"Your data likes this. Here's more!"

I'll get to the cryptic post title in a sec. But first I thought I'd update y'all on my progress on the runner rug. I finished the weaving Friday night, a titch ahead of schedule, and cut it off the loom the same night. Here's how it looked when it was halfway off the loom. I'm stoked that my idea for the center diamond worked as planned. (Yes, the motif is supposed to be off center. I'm okay with that.)

Lynne Cantwell 2024

As you can see, it's Tigs approved -- so far. We'll see how he feels about it when it's stretched out on the bathroom floor.

Right now, the rug has been soaked and is hanging to dry. Then I'll iron it and hem it on the sewing machine. I'm hoping to finish it tonight. 

(Before someone asks: The Ruggable box contains a runner for the kitchen. It's still in the box because the new kitchen counters are going to be installed tomorrow -- at last! -- and then I have to tile the backsplash. I'll put the rug down once all the construction is done. But for those who can't wait to see it: this is the way.)

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Now about that quote.

Longtime hearth/myth readers will remember when I was all excited about tiny houses. I spent years exploring the idea of downsizing to a tiny house on wheels. I even blogged about it here, here, here, here, here, and probably some other times when I didn't tag it. It wasn't the "wheels" part that excited me, but the tiny-dwelling part. Back then, I was living in an 850-square-foot apartment. It had a generously-sized living/dining room and a great galley kitchen. The bedroom was big enough for a loveseat and occasional table along with the bed and dresser. I thought it had a lot of wasted space. I was sure I could downsize to 500 square feet with no problem. (And I did when I first moved to Santa Fe. But I needed another closet, so I bought the condo, which is about 1,000 square feet.) 

Eventually, though, I dropped the idea of getting a tiny house. It wasn't the size of the living space that put me off; it was the inability to get one close enough to urban, or even suburban, amenities. Cities don't want tiny dwellings unless they're temporary units for unhoused persons. They're just now beginning to approve accessory dwelling units for folks with single-family houses to put in their backyards for Grandma to live in. But a sub-750-square-foot house by itself on a city lot is beyond the pale for a bunch of reasons, including city infrastructure, density, tax base, etc., etc., etc. So by the time I retired in 2020, I had given up on the idea.

Mama Google, though, remembers all. As recently as this week, Google's news page on my phone has suggested an article about tiny houses to me. It's been four freaking years since I moved to Santa Fe, lady -- give it a rest already!

But that speaks to the quote in the title, doesn't it? The search algorithm just keeps serving up links like the links you've already clicked on, whether you're still interested in the thing or not.

The quote is from Jordan Klepper, one of the hosts on The Daily Show when Jon Stewart isn't there. Klepper and his co-host, Ronny Chieng, were interviewing Kyle Chayka, a staff writer for the New Yorker who has a written a book called Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. I haven't read the book, although it sounds interesting. But that quote struck me so forcefully that I wrote it down. 

Here's the thing about algorithms: When they have you pegged, how do you break free? I talked here recently about kitchen renovations. That same Google news page on my phone has been serving up kitchen remodeling articles, even though I've already past the decision phase on the kitchen. I started looking up other home improvement topics to get it to quit showing me kitchen stuff. It hasn't worked very well.

This is a minor topic to be inundated with links about. But what about major topics? What about, say, politics? One of the points Chayka made in the interview, and presumably in the book as well, is that algorithms peg our politics and then keep us pegged. Voters in the US have been funneled into one of two political buckets. How do you climb out of the bucket you're in? It ain't easy. And as many others have observed, the polarization of our electorate is damaging the country as a whole.

I wish I had an answer, but I don't think we're going to get one any time soon. For sure, the solution won't come from an algorithm.

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These moments of algorithmic blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Crafty baby (stair) steps.

Tonight's post is gonna be a quickie, because I want to get back to the loom before I lose my mojo again. Here's what I'm currently working on (read: sick of looking at): 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

The pattern is called the Stair Step Rug. I got it from Gist Yarn, but their yarn colors didn't really go with my decor, so I'm using Maurice Brassard yarn instead. The blue, which I'm using for both the warp (the long threads) and some of the weft (the back-and-forth threads), is a cotton/linen blend in the Peacock colorway. The other stuff is a cotton slub yarn, kind of like boucle, in the Turquoise colorway. Here's a photo of some of the photos in the pattern, so you can see what it's supposed to look like when it's done: 

I started it in October or November, I think, and I'd already be done if I hadn't decided to double the length and make it a runner. It's taking forever because this yarn is a whole lot skinnier than the Churro that I've been working with lately. The technique is called crackle weave; I won't bore you with too much technical lingo, but basically I'm alternating the colors -- one row blue, the next turquoise -- with the blue rows all in plain weave and the turquoise rows in a twill pattern. Warping the loom to make all that work was a joy, let me tell you. But it should be very cool looking, with a big Southwesterny diamond in the middle, when it's done. 

The only other project I've finished since my last crafty post is this shawl: 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

The pattern is the Moroccan Lantern Shawl. When I started it last fall, it had been quite a while since I'd knitted anything. I wish I knew what possessed me to pick a pattern with a lacy stitch for my first project after my knitting hiatus. It was kind of a slog. But it's now been done for a while, waiting for me to block it so the points on the bottom edge stand out more clearly. I might get to that here pretty soon. Or maybe not. We'll see.

