My friend Lynette made herself this lovely shawl on her peg loom.
She is now making peg looms for sale. They are generally custom made, to your specifications regarding peg width, distance between pegs, and how many pegs.
Painted, or not painted.
If you're interested, just drop her a line at daisyhillhandiworks at hotmail dot com. She has limited internet access, so your best bet is to send her your telephone number so you can discuss the specifics of what you want.
A friend and I were discussing weaving on the peg loom, and the subject of a finer peg loom that what I had came up. By finer, I mean one with smaller pegs set closer together. The next thing I knew, she had built one for me.
Isn't she pretty? All painted and everything.
This is the best part.
She is thinking of producing these for sale, so if anybody is interested, let me know.
I tried her out using some cotton tape yarn I got at the Textile Center Garage Sale last year.
I love the effect!
I just realized what the yarn reminds me of. Shoestrings.
On. It was a little big, so it fell onto my hand. I adjusted it and now sits higher.
Tracy's comment about a similar project using needlefelting set off a lightbulb. Sorry if I stole your technique! I wetfelted two strips of wool, sewed the top row of plooming to the felt strip,
added a buttonhole and button, and it worked. One down, one to go.
The strip of felt makes the cuff snuggly warm on the wrist. It isn't exactly something I would wear out doing chores, but I think the colors go well with my brown suede going to town winter coat.
I could also see attaching it directly to a mitten or glove cuff, whether it be knit, felted, Polar fleece, hand made or purchased.
I could also see plooming a lighter, maybe silk blend yarn, and then attaching it to a length of satin or velvet ribbon, using magnetic bracelet clasps for the closure. Actually, I could imagine doing that with this yarn too, maybe using a crushed velvet ribbon in a nice wine color?
Here it is, the thing made with the beehive yarn shown in the last post.
I'm not really sure what to call it.
Loopy collar seems appropriate.
The back gives a little better look as to how I made it. I wove it over about 12 pegs on the peg loom, and then removed the bottom 8 weft threads.
The thing sort of appeals to my wild and wacky side, but I fear I don't have the panache or self-confidence to actually wear it. Sad, huh?
I think it would make a great valance strung at the top of a window. Or maybe just hung on the wall. It's art, you know.
I have a total of 2.6 oz of the yarns left over. I was thinking it would make great wrist cuffs if I did the same thing. Weave it over 5 or 6 pegs, then pull out the bottom two or three. The loops, 2-3 inches long, would peek out from under your shirt/coat, falling onto your hands. I have to come up with a way to make them easy to take on and off though. To tie the weft threads together each time would be way too cumbersome, plus you would need somebody else to do it. Must think on this.
I'm very lucky to be working full time again. I'm even luckier that they are allowing me to do it all from home, not making the drive (about 80 miles one way) three times a week like I did before Mom came to live with me.
The blizzard we had a couple of weeks ago dropped about a foot of snow, and the high winds rearranged it into 2-4 foot drifts. It has been a struggle to get water to the animals. I am contemplating a move to California. (Only sort of kidding!)
In my spare time, I've been spinning, knitting and weaving on the peg loom. Spinning first.
The latest issue of Spin-Off described how to make beehive yarns, so I tried it. You take the thick-thin on the left, ply it with the overtwisted thin single in the middle, and with some plying manipulations end up with the beehive yarn on the right. Watch this space for a peg loomed scarf using all three, eventually.
Did someone mention a peg loom? Yep, here's another shawl woven on the peg loom. This is 100% wool.
A closer look at the weave. This one ended up about 14 inches wide by 5 feet long. It will go to a friend.
Rusty Nail is done! Everyone dance in the street. Joshua come home to the island, happiness be complete. Great, going to have to dig out that CD now. Oh yes, Rusty Nail! She ended up about 10 inches wide and about 10 feet long when I finished blocking her. My first attempt at lace. At least, the closest to lace I've gotten. I don't know if it even qualifies as lace. I would have liked to do another full repeat, but I ran out of yarn and not enough time to spin more up. This one is going to a friend's mom.
I don't really know how to wear a shawl that long, good thing I'm not keeping it!
I'll end with a pretty sunset. It was blowing tiny ice crystals around, I think that is what created the ray shooting up.
A shawl for a friend.
The shawl stick is just a maple twig that I scraped the bark off of and sanded smooth.
Have you ever seen a cecropia caterpillar? They are quite pretty.
The picture is from here.
I was inspired to make a yarn of it, of course. This picture taken in the light of the setting sun, so the actual color isn't quite as golden as it appears. It was my first attempt at spinning coils or beehives or whatever these are called. I might have some of each plus some other techniques I don't know the name of, which are complete accidents!
The yarn then became this collar, woven on the peg loom.
