#ihavethemangoes

[ihavethemangoes]

LET ME PUT Y’ALL ONTO THIS BOOK

So the book is Reflections From a Flaxen Past by Kati Reeder Meek. It’s specifically an exploration of Lithuanian fiber art from the perspective of an outsider, she’s super clear about not being Lithuanian herself so the vast majority of the book just features other Lithuanian artists.

Very cool to see the many, many pictures of women weaving and spinning. Also a great inspiration book because again, there’s just SO MANY pictures of weavings.

I’ve seen a couple posts about weaving songs AND THIS BOOK HAS SOME both in the original Lithuanian and an English translation.

But my FAVORITE part of the book is ALL THE PATTERN DRAFTS. They’re all very pretty and there’s quite a few I haven’t seen before.

There’s a section towards the end that has a really extensive list of museums and other resources which is a little outdated since the book was published in 2000 but still mostly relevant. I have no idea how my grandmother found this book for me but I’m very excited to give it a full read.

[ihavethemangoes]

This project is definitely a marathon and not a sprint, but I’ve finally gotten far enough that I can get a better picture of the ‘right’ side. It’s definitely going faster now that I’ve figured out the rhythm of the design a little more but we’re still talking like. Two inches an hour.

Very cool technique! Looking forward to doing more (with wool instead of cotton) in the future. The material makes a pretty significant difference in design legibility.

My mother has claimed this one which is fine by me since it’s mostly been an experiment anyways.

[ihavethemangoes]

Finished scarf! Very laid back project to get back into the swing of things. I definitely enjoyed doing a complicated twill pattern and will be doing more in the future. It’s very soft and light but should be very warm considering it’s 1/3 alpaca and can be wrapped a whole lot.

[ihavethemangoes]

All finished! I will absolutely be doing more with splicing colors together, it’s a really nice effect and will help out a lot. DMC has so many colors but somehow I still manage to feel limited by them on occasion.

@is-the-venus-flytrap-post-cute since you expressed interest <3

[ihavethemangoes]

Looking like I’ve written the two-colored pickup pattern correctly! It is more legible in person and especially when it’s not backlit. I’ll be able to take better pictures once I’ve woven more. Definitely would help to use wool/other animal fibers as well as higher contrast colors which I will do in future projects. I would also ideally like a slightly higher wpi but I don’t have an inkle loom and I’m okay with that. In the future I will see if I can modify the threading to make it easier to do the pickup pattern. Very excited about this technique.

[ihavethemangoes]

I have some. Weird news?

Remember how my venus flytrap was like unsalvageably rotten? Well there was this little baby one I cut off the main plant and just threw on a piece of damp paper towel in an old spice jar because it had no chance at all of surviving.

It might be tiny (would use a banana for scale but my thumbnail will do) but it is THRIVING and I am SO confused. Fancy terrarium with other happy carnivorous plants and a very careful setup? No thanks. Paper towel with a sad cutting of a sundew and some dead moss and a little bit of mold? PERFECT. I have literally been ignoring this thing for like a month.

[ihavethemangoes]

Finished my graduation sash a month ahead of schedule! I’ve been at this for so long that one end is literally a different color from sun fading. It’s also not symmetrical because I ran out of warp but shhh nobody needs to know. It’s so long that if I made it any longer it would start to get really impractical to wear. I learned a lot and I’m very happy with the result!

[ihavethemangoes]

New project warped, but at what cost.

Only realized after I sleyed the reed that I in fact had twice as much yarn as I originally intended. Clearly I cannot trust half-asleep mango’s math. Decided I was not interested in having like 100+ three yard long strings tangled into a huge mess so I’m rolling with it and just doing the pattern panel twice.

Threaded half through the heddles. Realized far too late that 48 wpi absolutely cannot work in just two frames (even though I’m only doing plain weave) so I took everything out and rethreaded it in the full eight frames. Basically it was not going to get tensioned evenly because the metal heddles do in fact take up space so the warp couldn’t run parallel all the way through the loom.

Broke a warp string while winding it on. 0/10 would not recommend. Don’t force the crank everrrrr. Somehow managed to not thread one of the warp strings in a heddle and naturally with my luck didn’t realize until I started weaving.

The borders are not mirrored because for some reason I have 27 pattern columns on one side and 28 on the other and just assumed that I hadn’t counted out my warp strings correctly and added extra. Also not my problem I’ve accepted this weaving is just an experiment and it’s allowed to have some wonk.

Could have gone worse, at least now I get to weave.