A new family member

Hi y'all!
A lot has happened the last couple of weeks and I really haven't had or taken the time to write a blog.
Yesterday for 3 weeks ago with have bought a new family member.
May introduce to you: MILOU!

Milou is a charcoal labrador and because of the color she cannot have papers on her!
Isn't that the weirdest thing?
Her dad is from the USA and her mom from Germany and now she lives with a dutch family living in Sweden.
How international do you want it to be?
I don't have to tell you how cute she is, because you will all agree on that, right?
She is adorable. Sleeps since a week through the night.
The first two week were hard, especially the second week.
My husband was abroad that second week and I'm not good in waking up at night.
It affects my mood big time!
Good that have been home by myself most of the time!
The last days of my loneliness with her I put her in the crate at night and warned my daughter about, because her sleeping room lies above.
Well, I thought I would catch up some sleeping time, but that wasn't in the stars for me.
My daughter slipped into a kind of coma because the next day I asked if she heard anything and she didn't hear a thing.
How in the world is that possible?
She howled for hours!
So finally she slept in the bed with me!
Yeah, yeah, I know! I big nono, but I really had to catch up sleeping.
But as in last week she sleeps from 10 pm till 6 am so we cannot complain and ....... she sleeps in her own cushion next to the bed.

And because of this little wonder I got inspired too.
So I made her leashes!
One on the Inkle Loom and I made one for her sister Molly too!
And I sewed one.

This is the one made on the Inkle Loom!

This is the one I sewed!

I will wait for the collar until she is full grown, otherwise I would be making a collar every week!
Once you have a puppy and searched the internet and especially Etsy, you will go ballistic!
I ordered tags from HappyTag and I haven't got them yet, but if I do, I will make her a collar to fit her as an adult.
I can't wait for them to come in.
The other ones are for my daughters dog Freija.
Our neighbours bought Milou's sisters Molly, so I bought one for Molly and one is for Molly's big brother Bruno.
Bruno is one of our puppies we had 10 years ago and he is with us on a regular basis.

Enough doggie talk.

On the international women day I happen to have my birthday.
My husband didn't had any idea of what to buy me and I'm always full of ideas!
Who isn't, right?

So I asked him what my budget was and at first he didn't want to tell me, but eventually he told me and I ordered as a brave girl within budget!
Now your are very curious of what I bought right?

The story is that I'm not really fond of the looms I have.
I have the Ashford Inklette and an Ashford Inkle Loom which I have adapted and still not very happy with it.
So I have for months now searched the internet for a loom that I could think buying and I came out on a site from Germany.
He really knows his thing.
The site, unfortunately, is only in German.
No problem for me, speaking is another mather!

So this is the loom I bought with a couple of extra's and I already want another "extra".

So the extra on my loom is an board for tablet weaving and it works like a charm.
I only had 20 tablets so I had to take some others cards for the edges.
That's not optimal but it works.

There is one thing that I would to add to this loom and that is a little table that you kind of klick on on the side so that you can have your tablet or your pattern on paper there.
So that would be my next order and a couple of the wonderful wooden tablets he has.

This is what I have on the loom now!

I have found an awesome program on the internet.
It is called Twisted Threads and a great program to have on your tablet because it gives you the opportunity to weave with your pattern.
There is also a Facebook group for this program.
Sure, I'm not good in explaining this but just have a look at the online program and you will fall in love.
The only thing that I screwed up is that I had a pattern from GTT and thought I did it right and obviously I didn't, because my pattern was upside down and I had to weave it exactly the opposite of what was written.
So I will change that for another time.
I'm still happy with the colors and the look of it.
Well, that is all I wanted to say.

Have a great one and until next time!

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A wonderful weekend

Hello everyone,

I have had the best weekend in a long time!

Three of four times a year I organise a spin retreat in my house.

We have a big basement that is actually a one family apartment I would say.

Three bedrooms, a big kitchen and a very spacious living room.

Normally we gather on Friday night and for those who wants to earlier, that's ok too.

This year was different. 

I planned this weekend the same weekend as there was a Wool Festival going on.

And that Wool Festival is about a 40 minutes drive from my house.

So a couple of the girls came on Thursday night and we all drove to the Festival and meet up with the others their!

Well, it was a mad house. A lot of people!

They came from all over the country and as I was a vendor for a couple of years a lot of people came to me for a talk. 