The coiled/beehive parts sort of curl above the rest of it, looking rather inchworm like. Maybe I'll have to change the name of it? Or do another leaving out the yellow and blue, and calling that one inchworm. If I were better at adding beads to my spinning, I would just spin the green fiber, then add yellow and blue seed beads to it. That would be even more cecropia caterpillar like.
I spy, with my little eye.
The chickens have discovered the cat feeding station. They scared off two of the cats, but Puddin' wouldn't back down. She hissed, she stared, she just kept eating. I chased the chickens away, but I may have to find a new place to feed the cats.
Then, of course, there's another peg loomed item. Alpaca/denim lint/cotton scarf, about 9" by 45", with a 5" knotted fringe. I would have liked to make it longer, but I ran out of yarn. Dang.
Again with the peg loom weaving!
This time, a capelet. Since it was an experiment/prototype, I used a commercial cotton blend yarn that I've had for several years. Also, I was impatient. I had this idea, and didn't want to wait until I had spun up that much yarn to see if it would work. Also, spring is here, (despite the winter storm watch we're under for the weekend), so cotton seemed like a good idea. Here's the back.
Perfect to cover the arms on a cool summer night. Or to protect yourself from overzealous air conditioning, or heck even the refrigerated section of the grocery store.
I've been experimenting with the peg loom again. I am building up an inventory to make them available on Etsy. This one is black alpaca wool silk with bits of gray angora. With some dead lady brooches, it looks classy. (Some might call them vintage...my friend and I used to frequent estate sales when we lived in the Cities, and started prefacing anything we picked up at them with dead lady. Thus, dead lady brooches, dead lady jewelry, dead lady dresses, dead lady dishes.)
Or how about a vintage (I got this from an Etsy seller, so can't classify it as dead lady) abalone button?
Or a vintage silver button with blue stone center?
Or a little funkier with a shocking pink shawl stick?
Which do you like?
Do any of these buttons work?
Why do I have such a hard time picking out buttons? I see other people with cool, big buttons on their scarflette, neck thingy, whatever you call this, and love the effect. I look at these and think, I don't know, does this look ok?
I made this using the new peg loom. I really like the loosely woven texture and look of this. There will be more.
We are having thundersnow and lightning right now. It's coming down like crazy out there. I was out to do chores before it got too deep, and my cleats failed. I came down hard on my elbow. Just remember that it is always better to divide whatever you're carrying between two buckets to help keep your balance better. That's your tip of the day, two buckets, even if it could be carried in one. Two buckets!
This is what you get when a professional builds you a peg loom. Straight, uniform pegs. A hole so you can clamp the loom to the table.
Chamfered edges on the pegs!
Another innovation that I never would have thought of, or been able to do, is the lap joint to join several together. This peg loom is in four sections. I can make a rug up to eight feet wide! I just screw on another section. Can you believe that?
A friend took pity on me after seeing my sorry excuse for a peg loom. Her Dad is a retired woodworker who likes to keep busy. She saw the perfect project for him, and he outdid himself. Thank you Dieter!
Have you ever learned about something, and then not be able to get it out of your head? You're in bed, but have ideas running through your head so you can't sleep. I do some of my best work in bed.
I learned about peg looms the other day, including a site describing how to make your own. How to use one here. I wanted one immediately. I needed dowels to make the pegs, but didn't have any, and no way to get any. It has been crazy cold here, and I can't take Mom out in that. Foiled by the weather again! I kept thinking about it though.,
One night, I remembered. Several years ago, (six, seven?) I ended up with a box of chair parts at an auction, because I wanted the beautiful wood box the chair parts were in. Spindles, there were a lot of spindles in that box. Spindles, dowels, same thing, right? I scrounged around in the garage, found a 19" piece of 2x2, and several smooth spindles of approximately the same size. A couple of hours later, I had this.
The spindles are wonky because they were slightly different sizes. The lighter, bigger ones are 3/4 inch. The smaller, darker ones must be 5/8 inch. The biggest drill bit I have is 1/2 inch. I also had a 1/2 inch and a 3/4 inch wood boring bit. The 3/4 inch wood boring bit made wonderful holes for the bigger spindles, but I had to improvise for the smaller spindles. I am not a woodworker. It isn't pretty, but I can't beat the price! It is functional, too.
This is some domestic wool roving that I had dyed. When I ran out of roving though, I didn't know what to do with it. It was about a foot wide, and 1 1/2 feet long, and 1 1/2 inches thick. I decided to frog it.
It will become a very long scarf. I split each piece of roving in half again, so it wouldn't be quite as thick.
When I can get to a store,(high winds and blowing snow today, I had to cancel my plans again!) I will probably buy some 1/2 inch dowels to make another loom, 2-3 feet wide. I see roving rugs in my future.
