Tactile Weaving - My First Attempt

I first found the 12" bamboo embroidery hoop at the ReUse Ctr along with sunshine yellow wool roving for free.

That is when I decided Okay I guess I'm going to give this project a try.

The yellow cotton thread is what I used for the warp thread which is where the yarn and interesting fiber will be woven into.

With the ring being bamboo I did not feel it would take paint well so I decided to stick with the warm honey tone.

I started gathering coordinating supplies.

Wrapping the warp thread around the hoop went pretty well. 

There is math involved to figure out how much thread you need so I found that on the web somewhere.  I believe and odd number is best.  I had a few issues with 38.

I tied all the threads together and I wanted the focal point not to be in the center.  At this stage it is quite movable so I just moved it to the right a bit.

Here the warp thread is not tied.

I pulled together yellow, blue and white supplies together.

Some acrylic yarn, cotton thread, wool roving, wooden beads, wooden rings, some fancy yarn and long needles/crochet hooks to help me pull the weft through the weaving.

You will notice that I had not put the outer hoop onto this inside one which made it very difficult to keep my warp threads evenly spaced.

Things went a lot better once the warp thread had been evenly spaced and  the outside hoop was screwed tight.

Here are my first weft threads.  I chose to put some yellow cotton at the focal point.  It helps to make the warp thread disappear when it is the same thread in the weft.

I then started adding color in the navy yarn on the right hand side.

After that it was adding texture, color and resisting just wrapping all my weft fibers around the focal point.

The sparkly white yarn added texture and hid the warp threads nicely.

The yellow wool roving was luxurious and smooth which added a different texture to the weaving.

Loved that the wavy yarn was the same color as the roving.

I added beads in the weaving as well as on the hanger to add texture and color.

The wonderful grosgrain ribbon has recently been acquired as a leftover from some project - maybe from my niece.

I really wanted to hide the screw tighthener at the top of the outer hoop.

The ribbon was over 1" wide and with a bit of planning the solution presented itself.

The hanger adds color and height to the final piece.

All the pieces came together so nicely.

The piece I decided would hang so that required a bit of something at the end of the ribbon.

The large wooden ring was oiled to bring out the wood grain.

This added texture and color to the overall presentation of the weaving.

The white bead repeated the shapes and colors in the weaving itself.

It was sewn in place with some of the yarn in the piece which added to the cohesion of the elements.

I created a back for the piece to hide the knots and transitions between fibers.

I cut a piece of navy microfiber fabric just a wee bit smaller than the outside hoop.  I serged the edge to finish it off nicely.  I then hot glued it in place on each warp thread which will help those stay in place.

I have attached a credit label printed on fabric which has been hand sewn to this backing fabric.

I pinned the gallery's information tag with a safety pin.

The final piece will be revealed when the show opens next week.

Sylvia's Simple Shots

We had regimental funerals for 2 police officers killed in the line of duty recently.  It was held at the arena where thousands of officers attended from all over North America.

One was going to be a Dad this summer and both were married.  A very sad day for our city.

The young man who killed them also shot his mother and killed himself so a tragedy all the way around.

Mental health is so important and it's hard to measure when one has slipped over the edge.  Help is sometimes hard to access on an emergency basis and comes too late for some.

It is important to take care of ourselves everyday.

With my sewing machine in a desk I take cutting work to quilting on the Mondays that we get together.

It's a great time to connect with like minded souls and see the projects are working on.  I had a good visit with a former work colleague who is looking forward to more time to sew later this year as retirement becomes a reality.

I cut about 20 unPaperTowels which remain unserged as I write this.  It will happen in due course.

This green polka dot flannel is gorgeous feeling.

The left overs will go to the make up remover pad project.

This is reflected sunshine that I see from my chair just about supper time these days.

It reflects off the windows of the huge apartment building which was put up a few blocks away in the last couple of years.  Construction did not slow down during the pandemic here.

I loved how it created stars through the trees.

Warmed my heart since it still cold outside with snow on the ground.

Everyone is asking when will spring arrive. I have say I am envious as I watch a couple of my regular Youtubers planting veggies and flowers.

Last week when I visited my sister she helped with the Reusable Make Up Remover Pad project by cutting circles for the ties on the laundry bags.

I can now go ahead and make the bags and get a step closer to the end.

I should test the bags out to see how permeable they are in the washing process before I get carried away.

I will work on that next week.

We cut the circles with the Sizzix red original 4 circle die.  The second smallest make the circles about 1.5 inches in diameter then I used a circle punch for the smaller holes for the thinner cord and the larger punch on the Crop-a-Dile for the larger cord.  Love the color.

These are a couple of books that I started in the last couple of weeks but just did not finish.  I debated whether to document them but it is good know that I touched these books and made an effort to read them.

This one was great!  The Aphothecary's Garden by Jeanette Lynes presents the life of  Lavendar Fitch who lives in Belleville Ontario in Victorian times.  She lives in her childhood home with a young man which she considers as a brother as he was brought into the home when he was a baby. Her mother and father have both passed away.  Her mother was a harpist and supported her husband in his Apothecary business. 

Lavendar loves her garden which she inherited from her mother.  She learned many things about herbs and remedies at her mother's knee.  She earns a bit of living by selling her wares at the train station - the garden flowers in the summer and evergreen wreaths harvested from the woods nearby at Christmas.  

A famous medium Allegra Trout comes to Belleville accompanied by Robert Trout who is quite disfigured. She conducts tea leaf readings,  tarot card readings all the while preparing for the major event of a Mystical Extravaganza to be held all hallow's eve - October 31st.

