do when your husband makes placemats that shrink in the
wash? You make a tote. This is a little wimpy one, not sure if I should
line it, put a piece of plastic in the bottom and just leave it as a
wimpy tote.

See most of my sewing seems to be because of my husband. If you are like me you hate to throw any handwoven fabric away, no matter how small it is, so it has to be repurposed.
Amy

Woven Bags

I think that every granddaughter will love "Papa's Puppets." They will cherish them and remember their grandfather.

The blue ones in the back have a handle that is sewn
from the bottom all the way up. Those 2 blue ones will
not have a closure on them, I am leaving them open. The others
will have some type of closure. 

I need to get busy finishing up some of my woven things, I have rugs to hem, placemats to hem, bibs need bias binding and 5 bags that need various things finished. Some need closures, some need handles and they all need lining inside. I have been avoiding this because all the linings have to be stitched by hand. I really hate to stitch by hand and I may still try to machine sew a few, we will see.

Winter

especially hard this year....so dark, so dreary...little sun it seems and snow and ice everywhere.......but that should make us work harder on all those projects that we need to start or have already begun.    My hubby passed away on November 29th and much of my days have been filled with activities that center around this bad time...so many thank you cards to send out and haven't even begun the 'business' part of this time in my life......I am reading a book right now called There's More to Me than I've Used Yet and it says never refer to our spouses' dying as "I have lost my husband"....we know exactly where they are...not lost........at any rate one of the projects I have been working on are sock puppets made out of his socks.....needed 14 of them to pass on to all the grandaughters in the family...and they are done and properly labeled too thanks to my sister Gail, who made wonderful labels with the title "Papa Puppets"...Thank you Gail......and Amy, loved seeing that orange growing in your house and of course so proud of all your weaving...lovely......

Advancing twill

I started an advancing twill scarf and I made a mistake. In my defense the mistake was really in the directions. Since I am not that good of a weaver, I didn't realize my mistake until I wondered why I had 8 extra threads. I should have looked carefully at the draft and I would have seen why I had 8 threads left over but I thought everything looked good, so I removed the 8 threads. Then after weaving a small sample, I knew I needed those eight threads. I corrected the draft, cut off the sample and added the 8 threads. Now I can restart my scarf. I also have a roll of placemats that need to be cut and sewed. These are the ones that my husband made. We also celebrated New Years by eating an orange that my husband grew on his orange tree. That probably wouldn't be so unusual if we lived where orange trees grow but this is an indoor little tree. We do take it outside when it is summer. By the way, the orange was delicious and we have another that just needs to get a little bit riper. Today we are babysitting our grandsons and they are outside playing with the neighbor girls. I love it because my 6 year old grandson calls them, "the ladies." I don't know if that is what they told him to call them but I think it is cute.
Happy New Year,

Our orange, just before we picked it.

Looks good doesn't it, but if you look carefully you can
see that the pattern isn't centered. 

Roll of placemats

Amy

What is on the Loom?

Amanda's snowman

My husband's placemats, love the pattern, the color
not as much.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and got everything they wanted! We had all our children and grandchildren here for dinner, a little game playing and of course the opening of the gifts. Then this morning my husband and I did a little running around,we had to buy food for the dogs, cats and for us too. And you could tell that the hops were being processed. The smell of hops is very distinctive and if you have ever lived near where they are grown, you know what I am talking about. I don't find it  an unpleasant smell. We have many hop ranches in our area and you would recognized the fields because they look like large support poles connected with wire throughout the field.
So what is on the looms-my husband has started some placemats. He is not so sure about the color (I am not so sure either) but he has already finished 4 with white yarn and is now working on a gold color. I have a scarf warp on my table loom, it has been there forever, but I am not worried about it. The scarf warp is one the I have set up to take to Project Warm-Up meeting. So I am not worried about doing everything here at home. I have also started another scarf warp on my Gilmore with bamboo yarn and my husband has been warping wool for wool rugs.
I also received a super cute ornament from Amanda www.weave-away.blogspot.com. She talks about her snowman weaving on her blog. And I got one! Thank you again Amanda, I love it.

This is a cotton warp and weft. 

Amy

Merry Christmas

This little lady was given to me by a friend. I think
this looks like me. She even has glasses.
There are things on her that represent my
teaching time and a little woven
piece on her right shoulder.

This is a sweet collage that my sister made. Yes that is
a cupcake but it also has some special family things on
it too. Sweet enough to eat!

My husband took the picture and I don't know why
he put him up like a kangaroo, but I think you
can get an idea of how he looked. 

Merry Christmas! We have cleaned the house and tomorrow our oldest son will be coming over the mountain pass to spend Christmas with us. Our other two children live in the same town we do, so they will be over too. I am hopefully that the pass will be okay since it is snowing here, which means it usually is really snowing in the mountains. I haven't checked the pass report on the net, I will do that tomorrow. I want to show everyone the little armadillo that I made for my sister. She collects armadillos so I made one from the book"Weaving a Zoo." I know that Amanda from www.weave-away.blogspot.com has made some of the animals from this book, but I was just interested in the armadillo. When my grandson saw it, he wanted one, so I made two of them. 

Enjoy and have a Merry Christmas, Amy