some of the new rugs just off the loom

I have been remiss in Blogging

I have been filleting a huge mass of bluejeans. My husband has graciously volunteered to cut them into usable strips while he stays up late watching and re-watching movies. It has taken almost the whole month to get them done. As I was taking them apart I got to thinking the zipper pulls looked very interesting. I have always saved all the labels from anything I took apart, but zipper pulls are new. I dug out the zippers from the bag I was tossing things into and clipped them out too.

My daughter and I are both of the opinion that one of something is rarely cool, but dozens of something are automatically awesome. I gave the pulls to her and she made three lovely necklaces out of them. I have convinced her to sell one on her ETSY site and I hope she can get some more done before she goes back to college soon.

I finished off the blue warp. Log cabin is a very strong warp and tends to overpower intricate patterns. It is great for playing with and I did get some nice checkerboard effects on a couple rugs. I will post pics when I get them photographed.

I got a nice long green warp wound onto the loom. I have enough rags to put on 55 yards of warp. I will be doing green for a long time I think. Most of my time now is spent cutting the rags. I sort of like to have them all in front of me when I design. I pull out this group and that group and ponder what will look best together.

I photographed half the new rugs and got the pictures squared away. My knees sort of gave out though so I will have to try to get the rest in tomorrow. I then have to get them uploaded into ETSY or Artfire.

Well back to work I guess

The summer is just flying by

I think I heard somewhere that this is supposed to be summer vacation. Ha! so far I have caned 5 chairs and one chair back and felted between 80 and 100 balls. I cannot seem to stop. Wound on 45 yards of blue and natural log cabin and with Maddie's help got it sleyed and tied on as well. Have woven three blue jean rugs and a couple flannels. I love how flannel packs down. One of the blue jean rugs I wove in a checkerboard pattern, which is very time consuming, but the result is quite lovely. That is the beauty of log cabin. Well I am off to fringe those rugs I took off the loom and maybe cut some more blue sheets.

Painted Bull

Check out Painted Bull on Artfire. She has such passion in her work and is a weaving goddess. I find her enthusiasm inspiring. I love the historian in her as well. Her weaving is certainly unique to her. I have never seen another weaver do what she does. She keeps this old weaver young :)

thanks Kid!

Spring Green show and other stuff

The show in Spring Green over the weekend was pretty good. Not quite as good as last year, but still considering the detour and the intense heat on Saturday it was a great show. I sold two rugs that I have been hauling around for 10 years now... they were not quite the oldest rugs I have, but darn close. I sold my last rug just after we had packed almost everything away.

Maddie sold almost all her felt balls and I sold a great many of my needle felted balls. One woman bought $134.00 in felt balls. I only had to take three credit cards so that was good. I am terrible at remembering all the stuff I need to call in the card transactions later so they always make me nervous. Not to mention the fact that the credit card companies nip off a little more profit each time. One guy actually bought a felt ball with one. I could not talk him out of it. Oh well. The cost of doing business. Maddie needled another 10 balls over the two days and was a nice attraction for people. I hope I can hang onto her for a while for shows. It is good to have a decorative fixture in the booth LOL (some guy called her a fixture and she asked me if I thought that was a compliment)

Puck had to work on Sunday night so it was just Maddie and me for Sunday. The weather was much cooler, but the wind was horrendous. I hung up all my heavy rugs on the tent so it would not blow away. I was nervous the whole time... On one side was a glass artist and on the other was an expensive potter... talk about being between a rock and a hard place :)

we all survived and it seemed like people were buying. My good friend Michael stayed with us for most of the day so we got to visit when the booth wasn't too crowded. He also helped us pack up, which was wonderful. He is nice and tall and can reach all the things that we short people struggle with. I forgot to bring my nice step stool. I will have to add that to the show list.

we got packed up in a little less than an hour which is great timing. We drove home and I smelled burning rubber faintly. We had the windows open so I wasn't sure it was us. I didn't see any smoke or anything so we pressed on. We stopped at McDonald's for our end of show vanilla shakes and the van was sort of burbling like it was overheating. A little steam was escaping, but the overflow tank was pretty full. I added a little water to that. We headed for home again and got on the final road to home which is a curvy back road when the heat light came on. "Oh Shit" I exclaimed and pulled off to the side of the no shoulder road. We were right on a curve. I popped the hood and checked the over flow... it was still full. bummer. I did not want to open the radiator when it was hot, fearing an explosion. I had poured most of our spare water into the overflow tank.

We waited a few minutes. Finally I decided I better try to let some steam out of the radiator. I grabbed one of my cloth utilitarian bags (grocery and whatever) and set out to open up the steaming monster. I gingerly unscrewed it and waited for the gushing water that usually boils out. Nothing... Yikes! The radiator was completely dry. Now we had a completely different problem. Maddie and I scrambled to find extra water to pour into the radiator. We had half empty water bottles that we had drunk at the show so we emptied those in. Dumped the last bit of our designated radiator water in, still not full but could at least see water in the radiator. I decided to chance it and turned the van back on. No light so I drove slowly home. We made it and it appears I did not completely wreck the engine.

