Rain

My Corner Of The World - Rain

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Today we are having rain all day. It seems to be end of summer for sure. Above is a view outside our front door. You can see the other condominiums on the other side of the street. Our unit looks just like those over there. Since we don't have room for a regular garden, we garden in a wheelbarrow. Normally the wheelbarrow sits by the front door, but since it was raining, we moved it to the lawn for the water.

Dinner for tonight is homemade chicken vegetable soup and corn bread muffins.

Have a good day!
Franco Rios
Sacramento, Calif USA

Twining - Part 2

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The twined bag is almost complete. It needs a loop and button on the opening to close the top and it should have a lining. I have some old shirts that I can use for lining. I also need to trim the fringe.

I'm happy with the pattern that I just threw together as I went.


Here you can see the bag and more of the strap. I made the strap from six strands and used finger weaving to make it.


Here is a closeup of me twining the fabric. With big fat yarn like this the process is very quick. Notice how I pull up to the right to place the weft. Later I used my fingers to push the weft tight.


I don't have a big needle to use for sewing on the strap, so I wrapped some plastic tape over the end of some yarn to stiffen it and I used it like the end of a shoelace to push the yarn through the bag fabric and the strap.

Have a good day!

Twining - Part 1

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My friend Laverne has been working on a twining technique inspired by Montagnard weavers. She about it posted on her blog Backstrap Weaving.

Twining has been on my fiber adventure list so I moved it to the top. This is the first part of a twined bag I am making. Twining is an old craft that can create fabric without a loom.


Twining is usually started by stringing a line around two poles. I wrapped a string around some cardboard that is 8 1/2 by 11 inch. This makes it portable enough to carry. Then I attached some warp threads down with a larkshead knot or loop.


The first few rows I misread the directions and I twined around each warp with white yarn. Then I realized I was supposed to twine around warp pairs, so I started with the yellow yarn.


You can see how the yarn is twining around the warp pairs in this picture.


Here is a closeup of how I tried to pull up on the weft to keep it tight. I twine all the way around both sides of the board so I will have a bag when I am done. The yarn is labelled Rug Crafter's Rug Yarn, 100% acrylic and I bought it cheap at the thrift store for this kind of project.


Here is a link to a PDF file that will tell you how to start twining.

http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/monographs/lily_bag.pdf

And some more links of interest.

http://www.santacruzhandweavers.org/twining/demo2007/index.html

http://www.ohs.org/exhibits/online/native-american-basketry.cfm

http://www.nativetech.org/weave/falseembroidery/index.html

http://twinedbags.com/twining.html

http://halcyonyarn.com/designcontest/wild/wild2.html

http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/baskets/subpage.cfm?subpage=burden

http://www.barkingrock.com/bags.htm

http://www.uwlax.edu/urc/JUR-online/PDF/2009/karoll-amyARC.pdf

Have a good day!