Rachel Beckman » Weaver & Textile Designer

Now on Pinterest

If any of my readers are on Pinterest, please feel free to follow me and let me know if I should follow you too! (Click on the picture above to see my pin boards!) And don’t be shy- if you see something on my site or my Etsy that you like, feel free to pin away!

Whimseybox

If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I’ve been very excited about Whimseybox for some time now. If you haven’t heard, Whimseybox is a fairly new subscription craft supply service. For $15 a month, the fine folks who thought up this brilliant idea will put together a box containing small samples of a variety of craft-goodness and mail it to your door. Whimseybox encourages sharing of project ideas through their website and blog, pooling from user submissions and craft projects across the web.

I’m so excited about my February box! Between my full time job at the library and my weaving business and my determination to do everything, I can get a little overwhelmed.  And when that happens, well, I have a tendency to shut down. Sometimes it’s good to just curl up with a book for a day, or eight, but finding the balance between that kind of relaxation and the relaxation that comes from making can be difficult.  I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

I am hoping that Whimseybox will help bring some balance to my life. By doing smaller, more quickly completed projects, I will seek to challenge myself and have fun. These are materials I would never pick up on my own; I buy yarn, I weave, I paint, I draw, I sew. Glitter? Leather cord? So out of my norm, but I already have a million project ideas running through my head. (Like using that fabric to make yo-yos for my collaborative quilt project? You betcha!) Things to do to wind down on the weekdays after work, or to take a break from the loom. Ways to always have my hands busy. More making, less internet!

So far, I’m killing it in 2012, but I know there’s a lot more I could be doing. Like finally using my serger to do some good.

Baby steps!

Natural Dye Day

Carly Goss and I have been working on a Natural Dye Workshop series that we want to teach in the coming months, so we thought today would be a good day to put our skills and our knowledge to the test, experiment with the dye stuff we had, and hang out and chat as fiber sisters. It was a long day, but a satisfying one, and I really can’t wait to see what comes next.

Annatto Seeds

Mmm onion skins.

We did some ombre between dye pots.  Note the involvement of the microwave door to hold the scarf in place.

Left to right: Alkanet, Annatto, Onion Skins

The annatto was pretty light, especially compared to the lovely, rich onion skin bath. The alkanet was pretty light too, but oh-so-lovely.

More process photos:

Soaking the fiber makes it ready to take in dye. Some scarves and skeins were prepared with mordant the day before; these were our non-mordant pieces.

Safety first! We cleared out the kitchen of food and vulnerable surfaces, put down plastic and newspaper, and sported masks and gloves for the tricky parts. All pots and utensils are dye-only tools.

Yo-Yo Quilt Project

I’ve added a new link under the work menu to the left for an on-going project that starts right now! It’s a collaborative project, so I hope you check it out and take a liking to it.

New Woven Scarves

View details and purchase here.