Category Archives: Photographs

Dear Diary: Today Our Son Built His First Battlemech

When I dragged myself out of bed today, I found HRH and the boy in the living room working with Lego, as usual. There was a robot on the table.

“Hey, nice robot,” I said.

“Yeah!” the boy said, excited, and proceeded to show me all the features, including a tiny helmeted Lego man sitting inside the robot’s head in front of a viewscreen. I looked at HRH, who looked back at me.

“I had nothing to do with this,” he said. “It was, ‘Hey, Dada, I want to make a robot. With guns. And a driver.’ So I said okay, and we designed it together. Dear Diary: Today my son built his first battlemech.”

The boy started telling me a story about it, and I said, “Wait wait wait: You’re telling me that this robot hangs from the bottom of a plane, from a rack? And the driver climbs down to sit in it? And then it’s released from the rack and falls to the earth to do what it needs to do?”

“Yes!” the boy said.

HRH and I exchanged a glance again, one of those wide-eyed ‘no I don’t know where he came up with all of this’ looks that we can’t help but trade now and again. Because, really, he’s had no exposure to battlemechs yet, unless one of you has been secretly showing him mech-based anime or something. The hanging from a plane thing is more steampunk, another genre he hasn’t had exposure to (beyond thematic elements in Miyazaki films) though knowing him, I’m surprised the robot doesn’t hang from a dirigible.

We’re kind of proud.

In Which She Natters About The New Rigid Heddle Loom

So what was using the new rigid heddle loom like, when I was at my parents’ house?

When I told Ceri that the warping had gone really quickly on the new loom but the actual weaving was slower, she mused that it was a case of “be careful what you wish for.” Not so much “be careful what you wish for,” I told her, as “wait to see the reed before you choose a really fluffy yarn that might not fit, moron.” (She laughed, bless her.) Seriously, it was a classic case of not using the right material for the equipment you have. Or would have later that day. (Of course I can knit bulky yarn on size 3 dpns! It will just be… challenging.)

The yarn I chose before I saw the reed was a soft acrylic called Homespun, and it’s essentially a low-twist single wrapped with a very thin binder thread. It’s such a pretty yarn that I was cranky about how the reed was yanking it around; it got caught against itself or on the slightly rough edges of the reed a lot so I had to manually poke the shed into place thread by thread with my fingers each time I changed the heddle position. Not even that got me down, though. It got faster as I went, because I got used to how roughly I could handle both the yarn and the reed while poking the shed into place. With a lower dpi reed, it would slide beautifully. Kromski reeds are over $50 each, but the Ashford ones fit beautifully (as many Kromski weavers have attested to online, thank goodness) and the Ashfords are $25 plus shipping. We don’t have a shop that reps Ashford in Montreal, but there is a woman in Pointe-Claire who is a private rep. I’ve already talked to her about buying 5 and 7.5 dpi reeds to supplement the 10 dpi reed that came with the loom, as I want to use heavier yarns for my upcoming projects, and the fluffy Homespun I used for the sample, too. I was on the fence about one or the other when she pointed out that shipping was going to be the same whether I ordered one or two, so both it is. She says she uses the 7.5 dpi reed most often, switching to the 5 dpi for thicker handspun. It’s good to know I’m on the right track. Also, hurrah, I have ordered a real heddle hook and a reed-sleying hook! No more trying to fit the round crochet hook through a narrow slot!

I sat cross-legged on the floor with it flat in front of me for the first bit, but wove most of it with the loom propped almost vertical against a wingback chair, like a tapestry loom. If I’d known how much I would enjoy weaving with my frame upright, I might have seriously looked at the tapestry looms that occasionally pop up in the marketplace forums on Ravelry.

Anyway.

Back home, I went out and bought new yarn (the definition of irony is searching high and low in Oakville/Burlington for two specific yarns in specific colourways and not finding them, then locating them by accident in the local Zellers at home), thinking to make a blanket as a gift for the Wiccaning I’m performing this weekend. I made sure it was a lighter-weight yarn so I wouldn’t have the sticking-in-the-reed issues I had with the Homespun. I ended up with Bernat Softee Baby, which is a sport DK weight, and lovely, light and soft to touch in the ball, but tangled terribly while I was windign it into a centre-pull ball and several times when I was warping, necessitating an emergency trip back to Zellers to days later to buy a second ball. And it doesn’t stick in the reed. Instead, because it’s slightly fuzzy and is made of thin, thin plies, it shreds as the heddle moves up and down. I’ve had two warp threads break already. On top of that I’m having tension issues, and I suspect the finished product will be something I do not want to give to anyone. Besides, it’s not going to be ready for today, because I had revisions on a freelance project that ate up half a day and lost time; and on top of that I had to rearrange the layout of the back warp rod, which meant I had to take the back warp off and sort out all my loops, redistribute them among the apron rod ties, then slide it back on. This did not help my tension issues. I think it’s about a third done.

