What to do with all those clipped ends?

 For years I have littered my house with small bits of yarn-- the clipped ends from pin loom woven squares and rectangles. I finally started putting an empty Kleenex box next to my chair in hopes of containing the mess. This receptacle is my next step up from the Kleenex box. 

This was a simple decorative box until I added a hole to the lid. But it has worked so well and been such an elegant improvement in terms of keeping the yarn litter off the floor and out of my vacuum cleaner that I had to celebrate it with everyone! 

Weave on! 

Pin Loom Weaving on a Flexee Link Loom

One of my recent interests has been a practice of pin loom weaving on fine gauge knitting looms. My second book, Pin Loom Weaving To Go, has a whole section of projects and techniques using a fine gauge adjustable sock loom. You can see more information on that process on the Weaving on a Knitting Loom page. 

While I will never give up my favs, the traditional groups-of-three-pins pin looms, it is so much fun to begin to realize that if you can find some sort of frame with pins all the way around, you can wind on the yarn (or rope, I guess, if it was a really big frame) and create a piece of woven cloth with a finished selvedge all the way around. 

After working on the article for Kb Looms about making a cool zippered bag on a knitting loom, they were kind enough to send me their newest product, the Flexee Loom Links. As you can see they are links, some straight and some rounded, with a couple knitting loom pins on each and they snap together to make whatever size knitting loom the knitter wants. They remind me a bit of the old pop beads that were popular a looong time ago. 

One of the cool things about them is that the kit contains 16 straight links which fit together in a nice, rigid manner so that you can shape a small pin loom with them, which means that you can shape a number of different small pin looms depending upon your pin loom needs. 

These are the four looms I formed using the straight Flexee Links, three of which were used to make a Loom Bloom because pin loom flowers are such an easy, fun project. As soon as Kb Looms posts the complete article online - including a weaving video! - I will add the link RIGHT HERE. 

Here are some shots of winding yarn on each loom shape, keep in mind that they all weave up exactly like the adjustable sock loom. 

Now I am going to guess that a lot of you are already thinking about the fact that this kit contains both straight and rounded links and while the straight links give you a straight, rigid loom, the rounded links would allow you to make a rounded loom. If you add straight and rounded pieces you could make all sorts of shapes including a heart.

Here are my first heart pin loom attempts. I will be adding material on making two sizes of heart looms and weaving heart shapes, including new video, in the very near future. Let me know if you have any questions and I will try to address them.

So take care, stay tuned, I will be back with the completed links and more information soon. MS

Dr. Who Pin Loom Scarf

I don’t know how much overlap there is between pin loom weavers and Dr. Who fans, but I am a major weaver/Dr. Who overlapper.

When I stumbled across the website, Dr. Who Scarf, I knew that I wanted to weave my very own homage' to the original, knitted, Dr. Who Scarf. I wanted it to be as close to the original colors and design as I could get— without having to do any knitting.

For those who might not remember (or not have been born at that time) Tom Baker portrayed the Fourth Doctor Who from June, 1974 until March, 1981, which was the longest appearance of any one actor in the role of Dr. Who.

One of his most recognizable features was a very, very long scarf.

The Dr. Who Scarf website was extremely helpful by giving specific colors needed as well as a layout for the design. The original scarf was 10” by 13 foot with fringe -- which stretched to about 17 foot over the years. My recreation turned out to be 11 foot, 6 inches without fringe. I’m pretty short and decided that fringed scarf ends would end up acting too much like a dust mop.

To create the color blocks, I used 4x4” and 4x6” pin looms to make blocks 10” across. There are several sections that measure 8” x 10”, where I used multiple blocks of the same color. For thinner color blocks, I used 2x4” and 2x6” looms. For even thinner sections, I single crocheted 3 rows back and forth for an approximate 1” x 10” section.

I joined the blocks and all the color sections using a double overcast stitch. You can find information on this stitch on the Pin Loom Essentials page as well as a demonstration of using the double overcast stitch on the Pin Loom Video page.

I decided to limit my yarn choice for the project to what I had available in the house (which is not a ridiculous limit since I’ve got about two rooms full of yarn-much of which has come to me second-hand through various thrift stores). I found a very close match to all but one color in worsted weight wool. I had to use an acrylic yarn for the chestnut color.

This is the scarf laid out flat on the ground
pictured in sections.

When I started weaving and putting the stripes together I was blown away by how the color palette reeked of the 70’s. It dawned on me that my color choices may have been helped by the fact that some of the yarn I was using could have been spun in the 70’s. I may have been using the original colors!