Speaking of getting to things, I'm going to stop here and get back to weaving. I figured out that if I sit at the loom every night this week, I could have the weaving done by next Sunday. The rug wouldn't be done done, but at least I'll be able to take it off the loom. I'll let you know how it goes.

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These moments of crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

The ruana saga.

Lynne Cantwell 2023

Time for a less controversial/uncomfortable post. I can now relate the entirety of the saga of the ruana.

A ruana is similar to a poncho. But while a poncho has a hole for your head, a ruana is basically two long rectangles that are sewn together along the long edges about halfway. You drape the unsewn-together ends over your shoulders and hang the sewn-together part down your back. There are other ways to wear one, I guess, but the point is that their construction is stupid easy: make two long rectangles and sew two long ends together halfway up.

So of course I had to make it complicated. I found a weaving draft in a pattern book for a couple of interesting twill patterns. Never mind the little boxes that look kind of like guitar chords; the crucial point here is that with this threading of a four-shaft loom, you can do either the chevrons or the diamonds. 

From The Handweaver's Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon.

I desperately wanted to do the diamond pattern because it looked so cool. The treadling was a lot more complicated -- 16 steps in the repeat instead of four -- but I had plenty of time to get it right. So I found a pattern online that gave me the dimensions for each rectangle (I did not do her double weaving) and warped the loom for the first one. 

This is actually the warping for the second rectangle. I can tell because of the wall color behind the loom. 
Lynne Cantwell 2023

That was Memorial Day weekend. I was in no rush -- I didn't need the ruana 'til mid October for Spirits of New Mexico at El Rancho de las Golondrinas. This annual event is a lot of fun -- it's at night, with the placita rooms lit by candles and fires in the fireplaces, and we volunteers wear ghostly face paint and pretend to be the ghosts of local folks long dead. Last year, I wasn't dressed warmly enough and nearly froze. So I knew I had a hard stop on October 21st to get this done. Five months! Plenty of time!

In June, I spent my free time creating my tote bag for the ranch. I still had plenty of time for the ruana, though -- almost four months!

In the first week of July, my upstairs neighbor's plumbing sprang a leak, and all of the water ran down into my apartment. The worst hit was my office/craft room. The loom itself wasn't damaged, nor was the warp on the loom (phew!), but the mitigation took more than a month, during which time the room was all torn up and the loom was under a plastic tarp. (Part of the mitigation was to repaint both the craft room and my bedroom. I blogged about the new and old wall colors -- you can see them here.)

It was now very late in August, and I had just about two months to go. So I started weaving the diamond pattern -- and I kept getting lost in the treadling, which messed up the design. I asked Mokosh (the Slavic goddess of weaving and spinning, among other things) for advice, and immediately understood that I needed to give up on the diamonds and do the chevrons, or I'd never get the thing done. I resisted for another couple of weeks, which was dumb -- when a goddess gives you advice, you really ought to take it -- but I finally admitted defeat and switched to the chevrons, which had a much less complicated treadling. And it worked. 

Lynne Cantwell 2023

I finished the ruana with about a week to spare, and I was able to wear it last night, as you can see in my selfie up top. Although I kind of didn't need it. It only dropped to about 60 degrees by the end of the evening -- which figures, right? But it's done, and I can wear it for this event from now on.

Next up on the loom will be a runner for the bathroom. Luckily, I have no deadline for that project.

***

These moments of bloggy snatching of victory from the jaws of defeat have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

My crafty bag.

I spent today out at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, helping to skirt some of the fleeces that other folks sheared from the ranch's sheep a few weeks ago. Skirting a fleece involves picking out stuff like straw and poop, so that the fleece can be sent to a mill for processing into roving (which is then spun into yarn that can be woven on a loom). It's not tiring work, but it's dirty, and it was hot. So I'm not going to write a lot. Instead, I'm going to tell you how my tote bag turned out. Here's the finished product, if that's all you're interested in. If you want to learn about the process, you can keep reading. 

Lynne Cantwell 2023

Still here? All right, here we go.

You may recall that I wove the fabric for the bag on the ranch's hundred-plus-year-old loom. (There's a picture of the bag on the loom at the link.) Once we cut it free from the loom, I took it home and sewed up the sides. Then I set to weaving a strap. 

Lynne Cantwell 2023

The device in the background is called an inkle loom. An inkle, according to the Oxford English Dictionary via Wikipedia, was originally a type of linen tape. An inkle loom produces narrow bands or tapes that can be used for various purposes: belts, straps, and so on. The Wikipedia article has several pictures of inkle looms. Here's what mine looked like while I was working on the bag: 

Lynne Cantwell 2023

While I may know just enough about weaving to be dangerous, I knew nothing about weaving on an inkle loom. I warped it from a diagram on a printout, then realized I'd done it wrong, went to YouTube, and re-warped it the right way. And there were other issues. See the medicine vial hanging off the loom on the right? It's there because a warp string broke and I had to put in a new one. I also didn't understand how tightly I was supposed to pull the weft (the dark green yarn on the shuttle), so my band ended up looking less like an inkle loom product and more like I wove it on a regular loom.

