Say You Want a Weavolution....

The future online weaving community website - Weavolution - has been holding fundraising auctions, and the latest round has been on eBay. I managed to win this one, a batch of natural color wool (probably).



This is going to be great - I got 3. 5 pounds. I can continue with my wool dye painting and not worry about it costing a lot. The weight of the yarn is great for weaving, so it's all good. Great price, great wool (probably). Good times.

More Wool Painting and My First Sock

I had some momentum from my first success with dye painting wool with Procion dyes, so I decided to try a different color palette. I had some Lamb's Pride Prairie Silk that I got on sale, and the color was called "Dough". Now I really don't want anything knitted or otherwise that is the color of dough, so I figured it could only get better whatever I did. I used the colors olive drab (sage), oxblood red (a nice rich warm red), rust orange, purple, bronze, and gold. I painted the skeins one by one and steamed them in the crockpot one by one too, so this whole process probably took about 3 or 4 days. I didn't use every color every time either. It was nice to just go where the colors took me, and I love how they turned out. I will probably knit something with these skeins included, but not the only yarn used. I like to mix things up - that's the weaver in me.




And, last night I finished my first knitted sock. It's a training sock. It's not pretty. But it's my first sock, and I love it. I used some Dale's Baby Ull that I had in the stash. I only had enough for one sock, but that's ok. I'll probably get some more and do the second sock. Eventually.



Meanwhile, I have to finish a chenille scarf warp, and get another special order scarf started. So much fiber, so little time!

Pattern magnets are ordered!

Is this cool or what?

I found this story on the New York Times online yesterday. I'd never looked at T Magazine before. It seems to be a blog within the online newspaper. Anyway, there was this story about pattern magnets designed by a Japanese computer scientist who also teaches at Musashino Art University by the name of Asao Tokolo. I was smitten.





The Tokolo Pattern Magnets can be arranged in an endless number of combinations and every edge will always match every other edge. The mind boggles. Immediately I started thinking about plugging the designs into a weave analysis program and coming up with tons of really beautiful fabric designs.

If I could only figure out where to get a set of these I would be a happy camper. So far, my web searches have yielded a bunch of Japanese language websites. Sigh.