Sunday, September 16, 2007

Weave-It

Silver? eh, ok.......Gold? ho hum......Copper?.......WOW!

Yeah, I've got a thing for copper. My shower/jacuzzi area in the bath has walls of copper. My cook top is surrounded in copper. Light fixtures, lamps, outlets, switch plates, heating vents, nick knacks and doodads adorn the Hermitage in all their coppery goodness. I've been knitting, wrapping, winding and crocheting copper for as long as I can remember. This summer I began weaving it.

Ahhhhh the intercourse of Copper and a tiny Weave-It loom.


What can I say? This little box tickles me to no end.

Weave-It Looms are fab. You can readily find them at estate sales, and you can now buy them again online. A few years back some chick bought the rights and is selling them again. I believe hers are made of wood. From what I can tell, the vintage ones only came in two sizes 4 inch and 2 inch, she sells them in several sizes and rectangular ones as well.

The little box above was made with 5 squares from a 2 inch loom. Just in case you don't know what a Weave-It looks like here's a pic of a 4 inch one. The pieces beneath the loom were made with embroidery floss.




And what could be better than a 4 inch Weave-It? How about a 18 inch loom?



I made this loom a couple weeks ago. Aside from the stick woven rugs that will be spewing forth this winter, I'm thinking a few Weave-It rugs will being spewing too.



These squares were made with Mother Load stash.

And just because I could, I did this to one of the patio tables.



We spend a lot of time outside. We often eat outside, and nothing bothers me more......ok there are some things that bother me more, but work with me here.....nothing bothers me more than the clanging of a glasses on a metal table. And you know how impossible it is to have a table cloth on a table outside without using those dorky clips, so I took some gimp (the stuff you use to make lanyards and key chains out of at camp) and wove the table top. The gimp has just enough thickness to it to keep the glass bottoms from touching the metal, but is thin enough so the surface is flat and your glass won't tip or "catch" on the edge of the gimp. Three other bonus features, it's washable, can be dried after the rain, and while everyone else on earth has a mesh, black metal table top, no one has one like mine! :-)

I haven't decided about finishing the ends yet, the jury is still out. Some people like the "fringe", some don't. If I decide to keep the fringe obviously I'll cut it all even, if not, I'll make it disappear underneath the lip. What do you think? Fringe? No fringe?

Plans for the larger round table are on the list of things to do. I'm thinking of some wild more colorful zigzags radiating from the center umbrella hole. I'll prob'ly do the chairs that match the round table too, but that is waaaaay down on the list, prob'ly next summer.

Hemp Rope Rug

As promised yesterday, another post catching you guys up on some of the fibery stuff that has been happening around here.

Not sure if I mentioned it here before, but I've been working on a rug for the patio for a couple months now. Haven't touched it for over a month. I'm using a hemp rope that I picked up at an estate sale (go figure) several years ago. I got 3 kegs of this for 50 cents each. Duh! Snatched that up in a hurry! LOL

I'm making the rug in random pieces of knitting, crochet, and a couple kinds of weaving. At some point, when I run out of rope I guess, I'll figure out exactly how I'll place the pieces. In the pic I just have them sort of laid out NOT in any particular way, it's just so I could get them all in a photo. I plan on joining them and making a border with a heavy coarse cotton that is also, of course, an estate sale find.



I'm finding it very interesting how much the texture of the stitches/technique used plays havoc on the color of the pieces. I kid you not, they are all the same color from the same keg!

Here's the first piece I made, it's just a little 4ft spiral crocheted rug for in front of the door. Nothin special, I just wanted to get a feel for the rope.



Things I've learned so far:
  • Knitting rope is a helluva lot easier on the hands than crocheting it. I have to use a leather glove while I crochet, think rope burns, and blisters. Knitting however causes no such problems. Weaving is the bomb.
  • The hardest, think most physical, aspect of working with rope is getting the rope to feed off the keg. If you just pull it from the top you'll get all kinked up pretty quickly, you have to pull or "roll" the rope off the keg. Pulling from the center as in a center pull ball of yarn doesn't work either.
  • Rope, just like wire or any other stiffer type material, will only "conform" to the size it wants to. In other words, it doesn't matter that the actual loop size of the knitting is the size I'd get with #50 needles, my #19 work just fine and are soooo much easier to hold.
  • Hemp rope is smelly, dirty, drops all manner of vegetable matter in your lap, and has splinters......be careful and do this outside.
  • After it has been worked and has been outside for a day or two, hemp rope is "soft", cushy, doesn't shed or drop junk, and doesn't smell. :-)
I really, really, like making this rug. I'm eager to see how it turns out. I guess I'll have to get busy though, I won't sit out there when it's 20 degrees just to knit some rope!

Oh, one other thing, not sure how well you can see it in the pic but the shorter "lighter" strip that is near the top left......I did that in stick weaving. First time ever for stick weaving. LOVE the technique. Modified it a little bit by not actually using any sticks, just made the ends of the rope a little stiffer with some duct tape.....Red Green would have been proud. Expect to see some "stick" woven rugs emerging from this house this winter, it will be a fabulous use for some of the heavy cotton from the "mother load".