Kelly Casanova Weaving Lessons

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Woven lap blanket

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A lot of the things I make by hand are a labour of love these days and this blanket definitely falls into that category!
This was my first double weave project on the rigid heddle loom. A brief explanation: The loom usually has one heddle to weave cloth a certain width and in a single layer. Add a double heddle kit (giving you now two heddles instead of one) and you can weave double the width of cloth. The idea of this really appealed to me, as my loom is 60cm wide which is not wide enough for a blanket.


Well, what a steep learning curve! There is not a lot of information about double weave available and it took me a long time (hours in fact) to get the loom warped (normally takes 20 – 30 minutes) and getting all the heddles threaded was a strain on my back. Did I mention my back injury has flared up again? Anyway, once I got to the actual weaving I encountered more issues and re-started twice before I felt comfortable with what I was doing.
The weaving took a long time too. When I finished and took it off the loom I found a lot of floats (threads that didn’t catch in the weaving pattern and so just “float” on the surface of the work) on the underside which was disappointing – they don’t look good and take a potentially professional looking piece to a somewhat amateur piece. 
The story ends well. The blanket isn’t what I hoped it would be but it was an excellent learning exercise (not to mention one in patience!) and it’s a terrifically warm and cosy lap blanket that has been used nearly every day. Success? Sort of!

The specs in case you’re a weaver – 
10ply woollen yarn (didn’t record the amount, silly me)
7.5 dpi
60cm Ashford rigid heddle loom

Will I make another blanket? Oh yes I will! Will it be double weave? Oh no it won’t! It will be panels which I will join – I know the seams will show but it has to be easier than double weave!

Linking up with Ginny’s Yarn along šŸ™‚

Progress

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I submitted my fifth assignment during the week for the photography course I’m doing and am happy to say that I’m powering along, soon I’ll be to the half way mark. 

This was a challenging “low key” image. I’m loving trying new things with the camera.

We have had so much rain over the past week that the garden is like a different space now. It’s so great to be going into Summer with a green garden and full rain tank.


The vegetable garden is an assortment of things mostly grown from seed. Tomatoes are coming and we just ate some of the first dwarf beans today, good stuff!

The first week of Advent

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I love Advent, it’s a time of much hope, promise and renewal of faith. It’s also an opportunity to change the home environment in preparation for Christmas and I find our home becomes joyfully active!

We invited some friends for an Advent craft morning during the week and it was a great success. I thought I would share with you some of the activities we did.
These little nativity silhouette jars worked a treat and are easy and cost effective to make.

All you need is a jar with a lid and a battery operated candle to fit inside. I got my supplies at an Asian discount store. You can choose what to put on the outside of the jar to create the silhouette. One of my girls cut out the letters for Jesus, another one cut a nativity scene out of card stock and another printed the nativity scene from here, coloured it in and glued it on. You can add ribbon, stars or whatever you like just by glueing or tying on the extras.

Another activity we did was saint ornaments for the tree. We don’t have a tree yet, so they’re just hanging for now. I neglected to take a photo of our friend’s ornaments, but here are some of ours. I bought the PDF for this activity from Catholic Icing and it’s well worth the few dollars spent.



During the week my 9 year old daughter (who loves to draw but mostly within her comfort zone) did a video tutorial by Shoo Rayner for drawing a gingerbread house. Shoo has heaps of great tutorials for drawing and has a relaxed, humorous style. My daughter was reluctant to try the tutorial, so I said I was going to do it myself – pretty soon she had her drawing pad out and was immersed in the activity. Her drawing turned out better than mine! (Mine is on the left). 


I wonder what Advent fun we will get up to next week?


Some favourite photos from this week

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Black and white.

Colour. 

I often lament that I live in part of a conglomeration of suburbs that sometimes stretch on endlessly with little to differentiate between them. I think “if I lived on the coast, as I dream I will one day, I could take the most magnificent photos!” But in the meantime, if you look around a lot, there are still many things to inspire. 
One of my aims in starting a photography course was to improve the photos I take of my family. Well, the kids are always with me and they are willing subjects, so I shouldn’t complain! And, my portraits have improved a lot in just a couple of months. 
Yesterday we went to our local sensory gardens for the older kids to work on their movie. While they were shooting with the video camera, I got busy with my camera and my littlest model (who loves having her photo taken thankfully!) In a relatively short amount of time I brought home a lot of shots that I really like. 
The module I’m working on now is going to be a challenging one – low key and high key shots. I’ll let you know how I progress šŸ™‚

Yarnification tonight!

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The “Favourite Things” showcase is on at Yarnification on Facebook tonight at 8pm. There are lots and lots of beautiful fibre related goodies up for grabs.