Anyway, at last it was done. And it was long enough to make both the strap and some trim to cover the raw edges of the top of the bag. I decided to go a little '70s hippie with ends of the strap and add some braids and beads. Here's my high-tech (ha!) setup for that -- the Starbucks cup and stapler held the strap in place so I could do the braiding. 

Lynne Cantwell 2023

I pulled the beads and the big concho from my crafts stash. The concho is backed with a leather rosette that I also happened to have in my crafts stash. (I needed two for a knitting project, and at the time, I couldn't find online a smaller quantity than 100. If you ever need a leather rosette, let me know -- I have plenty, in a variety of colors.) The loop that goes around the concho is simply a few strands of leftover warp from making the bag; I twisted them and tied them together, then sewed them to the back inside edge of the bag.

I guess I should also mention that I dyed the yellow and terra cotta yarn in the strap the same weekend that I dyed the turquoise yarn in the bag, and I spun the white yarn in the strap from some churro roving.

All in all, it was quite the project. I tried it out today and it works great -- I don't have to keep my phone in my shorts pocket anymore, which is such a plus.

And now I'm going to learn more about inkle weaving, so the next thing I make on that loom looks more like it's supposed to. 

***

These moments of strappy blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

It's spring in Santa Fe, or: how I spent my weekend.

You know summer's nearly here when El Rancho de las Golondrinas opens for the season. Alert hearth/myth readers know that the ranch is a living history museum at a historic site that was the final stop on the Camino Real before Spanish settlers got to Santa Fe -- and also that I started volunteering with the weaving program there last year.

The first thing I wanted to do this season was to make a tote bag that looked more or less historically correct. My costume doesn't have any pockets because it's historically correct. But as a modern person, I need a place to stash my phone, car keys, lip balm, tissues, and so on. I've been wearing a pair of shorts under my skirt, but it looks awkward at best when I hike up my skirt to fish something out of a pocket. So yesterday (with permission, of course), I spent the day on one of our looms to weave cloth for my bag.

We have four walking looms (plus a Navajo loom that's just for display). The term "walking loom" means you stand up to operate it, shifting your weight back and forth on the treadles to get the heddles to rise in the proper sequence for your project. The loom I used for my bag was donated to the ranch by the Barela family of Chimayó -- and if you know anything about weaving in northern New Mexico, you know that the weavers in Chimayó know what they're doing. Here's a link to one of the rug shops there, so you can see what I mean. 

Anyway, I picked a very simple design for my bag -- stripes up the sides and a wide field of turquoise (which I dyed myself at the dye shed last fall) for the middle. And I managed to get the weaving finished yesterday while chatting with guests. Here it is before we cut off the loom. 

Lynne Cantwell 2023

For this festival this year, we had some folks from San Ildefonso Pueblo come to help out. They fed us with samples of food they made in an horno and entertained us with traditional dances. I hope they come back, because the food was excellent.

San Ildefonso Pueblo dancers,
from the door of the Barela loom room.
Lynne Cantwell 2023 

Posole and calabacitas with bread and
cookies, all made in an horno by the
San Ildefonso Tewa Women's Club. Mmm!
Lynne Cantwell 2023

(An horno is a beehive-shaped oven made of adobe. The ranch has two outside the cocina.)

The weather mostly cooperated, but this afternoon we had a thunderstorm. And see those little white pellets on the ground in front of the gate? Yup, that's hail. Luckily the storm cleared out within about a half hour.

Lynne Cantwell 2023

So that was my weekend. The tote bag isn't finished yet; it needs a strap. I'm going to try making one on an inkle loom. I'll let you know how that goes.

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These moments of springlike blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Let's get crafty again.

I am fresh out of new ideas for a post this week, so maybe it's a good week for an old idea. How about a crafty post?

This one won't be as varied as the one I did in November, when I had refinished a table top, among other things. But I've finished a couple of projects since then, and I'm working on a couple more.

First up: weaving. You may recall that I made four matching cushions for my dining room chairs and that I had enough yarn left over to make a table runner. I did get the table runner done -- and as soon as it came off the loom, Tigs, claimed it. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Don't worry -- I got it away from him and onto the table. And as you can see, it does match the cushions. 

Lynne Cantwell 2023

On to knitting. I'd had a scarf pattern called Gridlock in my Ravelry queue for more than ten years, so I figured it was time to make it. Except I don't wear scarves anymore; I prefer cowls these days -- they're just easier to deal with. So I converted the scarf pattern into a cowl pattern. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

I have enough yarn left over from this project to make a hat to match -- and I started it, but then realized I hadn't cast on enough stitches for the cable repeat, so I frogged the whole thing and started over. I've made progress since then, but it's been set aside for several weeks in favor of another knitting project: a holiday-themed afghan. Here's what that's supposed to look like when it's done: 

image stolen from favecrafts.com

This pattern has been around for approximately a million years. It was originally a free pattern from Bernat, but the yarn they developed it for has been discontinued, and the pattern itself is only showing up on random websites these days. I'll tell you more about this adventure when I'm done, which shouldn't be too much longer now -- I started the final rounds of green around the edge last night.

That brings us up-to-date. Hopefully I'll have something more scintillating to talk about next week.

***

These moments of fibery blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

My crafty fall.

I have another topic I wouldn't mind writing about (actually, if I wanted to go all political again, I have a few topics I could write about), but I've been promising y'all a crafts post for the past several weeks. So here we go.