The accent yarn I’m using, Bernat Satin, is fine, though. Two inch-wide stripes warped along the length, two to be woven in across the width. It’s a tiny bit thicker, not as fuzzy, and it’s holding up much better than the Softee Baby stuff.

Here it is, warped and beamed and ready to go:

I would have taken more pictures of the project in its third-complete state for you, but our digital camera has suddenly developed thin lines across the image, like horizontal blinds. Not only does it have lines across the entire image, it can’t seem to calculate the proper light balance any more. It was fine Thursday night, but when I picked it up to take a photo Friday morning, poof. No accident, no misuse, nothing; just mysteriously no longer functioning properly. I looked it up, and apparently this is due to a faulty sensor used in production around 2004; there was a big thing about this a couple of years ago when they all started failing. Our camera is three years old, but I’m going to call Canon on Monday morning anyway, and ask them what they can do about it. If they can’t or won’t do anything, then a new one is only about $130, and we’ll replace it when our tax refund comes in.

Anyway, there’s about a foot woven. I’m using it horizontally instead of vertically like I did at my parents’ house: I’ve clamped it to the coffee table, and I sit on the chesterfield to weave here. I might have gotten more done yesterday, but a new project landed and I got half of that done instead, because I’ll finish it Monday morning in time to invoice for it. I can always mail the blanket to the family, if it’s suitable for gifting when I get it off the loom next week.

Home Again

I’m back from my week with my parents, being company and an extra pair of hands for my mum, who had a hip replacement. She’s doing impressively well, and thank you, everyone who asked!

Two things:

First, while I was there I read pretty much a book a day. Here’s what I inhaled:

Boneshaker, Cherie Priest
Safe-Keeper’s Secret, Sharon Shinn
The Red Door, Charles Todd
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley
The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag, Alan Bradley
Chill, Elizabeth Bear
Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman
Blackout, Connie Willis

And I’m two-thirds of the way through Sarah Monette’s Corambis, too.

Second, and perhaps what most of you are waiting impatiently for, is the loom.

This is what it looks like, all folded up (with a Useful Cat for scale):

And when unfolded (Helpful Cat is Helpful):

There are no pictures of what it looks like when warped, but I’m sure if we wait long enough, that will occur, yes?

This is what the 16×16″ sample square I wove when I got it, though:

That’s Lion Brand Homespun; the cream colour is Deco, and the variegated colourway is Tudor. It’s incredibly soft. It is also not appropriate for a 10 dpi reed, because it’s about 6.5 wpi and bumpy like a boucle, so it kept catching on the slightly rough edges of the plastic reed. My fault; I hadn’t seen the reed before I chose the yarn for my experiment, and the grist of the yarn really calls for a reed with more space between the dents (a lower dpi). The yarn is also very fluffy, which I think contributed to the catching issue. Still, it made a spectacular fabric that’s warm and drapes beautifully, and I’m going to use it again when I get a new reed with a lower dpi. (Which will be very soon; my local Ashford dealer is checking stock for me right now. Yes, Ashford; their much-less-expensive-than-Kromski-reeds fit the Harps, hurrah.)

There you are. What am I using the sample square for? Well, the boy has already used it to cover two very feverish stuffed bunnies to help them get better, every cat as curled up on it at least once, and Nixie was tucked in with it last night. It is nothing if not versatile.

Fifty-Eight Months Old!

One of the boy’s favourite things to do this past month was check on Molly the barn owl who had laid her first clutch of eggs in California. Her nesting box has a webcam in it, and it’s been really interesting to watch the process. Every morning before he went to school and every day as soon as he got home, and sometimes before bed, too, he’d ask to watch her. He saw the first couple of owlets once they’d hatched, and watched a recorded video of the third hatching. He really enjoyed flipping through the other recordings available, particularly of the male owl dropping, and of Molly eating various rodents and rabbits with great gusto. “Let’s watch the one where she eats the rat!” he’d say, and enjoy the somewhat grisly performance with great relish. “What’s that crunch sound?” he said the first time he saw it. “That’s the rat tearing apart,” I said. “Oh, good,” he said, and enjoyed it all the more. He learned how to write ‘owlet’, too:

(I am just as tickled that one of the words he knows how to write on his own is ‘owlet’ as I was when the word ‘book’ was among the first five words he learned to say.)

