Tale of the Avengers

It's amazing to look at my last blog post and see a November date. But, that's what it is.

Living this year away from my house, home, weaving guild, siblings, friends, has challenges all over the place. The challenge to keep weaving fresh is one of them. The year is winding down now. I'm past the halfway mark, and feeling like I'm entering the home stretch. This is all said with crossed fingers and much salt thrown over the left shoulder.

With looking at an end to my volunteer work at Ardenwood, a couple of their naturalists said yes, they would love to learn how to weave on the big LeClerc. I have finished the rug I was working on. Have not cut it off and not sure I will before I start the next one, but I have been busy gathering and preparing weft. I went to a local thrift store and bought 4 sheets at $3.00 each. I washed them, and have been cutting them into strips. I'll sew them together in a pattern, and arrange some training time.

When I look for fabric for rag weft, I try to find fabric that has bigger blocks of color, so nothing with a small print, and it must show color on both sides of the fabric. Turning fabric by hand in the shed so a white backing doesn't show is torturous for me. Ditto on ironing the wrong sides of the strips together before weaving. Yikes. Gives me the heebie jeebies thinking about it. Sometimes it's okay for the while backing to peek through. It depends on the other colors used and how I want it to look. I didn't want it for this one, though.

One of the sheets I found was an Avengers! print:




This is HUGE in my grandsons' world, but the store only had one, and not wanting to start a war over who gets it, I snuck it into the house and today, while both were in school, cut it and the others into strips. They need never know.

Looking back on the last post, I did indeed weave the perle cotton. Haven't done anything with it, as I don't like it much. I also wove a warp of tea towels. We are badly in need of some new ones here. I plan to put on a warp for more napkins next. The kids go through napkins like crazy and we could use some more. After that, well, we'll see how much time I have left in my year. Weaving is slow here compared to the output I have at home. Two small boys in the house and all that entails means weaving takes a back seat.



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