long time no see

hey y'all, it's been awhile. time seems to fly by these days, but now that it's summer, it's starting to slow down a little bit. i finally had time to get a cut & color and i went a little shorter for summer. 

my summer weaving project is what i'm calling the rainbow sherbet tea towels. i've not abandoned my taylor swift eras tea towel project, but i decided to take a little break over the summer, while i plan the next ones. i know what colors i want to work with, but i don't know yet know what i want to learn from the next one - maybe a whole new, more complicated setup? so i did another rainbow warp. everyone loves the rainbow tea towels and this will give me some to have on hand. 

i had some time this weekend to work on them and i've finished four so far. i should get around 20 from this warp. it's so relaxing to sit at the loom and play with color as i listen to cozy mystery novels. i'm currently listening to anthony horowitz's hawthorne series. he probably wouldn't like that i call them cozy mysteries, but there you have it. 

last weekend, i acquired this loom. it's a little bigger than my big loom and i will assemble it upstairs, to have even more weaving projects underway. unfortunately, i discovered over the past week, after bringing it in the house, that it is permeated with the most awful cigarette smell from years of standing in the home of a heavy smoker. i'm not sure how i didn't realize that when we picked it up. it only became apparent when we brought it inside here at home. it's really awful. i got some rodalon — a special cleaning product that removes odors and i spent a lot of time scrubbing it down and cleaning it this weekend. i think it's going to work. i removed the søller (again, i realize i don't know weaving vocabulary in english) and soaked them in my jasmine-scented wool wash. it took FOUR baths to get rid of the yellow nicotine, but i think i have saved them. i'm not yet done washing down all of the parts of the loom, but i think it's working and i will be able to save it. 

these are the tea towels i made for the reputation era. it felt more austere, working largely with black & white, but it was also fun. i did a little hound's tooth here and there, which i think rather replicates the newsprint on the reputation album art. overall, i am pleased with how they turned out. i used red, gold and green as accents, for the reputation bodysuits that were (red, gold) and were not (green). 

the child comes home this week for good. or at least back to europe for good, or at least the foreseeable future. i'm very happy to get her out of what is fast becoming quite the shitshow over there. so happy she has options. it will be so good to have her home again. i'll take some holiday and we'll make good food, play cards and hang out together. 

so much weaving ahead!

1989 - now i have the right colors for this one

same for midnights - i like this color palette

the color palette for red

going to play with a so-called color effect for speak now

 the color palette for debut is probably the one that's most my vibe

i worked on these for five hours today, though that included cataloging all of the colors i have now, so i can keep track for future projects and orders.

i have so much exciting weaving ahead.

plus, they look pretty, just as decor!

these are part of the records i'm keeping.

so pretty, i can't wait to weave them.

more eras in the making

this morning, i decided to start planning some of the future eras. i worked on speak now. i really should have listened to it while i worked on it, but since i'm not finished yet, i can still do that. i want to make some yarn windings (vikleprøver) to see how the colors play together. i have a long weekend, so there is still time to do that. 

i'm liking the vibe of this one and thinking already about what sort of design to work with. i want to try something new. maybe something with more regular stripes.

i put together the color palette for red as well. this assignment i've given myself is proving to be a great way of working with colors and listening to a lot of music. i'm not really a swiftie, but i have come to appreciate her work after the concert last summer. and her color palettes are great. 

these two are similar, so i've got to come up with a cool way to differentiate between them. luckily, the possibilities are endless when it comes to weaving. 

next up - reputation!

 

i've already spent more than 11 hours and i haven't even started weaving on the reputation era. that sounds like a insane amount of time. but it doesn't feel like that at all. i guess that's what flow is about. 

this time, i'm looking to create a more graphic look. and i want it to look like the black & white of the type in a newspaper in some of the fields, to echo the album. i had to add a sparkly thread to the solid black panels as a nod to the reputation bodysuits.

the warp itself is black, grey and white, but i will create some dark green or red horizontal stripes, as an accent that also echoes the bodysuit and the bodysuit that wasn't (the green one that swifties kept expecting). i bought some threads with some small gold sequins as well for extra sparkle in my weft.

i do love this process and i feel like i'm getting better at it with each warp. setting up takes a long time, but i do enjoy every step of it. 