This is not just knitting this time, oh no, and it's not just weaving, either, although we'll get to both of those in a minute. First, let's talk about the table fail.

Maybe a year and a half ago, I bought a used equipale table from someone on Facebook Marketplace. Equipale furniture, by the way, is made in Jalisco State in Mexico; Mama Google says the name comes from ikpalli, the Nahuatl word for chair. (I'd post a link, but all the sites I've found so far look kinda sketchy. You're welcome.) It's characterized by thin cedar planks criss-crossed for the base, plus leather upholstery for chairs and either leather or copper for tabletops.

My tabletop was covered in leather, but it was worn out; I tried leather cleaner on it, but it was just too far gone. So I planned to rip it off and redo it, maybe making it look like copper. Here's what it looked like as I was pulling off the leather: 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

As you can see, it was pretty rugged underneath. I'd planned to fill in those cracks and things with wood filler, but it turns out that I suck at using wood filler. It ended up all lumpy bumpy. I painted it with metallic copper spray paint anyway, but it just looked terrible. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

So I purchased a random orbital sander, sanded off the mess I'd made, and repainted, this time with metallic copper spray paint that included primer. The result wasn't perfect, but it looked so much better! So I went ahead and put a few coats of polyurethane on it and called it done. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Next up: weaving. Right after I moved into the condo, I'd purchased memory foam cushions for the dining room chairs. Here's the problem with memory foam cushions: if they're not very thick, they flatten out pretty fast. If you're just grabbing a bite, they're more or less fine. But if you want to sit at the table for a while, well. It's not the most pleasant experience. So I decided to make my own cushions. I have four chairs, so I'd be making four cushions total.

I bought the yarn last December. (It's churro wool from Tierra Wools here in New Mexico.) Then I spent several months dithering around with the design while my cataracts got worse. Finally, I got started on them several weeks ago.

The first step is to measure out the warp threads (the ones that go the long way on the loom). There are a few ways to do this, but for the table loom, indirect warping -- measuring out the warp on a warping board and then moving it to the loom -- seems to be the way to go. I needed each warp thread to be five yards long, so I could do two cushion covers at once. Here's how the warp threads looked on the board. Well, technically, this is how half of one warp looked. I had to do this a total of four times -- two warps for each set of two cushions.

Lynne Cantwell 2022

If anybody really wants an explanation of the difference between direct and indirect warping, I'll tackle it in a different post. For now, let's just move on. Here's the loom all warped and the first cushion cover about a quarter done: 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Once the loom is warped, the weaving takes no time at all. But then I had to sew the covers together and stuff the polyurethane foam forms into them. I also braided some of the leftover yarn into ties for the cushions (those will probably get swapped out for something less stretchy later, once I figure out what to use instead). A few days after starting the project, the first two cushions were done, and Tigs put his stamp of approval on them shortly thereafter. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

The final two cushions are woven and nearly finished; I need to sew the second tie onto one of them and finish sewing the sides and ties on the other one. I'm hoping to finish that tonight, once I post this. And I have plenty of yarn left over, so I'm going to make a table runner to match -- although hopefully it won't take me another year to design and it. (It won't. I just need to the additional warp yarn I've ordered to get here.)

Finally, I completed the knitting project that's been the bane of my existence since last winter. On Ravelry, I called it the Spiral Sweater of 897,000 Ends to Weave In. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

It all started at Taos Wool Festival last fall, when I bought a couple of bundles of Fusion 800 yarn. Each bundle contained 100-yard lengths of eight yarns, all in the same colorway (mine is called Aurora Borealis), but each a different type. One was tweedy, one was spun with sparkly strands, one was a boucle, one was mohair-like -- you get the idea. Every time I ran out of a 100-yard length and joined the next one, it created two ends to weave in. And I switched yarns a lot. 

I knitted this sweater top-down, and it occurred to me last spring as I was about to finish the body of the sweater that the stitches I'd put on holders for the sleeves were in the boucle yarn. Which meant picking up stitches in boucle under the arms. Which wasn't going to be any fun. Plus I had to measure out and split the yarn I had left so that each sleeve would more or less match. And hope I had enough left of the yarn I'd used at the neckline and sweater bottom for the cuffs. And weave in all 897,000 ends. 

At that point I made an executive decision: It was getting to be too warm to knit with wool (not to mention the cataracts), so I set the project aside for the summer. This fall, I put on my big girl pants and dealt with the damn sleeves and all those ends. And as you can see, it turned out fine.

To think I could be writing a novel this month instead...

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These moments of all sorts of crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! And for my American readers, happy Thanksgiving!

Weaving and reweaving.

I was going to do a serious post this week, but I'm a day late and anyway I'm not feeling sufficiently lugubrious today. So you get a crafty post instead.

Alert hearth/myth readers are probably sick of hearing that I've been volunteering this summer at El Rancho de los Golondrinas, a living history museum here in Santa Fe. I've talked about how I wove a rebozo and a sash for my volunteer costume. 

