Happy New Year

Yes, I'm a tad behind the curve.  But hey, Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!  :-)

This is what happened on December 21, 2010.

This is Jia Michelle.  My new (and first and probably only) Grand daughter.  She's beautiful!  She was less than an hour old in this photo.

This is how she looked at Christmas:

And this is how she looked about a week later:

 She is SO teeny.  It's amazing to me.  My babies were watermelons when they were born!  LoL  Its wonderful to be a Grammie.  I don't get to see little Jia enough.  I haven't seen her in over a week now.  But I'll be going up next week for sure. :-)

I've also been busy weaving.  I love weaving.  Someone asked me how I started.  I guess putting that down here would be a good idea.

I've always wanted to weave.  I just never really looked into it before. I thought I had to get one of those big floor looms.  Come to find out, that's not necessary.  There are LOTS of ways to weave, from the potholder looms we used to use as kids (did you ever have one?), to backstrap looms, to card weaving, to inkle looms, to Rigid Heddle Looms, up to table looms and floor looms.....there are even computer operated looms!

I decided that for me, to start with, I wanted something somewhat substantial.  I decided on a Rigid Heddle loom.  I went with the Kromski 24" Rigid Heddle loom.  I sorta wanted to go bigger.  But at this point, I'm glad I went 24".  32" would have been much wider, and taken up much more room.  I wouldn't mind having a larger loom at some point.  I also wouldn't mind having a smaller loom at some point.  But for now, this is the right loom for me.

I also ordered two books.  Hands On Rigid Heddle Weaving by Betty Linn Davenport, and Weaving Made Easy by Liz Gipson.  I really am getting a LOT of information from the first book.  The second one is ok, but I don't know if I'll actually ever MAKE anything from it......

And, I watched YouTube videos.  Seriously!  I learned a LOT from them.  I also learned a lot by joining Ravelry, an online community forum that has so many kind people that are wonderful with sharing their knowledge and information.  Between the books, videos, and forum, this is how I have learned to weave.

So far, I've made table runners, mug rugs, dish towels, a really cool scarf, some oops projects, and at this very moment, I have a shawl on the loom.  I found out over the weekend, that my Aunt, someone very near and dear to my heart, has been diagnosed with bladder cancer.  She's going to live out her days at home.  Bless her.  I wish I could be there to help out.  But alas, she's in Maine, and I'm in VA.  I feel that the shawl will be something maybe she can use, and feel my love, while hopefully it'll keep the chill away. 

I have decided not to make the shawl out of wool.  I'm not a fan of wool myself.  I love cotton, but it shrinks too much and something this large would be heavy.  So I decided on acrylic.   A lot of people would snub acrylic, but someone on the forum, mentioned to me that she makes prayer shawls out of acylic so that the people who care for the elderly people the shawls are made for, can just wash and dry the shawls without having to worry about the fiber it's made of.

I'll be the first to admit that I have very little fiber knowledge.  I know what I like, and what I don't like.  I think at some point, I'll probalby work with wool so that I can make some things for other people.  I'm hoping that eventually, I'll be able to sell some products I make.  That would be such an awesome feeling, to be doing something I love, and to have others actually WANT it as a finished object. 

Here are a few more photos:

This is a photo of my loom with my first project on it; 100% cotton table runner.

This is the finished project:

The sun was shining thru the lace curtains - I kinda like the effect it made.

This is a Christmas table runner that I made.  I wanted to try weaving the ends in so that I didn't have fringe.  It took a little work but I like the final product (which I just realized you can see here - lol)

These are dish towels.  I went from using a really thick cotton yarn, to an extremely thin cotton yarn.  And silly me, I warped the loom for really long use.  Not a good idea the first time out.  LOL  It gave me fits but I love the outcome - they aren't perfect...but they are real usable dish towels! 

And there is the scarf.  My favorite thing so far.  It's made of micro fiber yarn - and I didn't think I was going to like it - but it's actually comfy to wear.

This is called a Pinwheel pattern, sometimes called a Houndstooth pattern.  It looks complicated ~~ but it's SO stinking easy!  I will be making more of these out of different fibers/yarns in the future.

Well, it's dinner time here.  Gonna drag out the Panini Press and make tomato and mozzerella sandwiches, and soup.   It's very cold today and I was outside at agility practice for 2 hours today.  I still haven't warmed up.

I'll be back more often.  I promise.