Yarn Pirate Shop →

Aaaaaaaaah

That is a huge sigh of relief and happiness. I am DONE with my Bradley Birth academic package. I should be approved as a provisional teacher in a few weeks. I had to read a ton of books and write a bunch of book reports, amongst other things. Perhaps I procrastinated a wee bit on those book reports, but whatever. They’re done now. So if you know any pregnant ladies in the Seattle area (or preferably North of Seattle, like Everett/Marysville/Snohomish) tell them about me! Bradley classes usually cost around $300 for 12 weeks, but since I’m not a fully accredited teacher yet I’m going to offer my classes for quite a bit less. I have to teach 2 full series of classes before I can become fully accredited. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also kind of a nervous wreck about it. And now that the holidays are over I’m starting the La Leche League leader application process. So let’s change the subject to weaving, shall we?

I haven’t had a ton of time to play with my loom in the last week, but I’ve snuck in a little weaving here and there. I got bored with my original weft so I took a break and tried out some handspun instead. Weaving with handspun was the main reason I wanted a loom. I’ve seen some amazing handspun, handwoven scarves on flickr. Here are some beautiful examples. I went through my handspun stash searching for the many leftover bits of green handspun I saved from this scarf but all I could find was some itchy, overspun mohair. I think I threw all of my scraps away when i was pregnant. Darn crazy pregnancy hormones. I tried the mohair anyway, and even though it is possibly the itchiest, scratchiest piece of fabric ever woven, I think it’s beautiful. In fact, I’m itching (yuk, yuk, yuk) to weave an entire scarf with handspun.

Here are a few more practice shots. These are left over bits of sock yarn. The patterns on the left are really easy to do. You weave a flat stick through the warp behind the heddle and make a mini space to pass the weft through. I’m really just dinking around, trying to use up my miles and miles of green warp so I can start a real project…

I’ve got some Louet Gems merino in “ginger” and some handspun singles lined up for my first official weaving project. I’m going to make a scarf, about 12 inches wide and 60 inches long. The Louet will be the warp and the handspun the weft. I am very eager to start this!

After my scarf I want to try weaving with hemp. I thought I’d try a table runner or some place mats. This is AllHemp. I’ve always wanted to try working with hemp and now that I have some, I can’t believe people knit with this stuff! It would kill my hands. I think it will be great for weaving though. It feels like really, really nice twine. Heh. Like twine Martha Stewart would tie up little boxes of homemade cookies with.

I think I have enough projects lined up to keep me busy for a while :). Have a great weekend!

H turned 10 months old a few weeks ago. There is so much going on with him it’s hard to keep track of everything! He started cruising on December 5th. Since then it’s been a whole new world of things to get in to and danger to experiment with. Not long after cruising came climbing. When I was pregnant people warned me about how much little boys love to climb, but I never expected to see my sweet little 10 month old baby pushing a box over to the couch so he could climb up and get daddy’s iphone. So yeah, he’s doing that too.

His language development continues to fascinate me. He’s started signing a little. He can sign “all done” and he’s working on “more”. I’d really like him to learn “please” so he can do that instead of screaming at me when he wants something but perhaps the concept of “please” is a little beyond his understanding :). He loves to mimic sounds and inflections that he hears in conversations. He has a toy phone that he will kind of say “hello?” into. When we were looking out the window at all of the snow and talking about it he got very excited and started saying “sssssssssss!”. He’s also started responding to questions with a very cute “yeah!”. Since he responds to every question the same way conversations with H can be very amusing. “Are you going to teach your uncle how to play Guitar Hero?” “Yeah!!!”

Mr. Yarn Pirate has been on vacation for the last two weeks so there has been some male bonding going on. Lots of tickles and laughing and some very cozy looking naps on the couch. Daddy has even gotten H to sleep a few times without any assistance from my boobs.  Awesome!

H’s first Christmas was fun. It was a long day for him with lots of family to see. Even though his naps were out of whack he was happy most of the day and had a great time. He’s so easygoing. I’m lucky.

He opened presents and tried to eat wrapping paper. He played with empty boxes. He got his first taste of a cookie, which resulted in him jumping up and down, saying “yeah! yeah! yeah!” and begging for more.

My little baby is getting so big. He’s thinning out and getting really, really tall. Most of his adorable fat rolls are gone. I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by.  I hope 2009 brings us continued health and happiness, and maybe some hair for Mr.  I Have Less Hair Now Than I Did When I Was Born (aka H).  And Perhaps 2009 will bring us another bun in the oven.  We’ll have to wait and see how I feel about that come August.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Mr. Yarn Pirate got me a loom for Christmas. I’ve wanted one for a few years but I’ve always felt kind of guilty about spending the money on one. It’s not like I don’t have enough fibery pursuits to keep me busy, not to mention the new spinning wheel I ordered this summer that should be here in a few weeks.

Since my beloved bought it for me though I don’t have to feel guilty. I just get to have fun. It’s a 32 inch Kromski Harp. This is a rigid heddle loom, which is what I wanted. I don’t have the space for a big-ass floor loom, and since I’ve never even woven before I thought this would be a good way to get started.

You know what I learned today? It is really, really hard to learn a new skill with a baby in the mix. Even with H, who is unbelievably mellow and content, it took me several hours to make sense of the instructions and FIVE FREAKING HOURS to warp the loom. Those 5 hours were broken up by many nursing sessions and baby snuggles but still. 5 hours. In those 5 hours I messed up my calculations and wound up with too few ends and too much warp but I made do. Once I had that sucker warped the actual weaving was easy and fun.

I’m using some of my own handdyed BFL sock yarn for this project. All of the instructions say to use waste yarn or something you don’t care about to learn on. I don’t believe in doing that. I think when you’re learning a new skill, particularly a tactile art like knitting, spinning or weaving, you should use the best materials you can afford. Use something you love. It’s more fun and it motivates you to keep going. For this project I’m using a semi-solid green for the warp and a variegated blue/olive/green for the weft. I love how it’s making skinny little stripes! I don’t really know what I’m doing yet. At some point I should probably take a weaving class or something. It will be nice when it becomes intuitive and my movements more fluid. Right now it’s a lot of starting and stopping and swearing.