His writing is really firming up, and so is his reading. He can get two or three pages into a picture book before he decides it’s too much effort and tells me to finish it on my own. I find it interesting that when he writes his name, the first and third letters are capitalsed, but the second and fourth are lowercase. I’m amused by his vocabulary, too. In his stories, for example, ships don’t come back to be fixed, they “return for repairs.” The stories he tells and his imaginative play are becoming ever richer; they start in the morning, especially when he’s got his shoes and coat on and is saying goodbye to me, and carry on in the car with HRH all the way to school. Sometimes he gets distracted by the stories and loses sight of what he’s supposed to be concentrating on. He’s getting really scary-good at Lego. I am told that preschool has to invest in more to keep up with him. Heck, at the rate we’re going, we’ll have to invest in more to keep up with him. (And with HRH building all sorts of spaceships at the boy’s command.)

When the winter boots were put away we discovered that last fall’s shoes barely fit him, so he has new ones now. They’re size 11 shoes, which means that he grew two shoes sizes over the winter. He’s in size 4 clothes, edging into size 5 tops. The naps are pretty much a thing of the past, but that doesn’t stop us from gently insisting on a lie-down after lunch on weekends. On the days when he doesn’t have even a brief a nap at preschool, he sometimes falls asleep in the car on the way home.

It’s great to see his abilities improve by comparing last year’s seasonal arts and crafts projects with this year’s. He brings home spring or Easter crafts and I think about last year’s, and it’s so easy to see how much more sophisticated the current ones are. His current favourite movie is The Princess and the Frog, which is growing on me after a somewhat neutral response to it when I saw it in the theatre at Christmas. The current favourite books are his collection of Henry and Mudge stories, possibly because he’s learning to read them and so is rediscovering them in a way. He mouths the words while I read them.

Just before Easter we were in a pharmacy and he saw the racks of stuffed animals alongside the chocolate. “Blackie needs a little friend,” he confided in me. “He has lots,” I pointed out. And it is true, there is a minor collection of rabbits in various sizes that he has amassed from various places. “No, he needs a new friend for Easter,” I was told. I almost picked one up when buying the chocolate eggs for our hunt, but decided against it. A good thing, too, because he ended up coaxing his grandma into buying another black and white one while they were out shopping on Easter weekend instead. So he has a new bunny about whom we had a serious discussion concerning names. He wanted to name it Blackie-Whitey, which would have been confusing since we already have one. I got him to agree to Whitey-Blackie. And then we had a couple of talks over the next couple of days about how we don’t stop playing with our old friends when we have new ones; Blackie isn’t allowed to be left behind just because there’s a fluffy, soft, new bunny with a shiny ribbon in the house. He’s handed it very well, actually: they take turns cuddling with him, or he has me take both out of his room at night ( “Mama,” he said, “please take my bunnies, because they are being disturbing and keeping me awake.”) And he left both at home on his first day back at school after Easter. We were concerned that he was going to glom onto it, and we’ve already done some work on getting him to stop bringing Blackie everywhere, but he’s been very good about it all.

And of course, the biggest news this past month: NEW BIKE! FIRST TWO-WHEELER!

He’s really growing fast. I say that every other month, I know, but that’s because I marvel continually at how steep the learning curve is for children, and how rapidly they assimilate new information.

Two months till he’s five years old. Just under five months till kindergarten. I’m going to stop the monthly posts on his fifth birthday, and just stay with random boy-themed posts when they come up.

Mission Accomplished

The bike scored on Kijiji has been received by the intended recipient. I learned this from hearing the boy yelling, “Mama, thank you for my bicycle!” through the back door.

He helped HRH put the training wheels on (they won’t be there long; both HRH and I are agreed that they can cause more problems than they solve), practised getting on and off, and then HRH took it round the front while the boy and I went into the garage to find his helmet. (Erm. We’ll need to replace that this summer.)

And off we went:

Only two wipeouts, mostly because he stopped watching where he was going on a slope. But there will be plenty more. There are so many driveways on our street that the sidewalk is sloped half the time, which made for wobbly steering and a hard time staying off the lower training wheel. HRH plans to take him to the old school round the corner to let him go on the flat playground surface; that will make balancing (and steering!) easier for him.

Zoom:

I love the blur on that picture. He wasn’t going fast, but I love the focus and the joy on his face.

There will really be no keeping up with him now.

The Pillow Covers That Will Be Pillow Covers

Although the finished fabric is very soft… no no no. Pillow covers. Not a scarf. I do not need any more scarves.

It took me about six hours over four days to warp the loom. I did a direct warp on it again, but it’s too unreliable and creates crossed threads. This is plain weave. I did consider trying twill for the first time, but I wanted to see what kind of a pattern the variegated yarn made on its own. It’s created a sort of mock plaid, very subtle and organic. I like it a lot.

