Social networking

I seem to have spent most of yesterday and today messing about on social network sites: Facebook, Tagged, and Twitter.

I joined Tagged some time back when my daughter sent me a message about it and have used it a lot recently. Apart from the usual men who want a quick bang, or those who are after money because they see women in their 50s and older as desperate!!!, I have made a couple of nice, funny and caring friends. One lives in Liverpool and the other in Italy. We write, send silly jokes, exchange music, chat about football. Many things and it is really nice.

Facebook is a recent addition and took me a while to find my way around. I have found one of my S-I-Ls on there, as well as his sister, and a niece who goes to Yale University. I can see what each of them is up to from here in the US as well as leave snippets of information myself.

Twitter is really new. I joined up last week and didn't think I Would like it at all. But I have watched what goes on and found a few people to follow and discovered that it can be quite addicitive! I have hooked twitter and facebook together as well, which was something I did not understand to begin with. And I have tweeted on a twitter Map. So all in all it's been an informative weekend.

Oh, I have managed to get a lot of weaving done in between spells on the laptop. I have to stand up and move around fairly regularly and each time I see the loom glaring at me. I have to finish what's on it by Tuesday so I can give the loom to my friend for lending to a new member of the weaving guild.

Dressed Loom and Half-Knitted Hat

As soon as I sat down to write this post, I remembered the picture of the loom. I had to put the loom on the floor as the warp consists of mainly dark colours and I had it on a dark table. I took a picture from the front and one from the back. This is the better of the two pictures, taken from the back, showing the rigid heddle loom dressed and ready for the weaving to begin. The silk is dyed a dark purple with random strands of reds and blues running through it.

Now I have to decide on the weft colours. My first idea was to use a darkish dusky pink. I tried a few strands in the warp and was not to keen on the result. I have now found a nice red that matches the main red strands in the warp, and a dark purple. I might use both colours, with the purple as the main colour and work some random stripes in the red. This is an experimental piece in two ways. Firstly using a rigid heddle loom, and secondly weaving silk with rayon chenille. How ever the fabric comes out, I will make the poncho with a crocheted edging to give it more strength. I can wear it around the house or as a bed poncho.

I am just a bit over half way through the patterned area of the hat. I will knit another four stripes before starting the stitch reduction for the top of the hat. I am choosing the stripe colours as I go along, and so far I think they look nice. The colours look a bit brighter in the picture than they really are.

The pattern is called a two colour seed stitch and is very simple to do. It has four rows to each pattern repeat. I am doing four rows in one colour, then two rows in the base grey colour for each stripe. I sit and knit a stripe when I have coffee, three times a day so it is growing quickly and will be finished by the end of the week.