Bare Feet, Cool Treadles....the joys of summer!

It's always good to stay in the moment, and, by the heat of afternoon, I am usually weaving on Hazle...Weaving on that project is as close as I can come to working in the garden, because I'm putting these lovely pink flowers all across the fabric.

While I'm weaving in this heat, by the time I am ready to move to the next part of the draft, the treadle I am using is warmed up and then, upon changing, there's the pure joy of cool wood  greeting my toes! Yes, stay in the moment and appreciate it ALL!

The photo is of Desert Nights on Jimmy. I decided to try some light colored wefts on Desert Nights just to see if I like it. It's nice, but, as you can see by the photo of the DARK edge of the fabric, the dark shades are pretty much compromised....I am enjoying the contrast and will weave until I run out of these wefts.... or run out of TIME!

That's all for now...must go hang the last load of laundry...there's another joy for you....remember? The sweet, lovely fragrance on clean, air-dried sheets and pillow cases at slumber time.....aaaaaah. Until, I have Miles and Miles of Smiles, Cat B.

"Okay...so...somebody has been weaving!"

It's the best way to start this post...with a recent quote from a visitor to my studio at the sight of this roll of fabric on Stanley!

When am I not weaving, more like!

This is about 13 yards of a fabulously simple cloth that was fun and fast and oh so plain a tabby.

The stripes are 20/2 rayon and 20/2 black mercerized cotton on a 16/2 black/charcoal cotton marl. I thought at the time that it might make good fabric for a men's shirt....that was my vision.

A gentleman visiting my booth in Taos recently commented that none of my fabrics were...well.....masculine. I really hadn't thought about that much, so I've decided to change that a bit!

In a previous post, I had told about laundry days and the efforts that go into my fabrics before they ever appear in my booth. This 13ish yards becomes 10ish yards after machine washing/drying, but there's a few steps in between that 13 and that 10....

First I have to "extract" the yardage where it started lashed onto the loom....yes, I remove the lashing and save it for the next project...satisfies the Scottish. It takes a little longer, but, for some reason, I like to do it.

Then I lug this big roll over to the sewing machine and zigzag.... Patience is needed now....and thoughts of new projects dance in my head!




This is the last of a long warp on Stanley and I'm about to make a big change on him, too...ah, but that's for another post!




This is when I begin to think that laundry days are just pretty darn cool....all the zigzagging stitch has been machine sewn at each end of the yardage, so that it won't unravel during it's finishing in the washer and dryer.

The end of this little story is that, after all my planning for a "masculine" fabric, a lovely lady came into my booth and immediately bought enough of it to make a SKIRT!

And, I'll bet she is looking just FABulous right now, too!

This has to be short for now.....so many demands in the studio...do you hear it calling? Keep laughing at life and dancing to your own tune. I'm sending out Miles and Miles of Smiles, Cat B.