That sash has been a problem all season. I didn't make it long enough. I could just barely get it tied in a square knot, but it took a lot of pulling and tugging. So I decided to make a new one. And make it in a different weave pattern and at a different sett. All of that required more weft yarn than I had left, so I had to dismantle the old sash to finish the new one. But I think it turned out pretty well. Here's what the new sash looks like: 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Here's a close-up so you can see the weave structure. The stripe on the end is a 1/3 twill; the rest is a 2/2 twill that's supposed to look like a zigzag, but owing to technical details, it's more like a chevron. The fabric ended up very dense -- stiffer than the old sash -- which to be honest is probably a good thing. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Also, I decided to go with twisted fringe this time. How does one make twisted fringe, you ask? Well, it so happens that I made a short video to show you the process. 

So there you have it. Now I have a brand-new sash that is not going to drive me crazy. I only have two more volunteer gigs this year, but that's okay -- it'll work fine next year, too.

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These moments of twisty fringed blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Carding and spinning and weaving, oh my.

It's Sunday night, which means I owe y'all a blog post. But I'm tired and my feet hurt, so I'm going to try to keep it short.

The reason I'm tired, etc., is that I've just completed my first weekend as a volunteer with El Rancho de las Golondrinas here in Santa Fe. Yesterday, I sat out in the placita (the little plaza in the part of the museum depicting 17th century life in northern New Mexico) in the shade and learned how to card wool and use a Navajo spindle. I even got my picture in the Santa Fe New Mexican, the local paper -- click here for the article, then click through to the third picture. (There's a typo in the caption, by the way. We were carding the wool, not carting it.)

Carding involves taking the washed, dried, and matted wool fibers that have been shorn from the sheep and combing them to get the tangles (and other junk -- sheep live outdoors, you know) out and to get the fibers to lay straight so that they can be spun. The carding combs sitting next to me on the bench are adult-sized; we also have some smaller combs for the kids. And yes, kids carded wool back in the day -- even toddlers were taught how. After all, it's not like you could have popped down to Target to buy a new shirt; if you wanted one, you had to weave your own. And it's labor intensive work, so everybody had to contribute.

The wool comes off the cards in a little roll. Here it's called a lamb's tail; I've also heard it called a rolag. A spindle is then used to make the rolags into yarn.

There are a bunch of different types of spindles, but the one everybody used in 17th century New Mexico was called a malacate (pronounced mah-lah-CAH-tay). It's also known as a Navajo spindle. Now, just like a lot of other terms, there's some question about whether "Navajo spindle" is politically correct, but I'll link to a video in a minute that was shot in 2020 and features a Navajo woman calling it a Navajo spindle. So there you go. 

Here's what a Navajo spindle looks like:

 Photo shamelessly stolen from woolery.com

It's a supported spindle -- that is, the tip of the spindle rests on the ground (or in a bowl), so the yarn you're spinning doesn't have to support the weight of the spindle the way it does when you use a drop spindle. It's hard to tell from this photo, but a Navajo spindle is about a yard long, which is two or three times longer than a typical drop spindle. You spin the yarn by rolling the top of the shaft against your thigh. (Video of that Navajo woman demonstrating it is coming up in a sec.) 

I am not proficient either at carding or at spinning on this kind of spindle, so here's that video I've been talking about. First you get to see some Navajo churro sheep, which are the kind we have at Las Golondrinas; then come the demonstrations on carding and spinning. The whole video is about 20 minutes long. She starts carding the wool at about 37 seconds in, then she picks up the spindle at about 9:10 and talks about the technique and what weaving means to the Navajo. If you want to skip over that and just watch her use the spindle, start the video at about 12:26.

So that was yesterday. Today I was in the demonstration loom room, letting guests try their hand at weaving. Of course I didn't get a photo of the demo loom because pockets are anachronistic, so my phone was in my shorts underneath my skirt. But going back to the article in the New Mexican, if you click to the fourth photo, you can see a couple of the other looms we have: the jerga (YEHR-gah) loom takes up a good bit of the front of the photo, and behind the guy in the red shirt you can kind of see the loom used to weave sabanilla (sah-bah-NEE-yah), the cloth that's used for colcha embroidery (which is a whole 'nother craft that I have yet to try).

I was commiserating today with a guest who both knits and weaves that while knitters have a big online home in Ravelry, there's no comparable website for weavers. So I'm happy that I've landed here in New Mexico, where weaving is part of the culture. I met so many experienced weavers this weekend -- more than I ever have in the years since I started learning the craft. I'm happy to keep learning, and to keep sharing what I learn.

And now I think I'll go and put my feet up.

***

So much for keeping it short...

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These moments of fiber-crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. The pandemic's not over, guys -- get vaxxed and boosted!

Spanish Colonial me.

I promised y'all last week that I would post a photo of my rebozo when I was finished weaving it. Alert hearth/myth readers will recall that the rebozo is part of my costume as an interpreter at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, a living history museum here in Santa Fe. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Well, it's done. This week, I fixed a few blips in the weaving and washed it. I realized y'all would probably want to see the whole costume, though, as it's a whole lot more interesting than just seeing a long, rectangular piece of cloth. So here you go, and please excuse the unmade bed in the background that I only kinda sorta managed to crop out. 