I tell you if it is not one thing it's another. I spent most of the evening deleting the things I had sold off of ETSY and cursing myself for not having a better system for locating the dang rugs. It took hours to figure it all out and I had sold a rug off of Artfire too. That all is way too complicated for my poor brain.

I finally decided to create a spread sheet with all my goofy names, the descriptions of the rugs and my id numbers. I spent Monday completing the spreadsheet. Now I am ready for anything. Oh and I had sold a book from my vintage shop too so I had to get that packaged up and sent out.

Yesterday morning I steeled myself to call in the three credit card sales. I called the number followed the instructions and punched numbers in as fast as I could. The nice little automated voice told me I was not a valid merchant number and transferred me to a human. She asked for my merchant number three times and finally told me I was not valid either and to call my merchant account person to straighten it out. I called him and left a message... he called back two hours later and told me my number had worked fine when he tried it (gee I hate that) I took a deep breath and tried it again.

I apparently am too slow for the automated telephone deely and they transferred me to a person again. This time my account number went through, but it had been my first sale and I had forgotten to get her street number and zip code so that her number could be verified. In my notes it mentions that I can just use my own number and zip for stupidity like this. The girl said I couldn't, I said it was in my notes and she said what the heck. When it came to the sale amount I gave her an amount, but did not include the tax since on my crib sheet it looked like the tax was supposed to come later. She started to give me a verification and reference number and I asked if she needed the tax amount. She sounded a little confused, I explained that I had not added the tax on the amount I had given her. She claimed it would be fine, but I have a feeling I lost the tax amount on that one.

I went to do the next two on my own. Dialed the number for the fourth time... got all the way through one and got a message that it was declined... Panic!

Called the number for the fifth time and did the other transaction... yippee that one went in just fine, grabbed the other one and tried it again... barely beat the automation timing, but this time it went through just fine so it only took me 4 hours to enter three credit card transactions. I sure hope I get better at that


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Dyed some wool for felt balls and got Maddie's balls and some of my own into the washer. All that wool and balls are now drying. Took picture of the rugs that are not yet on ETSY this morning and got them edited and resized for the site.

Ordered 35 more little connectors for my grid display system. We discovered after we were at the show on Saturday that we were about 25 connectors short. Maddie and Puck zip tied the heck out of the grids and it held together pretty well. I will be prepared for the next show. The problem is that because I now am selling online I need to be able to find the dang rugs if I sell them so we set up a rack in the basement. That used up my connectors and now I am short.

Blasted through that red warp

I finished the red warp a couple days ago. I think I got 12 rugs off that warp. It was not a very big one. I am pretty low on red rags right now. Next I think will be a yellow and orange warp. I only have a couple yellow rugs in stock so I really need some more with shows coming up soon. I ordered a mess of color from Edgemont yarns which should be here in a couple days. They are very quick at shipping.

I have been cutting yellow and orange rags as quickly as I can.

We were up north over the weekend to see our daughter in a play. We stayed with my baby sister who gave me two garbage bags full of blue jeans. Tonight I am cutting the seams out of as many of those as I can so Puck can cut them into strips. My business is really a family affair :)

Out with the Blue in with the Red

Finished my blue warp a couple weeks ago, got them finished, priced, measured and photographed. Spent the next few weeks listing and now finally have all but about 7 rugs listed. Now it is on to the next warp. I am pretty low on Red rugs right now so that will be my next batch of rugs. I have my first art fair at the end of June and need to build stock.



This is the truest picture of the warp wound on the the sectional beam of the loom. It is a red and black Log Cabin pattern





This shows the warp all laid out. After I wind on the required amount of warp I pull the threads up over the beam and double check to see that they are all accounted for. I arrange them in the correct pattern and tape the threads to the beam to keep them in place





My husband or daughter help me pull the threads through the heddles and we can get it done fairly quickly once we get into a rhythm. Once that is done I sley the reed. That means pulling each of the threads through the reed. It has gotten to be rather challenging now that I am relying more and more on my glasses to see the dang slots. I did mess up and skipped one slot, but it was close to and end thank heavens and after I took everything apart it was not terribly difficult to fix. They always say that if you want to teach someone to weave have them do the weaving first to get them hooked and then teach them to warp up the loom. If you had to warp up a loom before you had ever woven anything I rather think no one would take it up. :)





I just added this little picture to show the lovely gears on my loom. It is dusty and industrial looking, but I really love my loom.

In between warping I have been sewing rags together and cutting rags on my Fraser cutter. It is a hand cranked cutter which uses human energy to work :)