Tuesday, August 04, 2026

Mysterious Weaving Problem

The other day I sat down to weave on my winter leaf motif, and discovered there was a problem with the pattern. 


I hadn't changed anything, so what was going on??? I wove through the entire treadle sequence and was able to identify the culprit as treadle #1. But what could it be? I hadn't changed the threading, I hadn't changed the tension, the treadle itself seemed to be in order, nor was the warp caught on something. 

Next I inspected the lamms.


The problem, I discovered, is that one of the anchor pins was missing. I found it across the floor. How in the world had it gotten over there?

I didn't have to search far for the answer.


This is Violet, the newest member of our household. She had been playing with the treadle cords but II didn't think she could actually make some mischief! You can read here story here.

Happily, the fix was an easy one and I'm back to weaving the pattern as it should be.

Thursday, July 30, 2026

Summer TV Knitting: Mitered Squares

Earlier this summer I was digging through my filing cabinet and found a pattern for this vest. 

Amanda's Building Blocks
I purchased in mail order and still had the receipt attached - dated 2008! I paid $5.95 for it with $1 for shipping and handling. A quick search and I found it for sale on Etsy. It's now a PDF download priced at $7.50. I say that's fantastic resistance to rising price madness - way to go Amanda!

It was the squares that caught my eye, knitted individually in color changes as desired. With my Penguono Sweater being too hot and heavy to knit on, might this vest not be a good project for summer? Or at least playing around with the squares?

The pattern is based on domino theory knitting. It's knitted in garter stitch so it's quick to knit. The pattern is teaching me how to join on new squares to create larger projects. Even so, I have not found the pattern directions to be precisely clear and I've had several re-starts as I try to figure it out and make adjustments to make it come out correctly. Here's my awkward start on a learning sampler.


I think it would be much more interesting with a variegated yarn, but I'm using what I've got until I feel more confident with it.

It's a nice after-dinner project, while we watch a library video on TV.

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Uncovered

 Remember this?

This was originally intended to be for a pair of "Big and Little Brother Blankets" for my two grandsons. I started working on them about a year ago, and then the project got buried under a pile of incoming boxes from my stepmother's home plus making room in my front room floor loom room for remodeling. My sewing room became my storage area and has been so for months now. But the other day I took a break from dealing with our abundance of tomatoes, blueberries, and milk to make some progress in organizing my storage mess.

Anyway, I can get to my table loom again! I'm not sure if the project will still become brother blankets, but I love the colors. Once harvest, canning, and cheesemaking season slows down, I'll be able to get back to it. 

Currently my evening weaving is still on Winter Leaves, which looks exactly the same now as it did then, except I'm making progress on length. 

So, just checking in. How is everybody else doing?

Uncovered © 2026 by 

Sunday, June 28, 2026

Leaf Motif: Spring Yarn Color Choices

 Now that the sampling is done for Winter Leaves, the weaving itself is fairly monotonous. I did indulge in an inexpensive MP3 player, to listen to downloaded books from my county library and librevox.org. The treadling pattern is fairly simple, so by combining the two activities, I have a very pleasant evening pastime. 

With weaving underway, it's time to start thinking about the colors of the next season - spring. Both spring and summer leaves are green. So I have to ponder how to make the two weavings—Spring Leaves and Summer Leaves—distinctive. I want people to look at them and get which is which, rather than wonder which is which? 

So I've been collecting greens. I've taken quite a few photographs, and posted them as color studies on my photography journal:

I plan to do another one on late summer greens as well. 

From these, I've observed that, in general, new leaves in spring are a fresher, lighter, brighter green. Early summer leaves are turning darker; still bright, but not as light in value and hue. There are exceptions to this, of course, but for my purposes, I need color ranges that will enable a viewer to easily distinguish which is spring and which is summer. 

For Spring Leaves, here are my color options


The darker green on the left is 6/2 cotton and would be my weft. The five lighter greens on the right are all 8/2s and would be for my random color order warp. My Winter Leaves warp has four warp colors; here I'm looking at five choices. My original thought was to choose four and tie them onto the winter warp, following the same color changes. Right now, I can't decide which four to choose. Maybe use all five? I can't make up my mind!

There's plenty of time to decide, however, as weaving Winter Leaves will likely take awhile.