Seabreeze Spinners

I’ve accepted a teaching job for the month, teaching two sections of Psychology 101 AND 6 family members will be arriving from out-of-state Saturday to celebrate “spring break” with us. All this in additon to writing two grants due April 20 and maintaining my private practice. My world is insane and I fear that it will be the blog that suffers. Please suffer me infrequent entries until me life settles down. My stress reliever, clearly my fiber projects. I spun a bobbin of wool and nylon sock yarn last Saturday at Fiber Space. My plan is to spin another bobbin and dye the finished yarn “blog blue” and boganvia pink. My backstap loom is ordered and waiting for it’s arrival. I’m still playing with my paddle loom and during breaks at school, I braid silk on my kumihimo loom.

I’ve become a distributor for the Thread Gatherer, hand dyed silk threads & ribbons….more on that later. They have the most amazing color combination. More on that later; I’ll be adding thread to my etsy site.

Have to run…
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A visitor to this site introduced me to a very cool riggid heddle laser cut backstrap loom. See the loom on youtube by clicking HERE.

The loom is demonstrated by it’s builder, Travis Meinolf. His weaving blog is fun, to see it, click HERE.

You can buy one of the looms (I don’t sell the looms or get a commission, I just think its cool) by clicking HERE.

FIBER SPACE meets tomorrow, Saturday, March 28 9am to noon at Palma Sola Presbyterian Church, Bradenton, Florida. We’ll be lost in Fiber Space, but we’ll be having fun!

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Photo Gallary from our day at the Heritage Village last Saturday. It was a Chamber of Commerce day.

Photos (except the one with the children watching as I spin) from Bradenton Herald Tribune and taken by their photographer,.

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I have new “toy”, a paddle tape loom. Before zippers and velcro, everything was secured with “tapes” or ribbons. Tape looms were commonly used by the Swedes, Norwegiens and Germans. The Pennsyvanian Dutch (after immigrating from Germany, my ancesters lived in Sommerset PA in the 1850s before moving on to farm in Illinois and the Dakotas) have a history of tape loom weaving. Decorative “tapes” adorned clothing as trims as well as practical uses such as bonnet and apron ties.
My loom from Finnsheep arrived this week.

For a simple tape, or ribbon, the warp threads are threaded through the slots and a single row of holes. (That’s how you see it threaded here.) I tied one of the warp to a chair and held the other in my hand. By manipulating the paddle I was able to alternate sheds allowing me to weave a simple tabby pattern. The tape is a “warp faced weaving”, that is, warp threads create the design. My warp is a colorful mix of brown, yellow and orange. The first few inches I used the same cotton warp thread for the weft as the warp, first Kaki then brown. You can see both warp and weft. In the second bit of tape, I used finer cotton weft. The weft disappears and all you see is the warp pattern. (The pattern I used is from Handwoven Magazine … Warp Faced Dog Leash designed by Susan Weaver.)

Oh, and that second row of holes…

that is for floating picked design.

Soft wool or other fat yarn was threaded though the second row of holes. A plain tabby warp served as a background for the yarn design which was allowed to “float” above the face of the tape. The reverse side of the finished tape would have the negative image of the pattern on the face of the tape. The weaver had to be careful to design the pattern so that the floats didn’t get too long where they’d get snagged and pulled away from the tape. I understand the concept but haven’t tried to weave with floats yet, heh, it’s only been a few days. I will post more photos of this tape to show the design and techniques including my plan to make a backstrap belt to hold the end of the tape so that I will have two hands free to weave.

Other sources I found for Box Tape Looms, Paddle Looms, and Floor Two Treadle tape looms are (click on source name to be linked to source):

J. K. Sidel
Hand Woven Magazine
The Joyner’s Shop
Fred & Grace Hatton, Finn Sheep
TapeLooms.com
Link to photos of Swedish tapes

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Finished the socks knit from the Tuesday Morning hand dyed yarn. After the socks were completed, I rinsed them out and layed them flat to dry. They looked stretched but I was afraid to heat dry them for fear they would felt. My husband’s clean underwear was languishing in the dryer, I’m such a bad wife. I popped the socks in the dryer with the cottons and air dryed the load with no heat. The cotton undies wicked away the moisture and the socks fluffed beautifully, without felting. I’m so bad, (LOL) his underwear is still in the dryer but the socks are blocked and ready to wear.

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My new “Bee” arrived. I love it. Spins right out of the box. Took it to a demonstration event at the Manatee Historical Village. I took the Bee to share with my fellow spinners and the Mystery Wheel to demo fax spinning. The leather holding the flyer on the Mystery Wheel gave way (I guess every hundred years or so you have to change out the leather) rendering it useless. So I shifted to the new Bee. It was a bit stiff at first, but quickly settled down. It has it’s own personality. If you stop treadling it will quickly reverse wheel direction, but I quickly found it’s “sweet spot”. With all the various placements of the drive bands it has an abundance of ratios. While I’m not a technical spinner the flexibility of changing ratios appealed to my very techinical spinner friend, Elizabeth when she gave it a spin. She was taken with the compact nature of the Bee. While the Bee is a spinner’s wheel, with all it’s technical options, we introducted a new generation to spinning. After watching a bit, they each took their turn at spinning. They were able to spin with just a little coaching. Interestingly, some of the youngest caught on the quickest, and the boys held their own.
(Click on images to see larger photo.)

Love that Bee !

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On a visit to Tuesday Morning I spied a great yarn deal. Only mismatched skeins but at an amazing price. (This was 100 gr – 242 yards for $4.99.) This is a hand dyed 100% wool thick and thin; looks like hand spun. It was begging to become a pair of socks and so the journey began last night. One down, one to go.

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This is my first silk kumihimo braid. It’s a simple 8 stand spiral with hand painted silk stand alternating with hand dyed black silk.

(Click on photos for larger image.)

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Coming in today as the sun was setting, the azelias look amazing. Also captured a bloom from the Orchid Tree on the digital.

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My friend Patsy creates the neatest Lampwork Beads. Beads like these have inspired me to get out my MAPP gas and light up. It’s too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter to work on the open porch. But lately we’ve been experienceing chamber of commerce weather and I’m thinking the timing is good. To see more of Patsy’s work go HERE.

(Click on images below for larger photo.)

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