Under the rebozo, I'm wearing a peasant top. It's from Lands End, and drapier than it should be -- I thought it was mostly cotton when I ordered it, but it turns out it's a blend of cotton, modal, and -- whoopsy! -- spandex. The skirt is all cotton. There's a sash that's hard to see in the photo -- I'll get to that in a minute -- and you almost can't see the shoes at all, which is a good thing because they're brown suede flats and they are not historically appropriate. The shoes we're supposed to be wearing are called tewa boots. Don't bother googling the term; Mama Google will think you mean boots made by Teva, the shoe manufacturer. I'm a big fan of Tevas, but they don't make anything like the boots that everybody in Northern New Mexico wore in Spanish Colonial times. You can click here to see what the footwear looked like in those days.

Anyway, I'm hoping the rest of the outfit will be sufficiently convincing that nobody will notice that I'm not wearing the right kind of shoes.

Now, about that sash: Surprise! I wove that, too. The yarn is a cotton/linen blend that a friend gave me last year. I decided to attempt to weave a twill pattern for the first time ever. Here's what it looked like on the loom (yes, that's Tigs on the floor, and you don't want to know what he was doing when I took the photo): 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

To make plain weave like the rebozo, you go under one warp thread and over the next, all across the fabric, and then reverse it on the next pass, so that you go over the thread you went under the last time, and under the one you went over. But for 2/2 twill, you kind of think of your warp threads in groups of four. You go under the first two warp threads and over the next two on the first pass; then on the next pass you move over one warp thread, so that you go over one, under the next two, and over the last one, and so on. That's what gives you the diagonal slant. With any luck, you end up with fabrick that looks like this: 

Stolen from https://www.gistyarn.com/blogs/how-to-weave/basic-weave-structures-twill

If the pattern looks familiar, it's because you've seen it on your favorite pair of jeans. Denim fabric is a 2/2 twill.

Anyway, it was an interesting experiment. The end result looks a little rough in some places, but I think it will pass for the costume. Next weekend is my first volunteer gig. I'll let you know how it works out.

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I had intended to do a split post this week and address the recent rash of mass shootings, particularly the one in Uvalde, Texas, that put the lie to so many of the NRA's talking points. For example, the army of "good guys with guns" in the school parking lot didn't stop 21 people, most of them kids, from being shot to death.

Rather than keeping you, however, I'll point you to an interview I read in Politico earlier today. A couple of researchers have studied a whole bunch of people who committed mass shootings over the past several decades. These researchers have identified a profile that fits such individuals -- one that would make it easier to stop such incidents before they start. The question is whether the political will is there to implement their suggestions, which, for one thing, would require a huge investment in mental health screenings and treatment. So far, the will has not been there; for all the bleating conservatives do about how troubled these individuals are, they are also quick to scuttle any actual funding for mental health treatment. Still, I found it an interesting and balanced read, and I recommend it to you.

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These moments of balanced blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. The pandemic's not over yet, folks -- get vaxxed and boosted!

Weaving a rebozo.

Even though there are plenty of hot social topics in the news this week, I decided to take a break from that sort of thing and post about my new weaving project: a rebozo for my costume as a volunteer at El Rancho de las Golondrinas. But wouldn't you know it -- the use of rebozos is in the midst of a cultural-appropriation brouhaha. 

I'll explain all that in a sec. First, I want to tell you what the heck a rebozo is. 

Dama con rebozo - Juan Rodríguez Juárez
Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City

The striped wrap that the woman in this painting is wearing around her shoulders is a rebozo (one that's a lot fancier than the one I'm making). Basically, a rebozo (it's pronounced reh-BOH-zoh) is a long rectangular piece of cloth. Wikipedia describes it as looking like "a cross between a scarf and a shawl." It originated in Mexico, but it's unclear when; a number of indigenous cultures use similar woven articles. The earliest description by a European was written by Friar Diego Duran in 1572. Other influences on rebozo design were probably the Spanish mantilla (you might have seen pictures of these lacy shawls -- Spanish women would stick a tall comb in their hair and drape the mantilla over it); a Moorish garment called a rebociño that's similar to a mantilla but shorter; and, much later, the Filipino mantón de Manila (flamenco dancers wear these).

Anyway, back to Mexico. Women used the rebozo as sort of an all-purpose garment: over the head, for protection from the sun; around the shoulders for warmth; and as a carrier for all sorts of things, including babies.

In fact, the rebozo has experienced a resurgence over the past several years, both as a baby carrier and as an aid to women in labor. Here's where the cultural appropriation thing comes in. There's a movement among some doulas against White women using rebozos to aid women giving birth. One blogger calls the rebozo a "sacred garment" and says there have been cases where inexperienced White doulas have actually harmed their clients by using a rebozo in techniques they haven't been properly trained in.

I don't know anything about rebozo-related birthing techniques, so I can't speak to that part of the critique. But a rebozo -- a utilitarian piece of cloth -- is a sacred garment? Where did that come from?

The only thing I can think of is this: During the Mexican Revolution, women called Adelitas used their rebozos to carry both babies and weapons past checkpoints. Because of this, the rebozo became a symbol of women's strength and feminity. Frida Kahlo wore them. Mexico's then-First Lady, Margarita Zavala, wore one when she met with our then-First Lady, Michelle Obama, in 2010. 

Today, rebozos come in all sorts of patterns and colors, often with intricately-woven fringe.

Mine isn't going to be anything like that.

