Thing a Day
I've gotten out of the rhythm of posting my Thing a Day results, mostly because it seems like most days the answer is "spent time knitting" or "spent time weaving". And while this has been great for progress on my fidgets, it doesn't make for very scintillating blogging.
However, I'm pleased to report that I've come up with a mental system that makes my counter-intuitive table loom set up much faster to use. Twill treadlings typically go 1&2, 2&3, 3&4, 1&4. Unfortunately, my loom is set up backwards from what the patterns expect, and I end up counterintuitively moving in the opposite direction that shows up on the draft. It can be overcome, but it really slows things down until I've memorized the pattern.
Leyla suggested this weekend that the best thing to do is scan and flip the draft, which is brilliant, but at this point I have this pattern almost completely absorbed and it would only be confusing to start over. Next time, though...
Anyway, the solution that seems to work best is that I've started thinking about this as positions 1 through 4, in which case my pattern is 1,2,3,4,3,2,3,4,3,2,1 then 4,3,2,1,2,3,2,1,2,3,4. Basically, the result looks like MWMWMW etc. Thinking of it in terms of positions rather than 1 and 2, 2 and 3 is far less thought intensive and thus much, much faster. So, progress! I think this will help speed things up a lot going forward.
In honor of the upcoming need to have clothes for Gulf Wars, I've also decided to expand the TAD to include garb repair as a valid "thing".
That being the case, Saturday's thing was ripping out and redoing a portion of the hem of the red satin dress while at TOC. Yesterday's things included fixing the ravelling bits on the sleeves of the green Rus coat, and finishing the inside edge of the collar which is prone to ravelling with buttonhole stitch edging. (I really should finish the rest of the seams, since I didn't, but the collar was enough work that I'm likely to move to the machine for the rest, when I get around to it.) I also spent some time with the weaving, and the first Tree of Life sock, which is progressing nicely, but it's a complicated and very fine colorwork design so it tends to be on the slow side.
However, I'm pleased to report that I've come up with a mental system that makes my counter-intuitive table loom set up much faster to use. Twill treadlings typically go 1&2, 2&3, 3&4, 1&4. Unfortunately, my loom is set up backwards from what the patterns expect, and I end up counterintuitively moving in the opposite direction that shows up on the draft. It can be overcome, but it really slows things down until I've memorized the pattern.
Leyla suggested this weekend that the best thing to do is scan and flip the draft, which is brilliant, but at this point I have this pattern almost completely absorbed and it would only be confusing to start over. Next time, though...
Anyway, the solution that seems to work best is that I've started thinking about this as positions 1 through 4, in which case my pattern is 1,2,3,4,3,2,3,4,3,2,1 then 4,3,2,1,2,3,2,1,2,3,4. Basically, the result looks like MWMWMW etc. Thinking of it in terms of positions rather than 1 and 2, 2 and 3 is far less thought intensive and thus much, much faster. So, progress! I think this will help speed things up a lot going forward.
In honor of the upcoming need to have clothes for Gulf Wars, I've also decided to expand the TAD to include garb repair as a valid "thing".
That being the case, Saturday's thing was ripping out and redoing a portion of the hem of the red satin dress while at TOC. Yesterday's things included fixing the ravelling bits on the sleeves of the green Rus coat, and finishing the inside edge of the collar which is prone to ravelling with buttonhole stitch edging. (I really should finish the rest of the seams, since I didn't, but the collar was enough work that I'm likely to move to the machine for the rest, when I get around to it.) I also spent some time with the weaving, and the first Tree of Life sock, which is progressing nicely, but it's a complicated and very fine colorwork design so it tends to be on the slow side.