Osborn Fiber Studio

Oh my, what a month! I am lying in bed today, recovering from food poisoning and a nasty travel day. That was the only negative part of an otherwise very blessed week I just spent in Iqaluit. That’s a long story I’m not ready to share yet, but I do have lots of unfinished projects to share with you this month.

Weaving

I wrote about my initial forays into mug-rug weaving here.

Just about the only other thing I did finish this month was this little tapestry for N, which you can read about here.

The rest of the month I have spent reading about weaving, and waiting for my loom to arrive. Yes, I bought a rigid heddle loom, used from a very nice chap in Ottawa, and a friend agreed to carry it up for me. He gets back soon and I can’t wait!

I read Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom by Syne Mitchell. It was available as an incredibly cheap but also incredibly well-designed e-book on kindle. It goes from absolute zero knowledge all the way to overshot weaving.

And because I am the sort of big nerd who would absolutely try to understand four-shaft pattern conversion before ever weaving a single pick on a rigid heddle, I also read The Xenakis Technique for Weaving Four-Shaft Textiles on a Rigid Heddle Loom. Ok, I read it because it was free. But even though I didn’t understand a large chunk of the book, his writing style is very droll. Very Elizabeth Zimmerman.

Yeah I’ve been bitten pretty hard by the bug. We’ll see what happens when there’s actually a medium-sized loom in my house.

Homemaking

This month we’ve fixed a couple little things around the house, which was pretty empowering. We replaced all the caulk around the exceedingly unsealed bathtub (after reassuring ourselves with a view underneath from the crawlspace that there wasn’t any mold).

And here’s the really cool one: Jared replaced the oven hood with an over-the-stove microwave!

This was all his idea, since counter space is at a bit of a premium in our sweet little house.

With that installed, we decided to take advantage of the fact that most of our stuff isn’t here yet, and have a little open house for folks at church. It was so delightful. It’s really motivating me to do whatever I have to do to keep our house from feeling really cluttered after our sea can gets here.

Knitting

As I wrote about a little over a week ago, Strodie is nominally finished but needs some adjustment.

I left it to stew while I traveled. Having gotten some (literal) distance on it, and having received many unexpected complements on it, I’m feeling less annoyed. I think some small adjustments to the collar will resolve many of the issues, and surprisingly wearing it over a longer-sleeved shirt seems to make it much more comfortable for me. It’s on the top of my list to fix this in October.

The main knitting I did in Iqaluit this week was a massive swatch to match my hand knitting to machine knitting. Oh dear I need to get around to posting about this project, which started over the summer, but I’m just now getting around to really working on.

Spinning

I was not expecting to do any spinning this month, but I brought my drop spindle and some fiber with me to Iqaluit. This month in 51 Yarns was all about singles, and I managed to get them all spun. I am not ready to do their posts because they all still need to be finished and sampled, but here’s a little awful picture for a sneaky preview.

Sewing

Last but not least, I took on a big sewing project this month. I’m turning a baby wrap into a dress for me, sewing entirely by hand.

It’s so close to being done; I hope I have a finished project to show you very soon. With the little problem that I can’t decide whether to put sleeves on it or not…

Well, that was a lot of promises, but I did warn you I had lots of unfinished things this month. Better put this screen down and go back to recovering!