The rebozo came to New Mexico with Spanish settlers in the 17th century -- back when it was a simple rectangular shawl, used both as shade from the sun and as a carry-all. This is the historical period I'm going to be representing, so there won't be anything fancy about my rebozo. Here I have it started on the table loom: 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

It's going to be light blue with very basic fringe. With any luck, it'll be about 21 inches wide and about six feet long when it's done. The yarn is 5/2 cotton -- if you're a knitter, that translates to laceweight -- and I'm making it very drapey, to make sure I have enough yarn to finish the thing.

I'm hoping that no one reading this accuses me of cultural appropriation. Granted, I'm not Hispanic. But my rebozo's intended use is as part of a historical reenactment. I won't be using it to carry a baby, and I certainly won't be employing it to help any pregnant women give birth.

I'll post a photo when it's done, hopefully next week.

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These moments of weaving blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed and stay safe!

Pretty blankets.

I may have mentioned that I'm going to be volunteering at El Rancho de las Golondrinas here in Santa Fe this summer. It's a living history museum situated on the Camino Real, the royal road that led from Mexico City to Santa Fe, back when the Spanish were intent on conquering what's now the Southwestern United States. 

The museum covers a couple of hundred years of northern New Mexico history, from the Mexican settlement of the area in the 1700s to the turn of the 20th century. The building showing the earliest years is the placita, the little plaza, which depicts what life was like when the ranch was a paraje, or an official stop, on the Camino Real. Settlers had to make almost everything themselves, of course, being far from civilization as they were, and among the things they did was weave their own cloth. As you might imagine, that caught my interest. So that's the part of the museum where I'm planning to volunteer.

To prepare, I've been reading some stuff about the history of weaving in New Mexico. Churro sheep first came up from Mexico with Coronado in 1540, but the conquistadores weren't interested in making clothing from their flock -- instead, they ate them. It wasn't until Don Juan de Oñate arrived in 1598 that sheep were used for anything but food. That's when weaving began to take off. 

The Pueblo Indians were already weaving when Oñate showed up, but they grew and wove cotton, not wool, and their looms were different from the kind the Spanish brought with them to the New World. Weaving became a big part of the local economy, with tens of thousands of blankets being sent south to Mexico as trade items by 1840. 

I won't get too far into the weeds here. But as I was reading one of the handouts, some of the terms stood out for me. Saltillo-style weaving, for instance. I'd heard of saltillo tile -- the large terracotta tiles used in flooring across the Southwest -- but Saltillo weaving? What did it look like?

Dear Reader, I have googled and found photos, and now I will share them with you.

So the earliest weaving patterns were horizontal stripes. (I've stolen most of these photos from this webpage, and I hope Centinela Traditional Arts doesn't come after me for using them.) 

A striped blanket.

Horizontal stripes are stupid easy to weave. Even I can do them. You just go back and forth across the loom with one color 'til you decide to switch, and then you go back and forth with the new color, and so on. The earliest blankets were made with undyed yarn -- churro sheep come in shades of black, brown, and white -- although sometimes the yarn was dyed with natural materials. Chamisa, for example, makes a yellow dye. But not all natural dyes were local. Indigo blue had to be imported from Mexico. Cochineal red is made from little bugs collected from cacti -- no, really -- and it was also imported.

So the early blankets went south, and Saltillo blankets came north in trade. Those often had stripes at either end and a triangular motif in the middle. New Mexican weavers began to adopt and modify the style. 

Blanket with Saltillo elements, including the central medallion.

When the Santa Fe Trail was established in the 1820s, trade in New Mexico turned away from Mexico and toward the eastern United States. That's when commercial dyes became popular. By the mid 19th century, local weavers -- including many Navajo -- had moved away from natural dyes and began developing their own designs. One non-Indian style of weaving developed in New Mexico during this period is the Vallero. I found this example here. Isn't it dazzling?

A Vallero-style blanket.

As amazing as these later blankets and rugs are, I expect I'll stick with stupid easy designs for my own weaving projects. But I'm hoping to learn how to dye yarn at Las Golondrinas this summer. I'll let you know how it goes.

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These moments of dazzling blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

Flora gets dressed.

My life these days has been reduced to three things: the seven-day-a-week legal proofreading job, trips to the grocery store, and making accessories for Flora the llama. (Well, and spending too much time on social media, but that hasn't changed in years.)

 You remember Flora, right? When I introduced her last week, I said it wouldn't take me long to weave a little blanket for her back -- and I was right. Here she is, nearly there but still a work in progress.

I had a discussion with some friends online about the color to use for the tassels on the blanket. A couple of folks suggested that I make each one a different color, and I liked that idea a lot. But in the end I went with gold, because I ended up not using it anywhere else in the project.

The item next to the basket on her back is a butterfly pin crocheted by Kitty.

The choice of headgear was a bigger challenge than I expected. My first thought was a knitted hat, and I may make her one for next winter, but right now I'm thinking spring. So I thought maybe a straw hat, but the only straw hats I've seen are sized either for adults or Barbie dolls. Her head circumference is twelve inches -- bigger than a Barbie but way too small for an adult hat. So I settled for a garland of knitted roses. I think it turned out pretty well.

She needs one more accessory: something for her neck. With pompoms, because c'mon, she's a llama. Tassels and pompoms are required.

