10,000 Steps

This is going to be harder than I thought.  I purchased a FitBit to begin tracking my activity.  Today was the first day I wore it.  The standard according to FitBit - and also a physician I had been seeing, is at least 10,000 steps a day.

Today was my day to volunteer at Greenfield Village.   I do not go to the gym on those days since I usually spend most of the day on my feet and also do a lot of walking and stairs and come home exhausted.  I assumed - no problem with that standard.

Boy was I wrong.  Got home and I had only done 7,000+ steps (it must be measuring wrong).  So after dinner I ended up going for a half hour walk to make the 10,000.  

This is going to be harder than I thought.

The New Loom Has Been Ordered

It is an AVL Workshop Loom.  I have been thinking about one for at least a year and I finally ordered it on Friday.

It is a CompuDobby loom (for the non-weavers out there - you design on your computer and the computer determines which shafts to raise.

It has 24 shafts (my current looms have 4 and 8 shafts) - so it will allow me to do much more complicated patterns.

It is labeled as a workshop loom and advertised as being able to "travel", but I looked at the video on taking it apart and it looks like to much work for me.  

I would have loved a wider loom but space is at a premium.  Its weaving width is only 24 inches which is not as wide as my 8 shaft loom but …. since I decided to keep my 8 shaft loom, this loom needs to go into the space that my 4 shaft loom is in so I had to buy something small.

After this loom arrives - not until October, I will sell my 4 shaft Dorsett loom.

For the weavers out there - I did not purchase the sectional beam - should I have?  The guy at AVL said that most of there sales are of sectional beams but I have never used a sectional beam and was not sure about it on a loom of this size.  Any opinions?

Right now I am excited about getting this (but not about putting it together once it comes).

More Baby Blankets

I am behind in my postings of my weaving but today there was an announcement on Facebook when by nephew had a picture of his daughter wearing a Big Sister t-shirt.  That baby is due on January.

Many of you know that I have traditionally woven baby blankets for my nieces and nephews baby's.  I use the same general pattern but change up the colors.  Since I do not have a big enough loom, I sign up for a class at Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center and "reserve" a large loom.

The family had two babies born on April.  I was able to "double up" and only put one warp on the loom but chose two different colors for the weft to personalize the blankets.

The first one woven, since she was the first one due, was for my niece's Gina's expected baby girl.  Gina requested purple so I chose a light lavender and here is a close-up of the blanket.

Below is her daughter Karina with her blanket, being held by her great grandfather.

My niece's baby girl was supposed to be born after Karina
but made her appearance first.  Her color of pink was picked by her big sister who will be sharing her room with her.    Close up…

And a picture of Audi on her blanket….

It is amazing how the different weft colors change the blankets even though they have the same colors in the warp.    Some of those colors will be re-used on the next blanket (I am trying to cut down on my stash) but will wait for the order on what predominant color for the next blanket. 

Signs

Trail sign on South Mountain in Arizona along with a sign of "nothing".

Fences

I like taking pictures of fences.  Here are my fence pictures from Arizona.

Arizona Preview

Traveled back from Arizona on Wednesday (NOT my favorite way to spend my birthday).

Had a great time at my nephews wedding and meeting my one of my new grand nieces along with lots of family time, museums, meeting former work friends and wandering South mountain.  

This is just a preview of the pictures.  I need to work on my homework assignment for school so will start organizing the pictures when I am done with that.

A Crepe is Not Just a Pancake

I love that title which is the title from a monograph by Alice Schlein that I used that is on a weave structure called crepe.  Decided to try that structure since it is one of the structures that is part of our Cross Borders study group.

So I am back to catching up on documenting last years weaving projects.  I like to maintain a record of my weaving with documenting the weave structure used, the planned and finished size along with a picture of the piece.

These two scarfs are of tencel, with some of the warp commercially dyed yarn and some yarn that I painted.

First scarf I was not as happy with.  I love black but this is the first time I wove with a black weft versus  a partially black warp.  Not happy that I lost too much color in the warp.

Second scarf I was much happier with.  Used silver in the warp and also added some stripes of another weave structure to break it up a bit.