This scarf project turned out to be the perfect choice for several weeks of travel. Since I had a clear diagram, with my modifications, from the irreplaceable Dr. Who Scarf website, I could pick up and do a few squares whenever I needed something to do with my hands. Because I was weaving in different sizes and colors, it was never boring and the project took shape surprisingly swiftly.

It was only after I finished the scarf that I did some further investigation and found that there are a number of people actively knitting, and selling, Dr. Who scarves. However, none of them are woven on pin looms, which I still consider the absolute best, and most fun, fiber technique.

Shepherd's Harvest 2019, Classes and vendors and fun. Oh my!

Shepherd's Harvest Sheep and Wool Festival, located near Stillwater, MN, just east of the Twin Cities, just celebrated its 23rd year of all things fiber including (the most important part to me) three massive barns of vendors.  Maybe next year I will get my act together and post a notice of how cool Shepherd's Harvest is before the event. For now, I can only share a couple pictures.

First off, we had some great classes. This hard working group was part of the Introduction to Pin Loom Weaving class and made woven coasters/mug rugs with bee and flower embellishments. We also did a Pin Loom Patterns and Joins class. I figure that once you can weave a square and have a sense about how to join them, the sky's the limit!

This picture illustrates an extraordinary square. I wanted to share this because it reminds me how important it is to try new things. This weaver added a few more layers of warp and weft than are normally called for, but the result is lovely with a really interesting texture.

I would never have thought to do this on my own because I have been weaving for a long time so I always do it the same. It is really difficult to regain a beginner's mind.

I spent much of the time demonstrating pin loom weaving and showing off the fun things that can be made with pin loom squares. The Wolf Hat/Scarf and the Felted Book Bag in the lower left corner of my display table are both featured in Easy Weaving with Little Looms 2019 . Isn't it great to see a magazine devoted to little looms?!

Did you notice the three Monster Softies posed above in the middle of the display? They are a recent project to be published through Yarn Magazine, from Artwear Publications.

Of course I also was showing off a few of the items from the newest book, Adorable Beasts. You can see a picture of the cover on the right. This is one of the playscapes, a medieval homestead with house, tower, stable, garden, and ornamental pond with trees. The knight, lady, dragon and unicorn sort of go with the setting, but you can add in any animals you like. I included the llama, alpaca and rabbit because I was at a fiber fair. 

My greatest challenge has been finding time to make a few items for sale.  The cats shown below are a fun, simple project that works well as a craft item as well as being a fun class. The Owl Phone Pouches are also a product of working with Yarn Magazine and are going to make a wonderful class!

For those who have actually read to the bottom of this post, here is my favorite thing about Shepherd's Harvest. Every year the Minnesota fishing opener falls on the same weekend as Mother's Day. So for many families around here, Mother's Day weekend is celebrated with all the fishing guys and gals taking off for the lake and all the weaving, spinning, knitting, felting people getting together at Shepherd's Harvest. Everybody ends up happy.

A prodigal weaver returns

I have been out of the loop for months and I am really embarrassed by my ghosting behavior. I have been crazy busy writing a new book detailing the pin loom woven animals. I can never remember when I start these projects that, for me at least, writing about weaving is like 900% harder than actually doing the weaving.

By the way, please don't be concerned about the lack of specifics on the book at this point, you will hear lots more, more than you likely would ever want to know, about the pin loom animals book in the near future.

I also recently returned from Convergence, held in Reno this year. Convergence is the Handweaver's Guild of America (HGA) biannual get-together and if you haven't attended one yet, it is a definite bucket list item for anyone interested in any kind of fiber work. I was able to introduce the pin loom animals to a wider audience at their Leader's Gallery Show and taught two pin loom weaving classes, Introduction to Pin Loom Weaving and Weaving a Spirit Horse, which were both amazing fun.

Some of the pin loom animals by Margaret Stump on display at HGA Convergence at Reno, 2018.

Speaking of classes, I taught the class, Weaving a Spirit Horse, in by far the fanciest suite that I have ever set foot in.

You see the picture to the right? That was just the downstairs reception area...complete with tables, bar and incredible view! The class was held upstairs in another lovely room with bar (I didn't actually get to use the bar), restrooms and multiple bedrooms, (didn't use those, either). Unfortunately, I was so excited about setting up the classroom for the day long Spirit Horse class that I didn't stop and take pictures. ...As you may have guessed, I am a little, or maybe a lot, I'm not telling, older than the selfie-aware generation.

Spirit Horse Workshop, Margaret Stump

So, you will be hearing about more pin loom weaving info as well as getting updates about enthusiastic pin loom weavers, like Suzanne Eakin, very soon.