this morning, i was all ready to bind it up, check all the connections and get started. a few had broken (the cords connecting the shafts and the pedals), so it took some time to replace them. i have the old fashioned-style cords, not the newer polyester ones. they're easier to use, but there's something that feels more authentic to me about the cords. they've been good enough for my loom for around 80 years. maybe one day, i'll switch them out, but for now, i'm happy to be learning how to work with the traditional kind. 

i wove a little bit to get started before we decided to visit the linen weaving museum over on fyn. i needed to do something cultural to get my mind off husband driving around ukraine.  we got there just in time to join a tour with one of the docents. she told such great stories, i really enjoyed it. 

yarn porn

i got my latest order of weaving yarn from kinna's today. ordering from them really tries my patience, as it takes them at least a week to even indicate that they've noticed one's order and then another week or so to send the invoice so you can pay it. why not actually have an online payment as if you're in the 21st century? but i digress. look at all this goodness! i think i can do most of the eras now, though i need to restock black, white and some grey because of TTPD, after running the reputation warp (again, more about that soon, i promise). i also got an idea, looking at this picture, for a warp that's cream and that hot pinkish orange color. but that's not really one of the eras, so i'll try to stay focused. or maybe i need another loom. 

i sorted it all into boxes, more or less in color families. that was weirdly soothing. and goodness knows i need some soothing, what with worrying about husband driving all over the place in ukraine, only 30km from the front. 

i'll be able to do another rainbow warp as well with all these colors. it seems everyone i've given some of those to wants more. 

these remind me of my old blue room! i'm looking forward to working with them. 

i'll play around on this long weekend (we have four days off!) with some of the colors, preparing some yarn windings for more of the eras. tomorrow, my friend and weaving teacher is coming over to help me get started on my more graphic warp. i'm trying to learn something new every time. i think what i mostly learn from the loom is patience! 

i couldn't resist the way the sunshine fell on this jar of yarn clippings i've been saving. i want to do a rather fiddly project with them, but i need enough of them. and maybe a bit more patience.

the lover era - tea towel stylie

my lover era tea towels are finished. i got 13 of them from the warp, plus two pieces of fabric that i can make into small makeup or accessory bags. i'm very pleased with the result and the touch of sparkle turned out great, though it doesn't photograph well. 

i've already embarked on the next era - reputation. i'm starting it in hopes that the clowning for reputation tv is actually true this time. and also because i had the right colors for what i want to do.  more about that in another post.

someone came yesterday to buy the last two kittens and she contacted me today to ask if she could buy some of these. i'm going to try to have enough to take to a market in september, so i'm not sure, but i love that she asked. 

i learn something new from every warp i weave. and i sit at the loom and think about all the cloth that's been woven on it. it originally belonged to cis fink, a renowned danish weaving teacher from aabenraa and then my own weaving teacher, emmy, wove many a meter of cloth on it for 50-some years before passing it along to me. i cannot help but think of how much more it knows than i do. and how patient it is with me. 

i can already tell that i somehow must find a way to get a set of these tea towels to taylor swift herself. i have time to figure that out. there are only 11 eras to go. 

 

tea towels inspired by the eras tour

i was chatting with my sister and my swiftie friend on our group chat and we decided that my next weaving project should be tea towels inspired by the eras tour. so i ordered up a bunch of new weaving yarn in new colors. it arrived right before i went to the states. last weekend, i got started on seeing how the colors i ordered play together.

i made vikleprøver/yarn windings to play with the colors. i think i'll start with lover, which is the one at the top. followed by 1989, which is the one at the bottom. i need to adjust the colors for midnights (on the right), as the brown doesn't work and it needs some burgundy. the one on the left is reputation. that one, i want to play with a more graphic look. 

we're going to make the warp for lover this weekend. i'm even going to put that sparkly yarn in there, together with the purple, so that there's a little sparkle to them, even though that's not necessarily traditional in a tea towel.

the planning is actually becoming part of the fun for me! that's not normally my core competence, nor something i like all that much. i'm learning how to achieve the look i'm going for. and even learning what i like and what i don't. i think it's going to be a fun exercise. and with all those eras, it should keep the loom occupied for a few months to come.