The town is a buzz. She influences the dress of the day when the ladies want the type of dress she wears, the shoes and hats she wears.

Robert buys all of Lavendar's flowers the day they arrive at the train station. Lavendar is grateful and is intrigued by this mysterious man. 

The story has some interesting developments and has a wonderful ending.  I really enjoyed this book. 

I have not looked up the streets mentioned the book but having spent some time in Belleville I am tempted.

This is a small piece of a wool painting I saw a the Art Gallery of Albert which I visited with aunt on Friday.  The gift shop had some pieces for sale but I am not sure they were by the same artist.

We went to see the Canadian Art collected by the Sobey family.  Many old pieces in the traditional styles. 

Three of the galleries were under installation so the amount of art was limited.  

We had lunch at a restaurant nearby L'Espresso Organic Cafe - soup and panni was very good.

Sylvia's Simple Shots

Cool Water by Dianne Warren.   Another Saskatchewan story.

Juliet, Saskatchewan, is a blink-of-an-eye kind of town -- the welcome sign announces a population of 1,011 people -- and it''s easy to imagine that nothing happens on its hot and dusty streets. Situated on the edge of the Little Snake sand hills, Juliet and its inhabitants are caught in limbo between a century -- old promise of prosperity and whatever lies ahead.

But the heart of the town beats in the rich and overlapping stories of its people: 

the foundling who now owns the farm his adoptive family left him; 

the pregnant teenager and her mother, planning a fairytale wedding; 

a shy couple, well beyond middle age, struggling with the recognition of their feelings for one another; 

a camel named Antoinette; 

and the ubiquitous wind and sand that forever shift the landscape. Their stories bring the prairie desert and the town of Juliet to vivid and enduring life.

It was a different kind of book and a nice change of pace.

The sun is shining this morning and the place is bright and wonderful feeling.

I am learning a new way of living where everything has a home and it is returned there at the end of the day.  That I have only enough stuff for the space I have so that this practice can continue.

Big projects are on hold.

It means having to discern my very top priorities and concentrating on those.  

I have learned that in the past I have not cleared the stuff from one past time before moving onto another so stuff accumulated and sat around taking up precious space.

This place has space to breathe, relax and live a quieter life.   Is that what I want?

I did manage a few photo challenges this week.  Macro Mondays was Reflections so these were a couple of the shots I took.

This is a very old book which has fallen apart and I kept some of the pages to print cool stuff on them.  It's been sitting for about 6 years - am I really going to print on them?  And if I do what will I do with them?  I am no longer going to craft markets so supplies destined for those projects have to go. 

I love the depth of field I acheived in this shot.  The texture of the old book signatures are wonderful.

To me books are precious and should not be thrown away.  The ReUse center is now open so that is likely where it will go to be found by a teacher, student or other creative person.

This Y is for Yesterday book is the last of the Alphabet Series of books by Sue Grafton because she died before she wrote the Z book. 

This starts with high school antics which turn bad and I was not sure I was going to finish it.

It was better once we were with Kinsey Milhone the detective in the present.   

Crimes are committed by teenagers, some are held accountable, others are not.   Once prison sentences are done and the dues to society have been paid, one should be able to move on but those who have not paid drag those have paid down with them again.

Kinsey of course is in the middle trying to figure out the players, who did what and why things don't add up.

I did finish the book and it was okay. 

Recent Photos

This is the puzzle I am going to make this week.  It is from Eurographics Puzzles and is a reproduction of Marc Chagall's - The Blue Violinist done in 1947.  He was a Russian French painter (1887-1985) raised in the Jewish faith who spent time in Paris in the early 20th century.  He traveled extensively and lived in the in several countries during his long life.

I see that I will need a bigger space than I thought to put this one together.  I will work on that.

I hope all the pieces are there as I did acquire it second hand.  Here' s hoping.












I did some coloring this morning the gorgeous sunshine which was really warm!  Considering that it was -18C at 7:00 am.  That's enough reason to stay inside.  This will become a card.  The coloring book originally appeared in this post.

I finished this book this week.  It was different to read a book written by a man with Kabul, Afghanistan as the setting for the story.  It takes place after the Taliban has taken over the city and affected the culture and place dramatically. The two couples in the story Moshen & Zunaira - wealthy and had careers and Atiq & Musarrat - now a prison keeper with his wife very sick and dying.  It is a very difficult life.

It has made me want to research more about Afghanistan history as they had very different lives before the Taliban.  The couples were more equal it seems before and now there is a drastic contrast in their every day lives.

Yasmina Khadra is the nom de plume of the Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoulm, who is the author.  He took the feminine pseudonym to avoid submitting his manuscripts for approval by military censors while he was still in the army.



I took hundreds of photos this week in the above mentioned sunshine.

This is one of my shadow macro photos.  The object is a small black mesh half sphere in shape. Could be the top of a microphone possibly. 

I love the intersection of the actual metal mesh and the shadow the sun created.  I find the shapes that result appealing.  The dark crescent shape created by the overlapping of 2 shadows is very cool.

The Flickr Macro Monday theme this week was "Shadow".

The mosaic on the right are a few of the photos I took.  You can check out my photo stream at www.flickr.com/photos/smdpics .

I am sharing with
Mosaic Monday #75 hosted by Angie
Through my Lens #236 hosted by Mersad
My Corner of the World hosted by Betty