I have 2 items available, some wonderful Cashgora and wool fibre and some gorgeous Silk and wool fibre, both dyed in my favourite colours. I’ve dyed some extra Cashgora to spin with and it’s so lovely!  What on earth is Cashgora, I hear you say? It is fibre from a goat that is a cross between a cashmere and angora goat!


If you already have your eye on something, be ready at 8pm as this is a very popular showcase šŸ™‚

I’ll never be good enough

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Comparisons, they’re a killer. You think you’re doing pretty good at something, then you see what others are doing. Or you don’t get the reactions you hoped for when you pluck up the courage to share. There are so many times that I decided to give up, such was my disappointment. 



Recently I was very excited to start an online photography course. It’s been great to see my photographs slowly progressing towards more professional looking images. There is a support group on Facebook for students to share their work and offer and receive support. There is just one problem.
Every day I have these magnificent images popping up in my newsfeed. They make me go “wow!” But they also make me go “I’ll never be good enough”. “I can’t do that”. “I don’t have enough talent”. “No-one notices what I do”. “Why can’t I be that good?”


Sound familiar? 





But here’s the deal: The journey is as much about the journey as the destination. We may look back and shudder at our first attempts, but didn’t the professionals start out the same way? Even talents have to be developed through practice and learning. 


What is “good enough” anyway? Where are the “good enough” police? In my head? Hmmm.


How about we change that “I’m never be good enough” to “I’ll do my best and see what happens”. Or perhaps “I’ll do this because I genuinely enjoy the experience and I don’t need the appraisal of anyone to validate that”. Yeh, that sounds better.


I’ll leave you with a final thought. 


If you never start something, you will never finish anything.

Sourdough

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I’ve tried sourdough starters from scratch many times. Some of the starters went really well but baked really poorly. Others just went off. I became despondent. But something about the warmer weather gets me to thinking about sourdough and I always feel like having another go. This time around I decided to increase my chances of success by buying a starter. I got a partially dehydrated starter from Sourdough Companion, followed the instructions to “wake it up” and away I went!

After the starter was activated (about 24 hours after adding water) I divided it in two to start the feeding stage. The one on the left was fed with organic white flour and filtered water. The one on the right was fed with wholemeal flour and filtered water. I wanted to divide them in case of disaster – my hope was that at least one would survive.
24 hours later they looked like they do in the picture above. Increased in size, lovely bubbly holes and a pleasant, slightly sour aroma.



After this first feeding the starter was ready to bake with. Wanting to remain on the cautious side, I decided to bake plain white loaves. Very simple ingredients – white flour, starter, salt and water.
I baked on a very warm day, so total rising time was around 6 hours, which was perfect. They turned out great!


Two days later I did my second bake. I kept the starters in the fridge in between and got them out for 2 hours before using. This time I tried overnight proving – one batch of dough in the fridge and one out on the bench top on a relatively cool night. I didn’t get as much rise (even overnight which ended up being about 14 hours total proving time!) However, the resulting bread still had a great taste and dense, springy texture.


I’m very happy to be able to add sourdough to my bread making repertoire and now plan to bake sourdough twice a week and yeasted bread once or twice a week (my 5 year old does not have the acquired taste for sourdough yet!) My starters are happily living in the fridge in between bakes and do very well after an outing and a feed.


Little Bear.

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Recently I made a little 7 inch bear for the beautiful Sue. Well, it wasn’t exactly for Sue, but rather for her son Thomas’ birthday. If Thomas was still with us he would have turned 14, the same age as my son. Unfortunately, he passed away not long after his birth.

Sue’s tradition has been to buy a bear for Thomas each year on his birthday, isn’t that beautiful? However, as you can imagine there is now quite an accumulation of bears in her house and she thought a miniature might be appropriate this year.

I loved making this little bear (Sue has named him Paul) for such a special purpose. He was stitched entirely by hand from lovely mohair and I knitted a mini scarf for him from soft alpaca yarn too. I know he will be a treasured part of Sue’s collection.

I purchased a kit from Gerry’s (if you ever want to make a bear a kit is a very good way to go – it comes with everything you need).

Did I mention that Sue is an author? She has published two books, the first being “Grief, Love and Hope”, a touching book about Thomas and also “The Angels of Abbey Creek” which is a fictional 
children’s novel (soon to be reviewed here!) Reading her writings and experiences of unschooling has been a major influence on the way we home educate and I’m very grateful to her.

You can find Sue at her blogs Stories of an Unschooling Family and Sue Elvis Writes, as well as her Facebook page. 

Photography

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I’ve started an online photography course and I must say, it’s taken over my life just a little! That’s not to say that I’m not dyeing, weaving, spinning, knitting (and the rest of my little obsessions) but you could say that photography is currently centre stage and I really want to do well at this course.


So, I thought you may be interested in seeing some of my latest shots. I picked a few recent favourites.

Thanks for looking, I’m sure I’ll be back with more shots soon šŸ™‚