New Kayakers

With a school closure our granddaughters had an extra day added to the Victoria Day long weekend. We kept them busy today by giving them their first kayaking experience. 

The weather was perfect. Not too hot or too cold and a nice light breeze.

There were a few interesting things to explore. We got up close to a family of turtles sunning themselves on a log.

And watched a mother duck walking her brood along the shore.

Both girls really enjoyed kayaking, but with only two kayaks it meant someone always had to sit out while the other had a turn. We need more kayaks!

A Bit Each Day

With so many other projects urgently needing attention I haven't been knitting a lot lately, but I do try to put in at least a little each day so that my granddaughters will get their sweaters in a reasonable amount of time. Lately my knitting time has been confined to the 30 minutes or so that I sit with my morning coffee. Still, it's adding up!

I only have the front bands to do and the youngest granddaughter's sweater will be complete. It's miles too big for her. We've had a couple of try on sessions. Better too big than too small at this age though! She's growing like a weed.

Even though the sweater would likely fit the older sister right now the colour and mood of this one would be all wrong for her. Wildly colourful with lots of pattern and variety is in keeping with the youngest's personality. I'll come up with something less busy for the older sister!

On Sunday when I wrote the post about the handwoven hat I did not have a picture of the inside to show you. So here you are, an inside shot. The hat is fully lined with a fabric labeled as "mixed fibres", but seems like a polyester to me. It's the perfect weight and colour for this hat, has a nice hand, and doesn't fray or wrinkle.

Pretty Piccolo

While I was out and about today running pre-Christmas errands a wonderful new treasure arrived.

I put the money I earned from sales of Saori woven items toward an additional Saori loom. This is a smaller "Piccolo" loom that can be adjusted to allow children as young as three years old to weave, even operating the treadles themselves. I bought it so that my granddaughters, aged seven and nine years, can weave along side me when they visit. They are tall enough that I think they will be able to use it at the regular height. I also purchased an "inside set" so that the warps can be swapped out between their visits and each girl can weave on their own warp without having to share. 

Between their visits I can fold the loom up very small so it's out of my way. I can also use the loom occasionally for demonstrations and weaving at alternate locations. I'm hoping I'll be able to convince my Christmas guests to give the loom a try too. 

21 Snaps!

I spent some time this past week sewing for my granddaughters' 17", "Frightfully Tall, Monster High" dolls.

I used "Easy T-Shirt and Pant", a DGRequiem sewing pattern available via Etsy.

I used scraps of fabric I already had on hand, and thread from my stash as well. 

The 3 pairs of pants and six shirts (one outfit is not shown, but is identical to the one below) were quite fun to sew except for one thing ---

--- or maybe that should be 21 things! Sewing 21 tiny snaps on was a bit of a drag.

Busier Than It Seems

When I have these long lags between posts it must seem to my regular readers that I haven't been up to much lately. In actual fact it's usually the opposite --- I've been so busy that I haven't taken the time to post!

Lately I've been sewing a lot more than usual. I've not only sewn a pair of jeans and a corduroy and fleece vest for myself, (neither have been photographed yet), but I've been sewing a few things for my granddaughter's dolls as well.

These two high/lo dresses were not complicated to sew as there are few seams, but they had to be sewn by hand due to the nature of the slippery knit material and the very narrow 1/8" seams.

This second photo is just to show how well these "Frightfully Tall Monster High" dolls (17") fit on that couch I bought for the Minifees.

I've sewn a couple more outfits for these dolls but I'm saving them to give to the granddaughter's on Valentine's Day. I'll post pictures after the 14th.

Days 4, 5, 6, and 7

I spent a good chunk of Day Four of the Tour de Fleece spinning a denim coloured superwash merino in preparation for plying into a boucle yarn.

On Day Five I attempted the boucle (on the left in the picture below). Hmm, not really my favourite type of plying, but sure to be fun texture for a weaving some day.

On the right is the remainder of the previous days spinning chain plyed into a 3 ply yarn. Meh. The denim like grey blue colour isn't doing much for me.

Day Six was much more fun. Not that my chosen fibre for spinning was all that nice, it was a very coarse, dirty alpaca. The finished yarn will have to be used for something other than wearables. It is very scratchy, which is unusual for alpaca I think. I've heard that the fibre gets coarser as the animals age.

The fun of that day came in allowing my granddaughters to play at my wheel! My coarse alpaca fibre, plyed with thread, is the two skeins on either end of the next photo. The centre skeins are two the girls did as their very first attempts at plying.

The eight year old's skein is on the centre left. She not only did the hand work to do the plying, she also did her own treadling. She found it difficult to keep the wheel spinning in the correct direction but persevered and was very proud of her little skein.

The six year old sat on my lap and did the hand work for plying her little pink and blue skein while I handled the treadling for her. Both girls also worked hard using my niddy noddy to skein their creations.

I don't normally weight my skeins, but all four of these turned out a little over plyed and needed the blocking.

And today, after a busy day of running about, I spent a relaxing 1/2 hour or more at the wheel with a vibrant pink merino/tencel blend. I love it! After a bit of a pre-draft it spun like a dream.