Away from the Glitz

Although I live in Las Vegas I'm mentally a long way away from the glitter and glitz of the Strip. I live in the "other" city, where people live and work and actually don't think about gambling every minute. I've lived here for 22 years, teaching in the school system for 15 of those years. Now that I'm retired I can "play" with fiber instead of coins.

I work in a local yarn shop usually only one day a week, enough to feed my yarn habit. Since retiring I've been giving beginning weaving lessons on frame looms that I've constructed myself--over 75. Lately I've started branching out into beginning weaving instruction in rigid heddle looms. I've also touched on inkle weaving, tapestry weaving and fabric for making a vest (that was a REAL learning experience).

I also enjoy knitting and am currently working on a mittered square project from the book "Knit to be Square" by Vivian Hoxbro. Vivian calls the technique 'domino knitting' not mittered square. This particular project is abstract stole found on page 123--using incomplete squares. I thought a stole with holes in it was especially appropriate for Vegas weather. I'm using #4 needles with some Koigu fingering yarn. I don't plan to felt it as the patterns suggests so I'm cutting down on the number of panels and squares per panel. Hopefully I have enough yarn for the project...does that sound just a little like a faint doubt of my estimations? Oh yes.

Incidentally the piece of fabric at the bottom of this blog is the fabric I wove on a rigid heddle loom that I made into a vest, which I'll show in another posting. The workshop that I took with Daryl Lancaster in Salt Lake City last April was very helpful in completing the vest.