Dyeing and Weaving - More Playtime!

OK - so I'm still catching up on my last few months.  March 19th I met a friend of mine down in Carson for the Rubber Stamp Show sponsored by Stamp in the Hand.  I have a few places I like to gather wild daisies at for dyeing, so I left home a little early and headed down to my old stomping ground.

And things have changed in the last 3 - 4 years.  Weed Abatement.  Many of the good places were gone, some had been fenced in, but I was able to get a good gallon bag of the daisy heads.  Now, the family was leaving the following Friday evening for a trip to visit family in SE Washington and I knew I had to have a dye evening otherwise the daisies would be moldy when we got back.  My family let me take over the kitchen for the next few nights to play - because I couldn't just do the 1 plant.  I also grabbed some of the stinging nettles from the backyard (ouch) and I had some old eucalyptus leaves and did 1 pot dyeing for three nights in a row.  Lets say the house had some interesting fragrances that week.  I will have to post pictures later.

When we got home from the trip I was reminded of a weaving / spinning demo I had volunteered for on April 16th.  I didn't want to warp my loom for just 1 or 2 bags, so I put on enough warp for 5 bags (about 6 1/2 yards).  Tuesday night I measured out my warp, Wednesday night I threaded the reed, Thursday night I got half of the heddles threaded and that left panic time on Friday.  Now, like most of you others, weaving time is limited and most of the time I can't start until after 8PM (family dinner, family time, etc) so Friday night was a "I'll be in when I get in" night.  And I got my little loom warped in only about 4 hours.

When I got to the park I started weaving and I wasn't sure what color weft I wanted, so I wove about 1 inch of white, then black and then grey.  Bridget and Cat Ellen thought I should continue weaving that way.

And here is a closeup picture of the cloth.

The lav / pink is a logwood exhaust, the yellow is from the daisies and the eucalyptus (it's hard to tell there are 3 shades of yellow in there).

I think I wove about 2 yards at the demo, then finished it up the following week(s) (after I repaired the loom).  Here is the cloth after a gentle wash to do a light fulling

Here is a finished product

The band is a weft faced band I woven on the loom as I am weaving for 5 bags.  If it was just 1 bag, I would have done it on an inkle loom.

Now to start planning to next group of bags.