I really, really enjoy weaving. It’s a pity that three-quarters of the time devoted to each project isn’t the actual weaving part.

Now I’ll wash and block it, then machine-sew two lines of running stitch down the middle right next to one another and cut the fabric between them so I have two squares, and cut the fringe off (that’s not true fringe, it’s loom waste left over from the warp tied onto the loom). Then I’ll need to decide if I want this to be one single cover with the woven fabric on both sides, or two covers with one woven panel for the front and and one solid fabric panel on the back of each. I think I’ll go with the latter.

Next, I think I’ll try weaving a stole or wrap the full width of the loom. I think it has about an eighteen to twenty-inch weaving width, but the problem will be missing heddles on the shafts; on a project twelve inches wide I had only five heddles left empty on the first and fourth shafts, although there were about ten to fifteen each on the middle two. I can order replacement heddles, but I’m trying to stay away from my credit card. Maybe there’s somewhere local that I don’t know about, despite thorough Googling. I think I’m finally going to have to contact the local guild for information.

Weaving Experiment No. 2: The Pillow Covers That May Be A Scarf

The idea for this project was to use the lovely Red Heart Collage yarn in the Landscape Green colourway. Yes, I bought this yarn because I loved it, and then had to think up a project. Since one of the things I have from my grandfather’s loom is a pillow, I thought a pillow cover would be nice.

And yes, I am stunned to make the statement, “I love this Red Heart yarn.” Most Red Heart is scratchy and awful. This is incredibly soft and flowy. It’s a two ply: one ply is green, and the other shades from a pale pink through pale blue through hyacinth blue-violet. It’s spectacular. I knew I wanted to see how it would transition in a woven piece.

I chose an ecru linen colour of South Maid crochet cotton as my warp, and never again. The Royale crochet cotton was bad enough because it stuck to itself and a bundle of it wouldn’t comb out or straighten, but apart from the sticking not-flowing behaviour previously exhibited by crochet cotton, a few of the the South Maid strands shredded before I even got them threaded through the heddles. It’s a good thing I decided to thread floating selvedges; I ended up using those as replacement warp threads. I threaded lengths of the Red Heart through the reed for floating selvedges instead. I know now to measure at least five to ten extra warp threads and have them in reserve on the edges in case of fraying or breakage. Also, I’m just going to stop using crochet cotton. I don’t like the finish on it.

There were one hundred and fifty-two warp threads on this project, threaded through four shafts in rotating order. Gah. Making sure everything was in the right place in the right order took a lot of focus and was really energy-consuming. The good thing is I only made one mistake and it involved threading two heddles in a row on shaft 4, which meant I could just pull one out and rethread it further on, leaving the extra heddle loose in the warp. (It’s not a crisis, like missing a heddle somewhere in the middle would have been. Gah. That would require undoing however many threads I’d gone on to do afterwards, and redoing them all in the correct order. I had a taste of that when I threaded the warp for the sample scarf last week, thank you.) It is a pity that the prep takes longer than the actual weaving. Books tell me to embrace it as part of the process, and I’m trying, but it’s not as much fun. I do find it interesting, just not as rewarding. Also, I can totally understand the whole ‘weavers have bad eyesight and backs’ thing.

The floating selvedges were a very successful experiment, and I shall do this again regularly. Floating selvedges are extra warp threads that threaded through the reed on the beater but not through heddles, so they aren’t raised at any time; they stay in a neutral position. You wrap your weft around them, and they stabilize the edges as well as theoretically reducing the pull-in problem.

Due to a not very thorough thinking-out of the warping process, this piece is much longer than I expected it to be. I’d originally planned for a 12″ x 12″ pillow cover, doubled to cover both sides, so a 12″ x 24″ piece of cloth. The first warp I started measuring on Friday night seemed way too short, what with loom waste, so I doubled it. In the end I realised that while I was measuring the warp I was thinking I’d doubled it, but I was also doubling the loom waste, which I’d overestimated to make sure I’d have enough room to begin with. Oops. If I measure carefully I might get two smaller pillow covers out of it, or I could do one side the woven fabric and the other side in a plain material and get three out of it. There are options.

Of course, because I really fell in love with the fabric when I took it off the loom (so soft! so drapey!) and immediately wrapped it around my neck like a big thick scarf, I may have to weave something else for throw pillows.

I am so pleased with this. I’m going to try a small sample square using the Red Heart for both warp and weft next, to see what happens to the lovely colour gradation. The crochet cotton was fine for test runs, but it’s not the look I’m going for now.

Project stats:

Warping: Nine hours
Weaving: Five hours
Finishing: One hour

Warp: about 300 yards
Weft: about 100 yards

Finished measurements: 11.5″ x 56″