Another Goody in the Mail

This arrived this week finally. Of course now I have no time to sit and weave rugs...but it is here for when I do have time. Trying to spend as much time as I can with the gardening when my energy allows it. I am going to try to get that material dyed for the rug though and my plan for a loom is already in my head so it is coming together!

Grumpy bunny longs for sunny beaches....

This is my favorite photo I have ever taken. Its old, bent and worn but still chereished. I have taken many more photos that I'm sure other people would say were much better than this one. I love the expression in this one though. The carefree spirit and triumphant feeling it speaks to me. Ah to be so young and free again eh?


I am a bit grumpy today. Woke up with a scratchy throat and a sniffly nose. I have been working non-stop now for three days on my MIL's rug and last night I finally finished it! I wish I could say I woke up this morning rarinng to get to work on something else but truthfully I just wanted to crawl back under the covers and stay there.


I did make some nice homemade pita bread and hummus and I'm afraid that drained me of what little energy I had. I am snuggling down on the couch to moan and groan my afternoon away. Maybe after a bit of a rest I may get inspired again. I hope you all are feeling better than I. Take care....

Raggedy

5456 strips...

It's been a bit of a hectic week here. We arrived back from Moirax Sunday evening, then to bed, then to class the next day. As soon as I arrived home from class Monday, D informed me that he had a job interview the next morning and we had to rush out to buy him an overcoat and dress shirt. Then to bed, then class the next day....My test was today so I spent yesterday studying and then when I went out to go to class this morning the bus drivers were on strike. All that worry over my test and now I cant take it. I also spent part of my day doing a little of this...


Yes finally I have enough strips to do this rug. This one is a gift for my MIL. She fell in love with mine and she really needs a nice rug in her bathroom. THe large one I am planning ot make for the livingroom here may take me forever. Over 25,000 strips and I still have 2/3 of them to cut. That will definitely be a long term project *hehe* I think I will be quite busy this month just trying to finish up Christmas presents. I still want to open an Etsy shop but I would like to have at least a few more items on hand before I do. I am in no big hurry to do that though. It will be nice when it happens but I'm not going to rush things. I tend to start feeling things are a burden if I feel rushed and I want to enjoy my creating not get bogged down.
As a parting note...look at the goodies my MIL gave me when I was there visiting!


I'm not sure what I will do with the yarns. I dont have a crochet hook or knitting needles but they are very pretty so Im sure I will come up with something. Besides the pieces of material here in the pic she also gave me several more pieces of white material for dying and more tshirts to cut for strips. Yay!

Warm and wooley

I dug out my stash of wool bits and pieces today. When I came here from Seattle one of the things I couldn't leave behind was all the bits and pieces of wool I had collected. I had a reweaving shop there for years and spent many a long day with piles of cashmere sweaters on my lap, patiently reknitting the holes to make them disappear. Often when I had to shorten a sweater I would have huge pieces of fabric left over. I would always give my customer the extra pieces but before I did I would wind a little onto a card and put it in my box. THis helped me much when someone brought in a sweater that had no place where I could find extra yarn...and often would help the original owner when they brought their sweater back but had managed to lose the spare piece I had returned to them. I looked at this pile of wool today and realized just how many sweaters I must have worked on if this represented only a tiny percent of the sweaters I did ( most times I did not harvest any yarn from a sweater, only when I shortened them)


I was quite sad to see that somehow I missed at least one box of my wool. Where are the reds? The pinks and oranges? All the wonderful sunny yellows and golds? Sad that they were left behind. I had pulled out these wools as I had a new idea for a square. I decided to do a sunrise on this wonderful piece of shimmer taffeta in the center of this photo. I was going to take pieces of wool and build up a misty cloudy effect. A sunrise on a cloudy morning. I am still going to try to accomplish something along this idea. I am doing two dye baths this week, one of them in pink, maybe I will add a few pieces of wool and see what I get. Since dyeing is an all new thing for me I am wandering into unexplored territory.


Last but not least...more strips! I sat and cut these the last two evenings. I am making a rug for my MIL like the one I did for my bathroom. She fell in love with mine when she came to visit and she does have need for a nice bathroom mat. I hope I get this done by christmas. I have 1500 strips cut for her rug. It should take about 5000 so almost a third of the way done. WIsh me luck *grin*

5540.....

Crystal in a shop window in Bordeaux

....and 19, 612 to go! Thats how many more fabric strips I have to cut to finish my next rug, the big one for the living room. I hadn't planned on starting on this rug yet but then circumstances came about in such a way as that is where I ended up this week....cutting tshirts into strips.
Monday I had a headache all day that I just couldn't shake. I don't normally suffer from too many headaches. I didn't feel creative at all and even D noticed that I was out of sorts. Well Tuesday rolled around and in the middle of my French class I realized that I had just about the worst headache I've ever had. I came straight home from class, took an eferalgen (sp?) went to bed and SLEPT 5 HOURS. I have been out of sorts ever since, and being bent in the wrong direction has robbed me of any desire to create. The fact that my head just wouldn't stop pounding didn't help much either.
Stitching held no appeal to me whatsoever. I was completely stuck on this last square and felt no creative spark when I looked at it. So instead I sat on the couch watching old tv shows and cutting strips. The good news? Last night as I was falling asleep I thought up an idea for my square. I think I am on my way back up *wink*
Todays pic has absolutely nothing to do with this post. I love the colors though and waned to share them with you.

Recycle!

Have you ever watched this video http://www.storyofstuff.com/? I ran across it on a blog I read awhile back and it really shook me up. I think I already knew a lot of what it said already but really liked the way she put it all together in one great big scary story.
And if it doesnt scare you then it should. We people as a whole are big wasteful creatures and we should all wake up and do what we can about it. I have slowly over the years tried to change my habits. Now I tend to save everything. D makes fun of me sometimes by holding up some part of a food package and asking "Do you want to save this?" Nine times out of ten I do. Its amazing how many things you can reuse if you just put your mind to it.
One of my latest projects involved ten old holey stained t-shirts and a piece of latchhook canvas. Upon moving here I really felt the need for a nice bath mat. Sure you can fold a towel and set it on the floor but I prefer a nice thick mat to set my toes upon after leaving the bath. So I set to work making myself one. First I cut a piece of canvas to the size I wanted with a little excess going each way. THen I counted my squares down one side and across the bottom, multiplying to get the whole number of squares in my piece. I felt this was an important step as I was using a mix of colors. I wanted to make sure I had enough strips cut before I started so I could mix them well and have a nice color balance. After determining the number of strips I needed (appr 5,000) I started cutting my t-shirts into tiny strips (about 1/2 inch by 4 inches) This took me three days. And yes, I know I'm crazy. After the strips were cut I just hooked them onto the canvas in the same way you would make a normal latch hook rug. I think it is so much nicer than those yarn latch hook rugs. It comes out nice and thick and very heavy. Its made from pure cotton (depending on the tshirts you use) and it just looks really good. Now I do have to admit I wasnt sold on the mix of colors I used. Granted they do match the colors of my bathroom to a point but I would have prefered a darker mix. I might just throw it into the next dark red dye bath I have going and see how it turns out. Until then I think it will do as is. What do you think?