I started knitting the band while I was working today. I'd be farther along, but it was giving me fits -- mainly because the pattern I'm using has one of those weird lace moves that cause knitters to tear their hair out. This one calls for a yarnover (abbreviated as YO) right before you purl two stitches together through the back loop (abbreviated, in this pattern, as p2 tog tbl). I think purling through the back loop is pretty easy for English-style knitters. But as a continental-style knitter, I can tell you it's no fun at all. There's contortionism involved. And every time I thought I had it nailed, I discovered I'd lost the YO.

At last I figured out a workaround. It involves an extra step or two, but the stitch comes out right every time and I haven't pulled a muscle yet. If you ever find yourself in similar dire straits, here's what to do: 

1. If the pattern calls for a YO right before the p2 tog tbl, don't do it yet.
2. Turn your work slightly so you can see the side of your project that's normally facing away from you.
3. Insert the tip of your right needle into the second stitch on the left needle. The right needle needs to be pointing toward you. Slip both that stitch and the first one onto the right needle. In that order -- first the back leg of the second stitch, then the back leg of the first stitch. So far, it's just like you would do a normal p2 tog tbl.
4. Okay. Slide the stitches off the left needle and turn your work back. 
5. Now the two stitches are on your right needle, and they're twisted. Keeping them twisted, slide them both back onto the left needle.
6. If the pattern calls for a YO before this stitch, make your YO now. 
7. The back loops of the twisted stitches are now facing you, so do a regular purl 2 together (p2 tog). And you're done. Perfect every time. You're welcome.

***

This coming week is the final one for the seven-day-a-week legal proofreading gig. I may or may not have the energy to post next weekend. If I do, here's hoping I'll have something more interesting to talk about than llama wear.

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For those who care about such things: The rose pattern is from 150 Knitted Trims by Leslie Stanfield. The pompom band pattern is called "Single Faggot Stitch" and it's from the same book. Directions for making and binding a tassel are in there, too. It's a pretty great reference, all in all. 

The band for the roses is a seed stitch I-cord and the pattern is in Knit Edgings & Trims: 150 Stitches, edited by Kate Haxell.

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These moments of whimsical crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Still wearing a mask and washing my hands while awaiting my vaccine...

A knitting post? Don't mind if I do.

Enough with the heavy, navel-gazing topics already. I'm ready for a crafting break -- how about you?

In our last exciting episode, which was back in November, I introduced you to a gizmo called a Norwegian knitting thimble and showed you the project I was knitting with it: the Community Tunic, a pullover sweater with a colorwork yoke. You may also recall that the yellow-green yarn I picked for part of the colorwork was too pale and didn't provide enough contrast with the main color. And then I made an offhand comment to the effect that I was going to have to go over those stitches in duplicate stitch with a better green.

Now, it usually takes me about a month and a half to knit a sweater. I started the Community Tunic in October. Guess when I finished it? 

Give up? 

Today. 

The holdup was those 14 rows of duplicate stitch. I needed a really bright light to make out the pale green against the gray, so I bought a new table lamp. That was in December, I think. Then I started going around and around, row by row. I got the fourth row partly done before I abandoned that line of attack. It seemed to be taking forever. Then I started working spoke by spoke, which was better, but still so tedious. 

Finally I signed myself up for Great Courses Plus so I could stream lectures to listen to while I worked at the sweater. And at last, I finished it the duplicate stitch. All that was left was to sew on the pockets I'd knitted weeks ago. Of course, I screwed that up, too.

The column of stitches in the circle on the right has five stitches between the bottom edge of the pocket and the start of the ribbing. The column in the circle on the left, alas, has only four stitches from bottom of pocket to top of ribbing. I'd managed to drop down a stitch without realizing it.

There's a saying among knitters: It's not a mistake -- it's a design element. 

A knitting friend picked up a similar saying at a conference: If a man riding by on a horse won't notice it, just keep going.

Normally I would have -- but not this time. Not after the yellow-green yoke debacle. I ripped back to where I'd made my mistake (it wasn't very far) and redid the sewing, carefully counting each column of stitches before taking each new stitch. 

It worked. Attaching the pockets took no time after that. And now the sweater is done -- and I still have time to wear it before it gets too hot. 

The green might be a little too bright compared to the purple, but I am not doing anything else to this sweater. I am done. 

I did finish one other project this winter: a blanket/wrap/thing that I wove on the ginormous loom. Here's what that looks like. It's really long.

Getting that done allowed me to fold up the ginormous loom and gain a bit of real estate in my bedroom, which made me happy. Getting that sweater done and off the couch, where it's been silently rebuking me since Samhain, also made me happy -- it cleared the decks so I can work on accessories for Flora, who arrived yesterday. 

Isn't she adorable? I was going to knit her a hat, but I don't think it will fit properly, given the shape of her head. However, lots of llamas wear pretty woven blankets  and baskets on their backs. And I happen to be extremely close friends with somebody who owns a loom. And I know of a store that sells cute baskets. 

(I haven't gone completely around the bend. I know that Flora's just a statue made out of resin. But she was too cute to pass up. Plus she's cheap to feed, she's potty trained, and the landlady can't complain that I have a pet in this pet-free building.)

The little blanket for her back will take no time at all to weave. I'l show you when it's done. 

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These moments of crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. I know it's been almost a year since we all went home, but keep wearing a mask and social distancing. We're almost out of the woods.