Saturday, July 28, 2007

Greetings from Maine

I have been sadly remiss in my recent posts. But I finally have pictures of something worth posting.
These past two weeks I have been in Maine, for a family reunion. The weather has been, in general, perfectly lovely. Normally it is hot and muggy here, but it has been tolerable.
I have been spending a vast amount of time in the pool/lake, and next to air conditioning units, knitting, of course. I have worked on:
  • The watermelon socks are now finished! And I have worn them as well. I am very happy with how they turned out.
  • A linen stitch bag in hand dyed (not by me) indigo yarn from Orting, WA (Heritage Yarn, I think). It's a nice sturdy yarn, good for a bag. Almost done, just need double points for the bottom of the bag.
  • A red tank top in Kashmir DK, from Louisa Harding. I am basing it off of an Elspeth Lavold pattern from the new Cotton Frappe book. Front's almost finished.
  • A cell-phone pouch from my leftovers from the socks.
  • I bought a skein of yarn from Peace Fleece here in Porter, ME. It's in pretty Peacock colours. I have one skein, and it's a DK weight, 100 grams. Have no idea what I shall do with it yet though.
This past week I have been working on my family's loom down at the Jay Historical Society. The ladies (and gents) there were all so sweet and so glad I was working on the loom. Here is a picture in all of it's enormous glory.

History of the loom:
The loom was made in the 1700's (supposedly, and believe me...it is old) in Massachusetts. It was brought to Jay, ME in the early 1800's (not necessarily by my family) and resided in Jay until it was used by my Great Grandfather, Jonas Godding Pike. After his death it stayed in the attic, mostly unused, and unmoved (it's so big!) until the 1960's-ish when my great uncle Stanley donated it to the society.
In recent history, it has been used by a local weaver who set it up and rigged up heddles to go with it and replaced the ropes that were dead. It has been moved several times. And two years ago a drunk on the adjacent highway crashed into it damaging one of the legs. Stupid drunk! Grrrr.

My project:
I wove a rag rug (there was already a linen warp on the loom set up for a rag rug, so I re-tensioned the warp and re-used it) with cotton prints. It took me a day to repair things on the loom and replace ropes and strings, and then 2 hours total to weave it.
It took the longest time to figure out the heddles. I had the worst shed possible until I realized that they were crooked.
Now I have to take a picture of the final project. But here is the weaving in progress:

5 comments:

Carol said...

Oh wow! That is so nifty! Family history that goes back like that always fascinates me.

Sara M said...

She LIVES!!! And weaves :D

And, wow, I'd offer to help you steal (ah, liberate and protect, I mean) the loom if it weren't, you know, 3000 mi away...

Carol said...

Very cool! And it has family history, that's really nice that you be so connected to family that way.

Anonymous said...

Hey Mirm, when you getting back to the west coast?
-Kimi

Anonymous said...

Mock!! Mock mock mock!!

-Kimi