Very nice!

One of the vendors stayed the night with me as well.

Renee Darley, she is really wonderful and she came all the way from the northern part of Sweden.

You can read about her here and here.

Ofcourse there was a lot to see and I only bought some stuff for tablet weaving. 

I have to say, I really behaved!

I got some presents too, part because tomorrow is my birthday and part to say thanks for being here. 

Totally not necessary but really nice anyway!

And because we bought some new dye from here we had to try it right? 

We dyed in a ricecooker and that I didn't figure it myself is a mystery to me.

I mostly dye in a pasteuriser and a ricecooker is just the little version of that. 

Just awesome!

I had some Austermann Merino Lace that I have been wanted to dye for ages and now I did!

The plan is to knit this out of it. 

Hope my arms will be better soon so that I can start on that one.

Although, I promised myself to finish my husbands blanket first.

The boat is really coming along now and she is definitely going in the water this year and I want to have his blanket finished by then. 

So here is my dyed yarn:

These colors are actually quit right.

All and all a great weekend!
I did a bit of spinning too and very pleased with it and already looking forward to the new retreat!
Until next time!

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Soapmaking efforts

I have had a wonderful weekend with a visiting good friend.
Time is always to short if you have good company.
We talked a lot and among things also about soapmaking and I promised to make a shampoo bar for her.
What the heck was I thinking?
I wanted to do this one hot process so I gathered my stuff and got going.

The Trace stadium looked good to me.

I peeked at 15 minutes and I had my crockpot on hot!

I could already see that it was browning on the sides, but I thought that was part of the process.

Here you can see that is what was kind of burning.
So the crockpot went on low.

After an hour I put my mixture in the moods, but look at how it looks!
It looks like scrambled eggs!

So I have taken a shower with the bar and I have to say......

It worked. My hair is stil wet so I don't know what it looks like when it has dried up, but it feels nice. 

The latter was amazing. We have very soft water and the you get more lather too.

I will keep you updated and I might send her the shampoo bars after all.

Yesterday and today I have knit knight and as you all know I cannot knit because of my tennis elbows. 

I can do Inkle Loom weaving though so yesterday I started with a double weave project and it looked better on the back then on the front.

Have to work on that then!

Here are the pictures. The pattern is from Laverne Waddington.

This is the front

and this is the back. You see the pattern better on the backside.

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Everything and nothing.

Hope you all had a great Valentines day.
We went to the movies yesterday and it was a long time ago I saw a crap movie like that, DeadPool.
Suppositely a good movie and I think I was the only one in the theater that has these thoughts.


I thought I've found a new awesome APP for blogging that everybody on the internet raved about!
Well I'm highly disappointed.
I wrote and posted pictures and everything just to find out now that nothing has been saved!
You understand that I'm not a happy camper at the moment.
I try to remember what it was that I wrote about and I can't recall everything.
Well I will have to try to do my best to make a good one now!

Last Wednesday I had to go to knit night here in town and my arms where hurting so no knitting for me.
So I decided to put on a new project with band/strap weaving.
With the tutorial from Laverne Waddington I finally got the hang of it.
This pattern is from her E-book Andean Pebble Weave that you can find here.
And... I didn't do bad as I may say so.
The beginning hard to get and it just got better and better.
I think I have the hang of it now.

I'm in a group on Facebook about Inkle Loom weaving and sometimes it's not good to have a look there. 

So many beautiful things that I, of course, must master.

Next project I started is double weave.

You can do double weave with tablets too and that looks like this:

But I had my mind set up for double weave with heddles.

You can find a lot of tutorials on Laverne Waddington her website.

Last week I also ordered some very thin cotton and it came in the mail and started a project. 

Didn't go that smooth in the beginning and nothing does in the beginning, right?

I didn't like the long threads at the back of the strap so tonight I will take the old one of and set up a new, wider one. 

Here, I'm just playing!

Then I decided to go a bit bigger but I made the mistake of making to little threads. 

So I guess I'll put up another on that one too. 

Maybe I'll do that one backstrap. 

The only thing I don't like about backstrap is that I can only to this in the basement. 

Let's call this embedded double weave. 

This is Memphis btw! 

Annoying me to no end, sitting in front of my screen, on my 

keyboard and chasing me typing on the screen.

I love to try out new techniques so until next time!

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