Heart to Heart

It’s 2012! How’s Your Heart?

I find that most lovers of fibers know how to take care of themselves.  But don’t we all need encouragement to take off those 5 (or 10 or …) extra pounds, get regular check-ups, slow down from our high-stress, hectic lives and make time to relax doing what we love? That’s what Stitch Red is all about!  Click Here to see how you can support women’s heart health awarenessby knitting, weaving, crocheting or spinning one of our exclusively designed kits!

So now let’s get to eating right!  With massive amounts of food available at every turn, even health-conscious eaters can easily go overboard. Here’s 5 tips for being mindful  and cutting back on portion size:

1. Read.  Package labels can tell you a lot.  Pay close attention to calories & fat grams/serving.
2.  Measure Up. Not to be an obsessive-compulsive calorie counter, but breaking out the food scale and measuring cups and  spoons will help you get a better idea of what a real portion size looks like. Do it for a week and you’ll be a lot smarter.
3. Sit down.  Mindless grazing is one of the easiest ways to lose track of how much you’re consuming. If you don’t have a table, a plate and a chair there’s an overwhelming pull to mindlessly overeat.
4. Stash Leftovers. Serve up your meal and then put the rest away before you sit down so that you won’t be cued to eat more! 
5. Slow Down. The faster you eat, the more you consume.  You’ll save 70 calories per meal; 210 per day which theoretically adds up to an extra 22 pounds you won’t gain this year!

Join me for the Vegetarian Times 7 Day Portion Control Challenge!

 Click Here to sign up for the Vegetarian Times Portion Control Challenge!  It’ll make your heart just a little bit happier! 

Write me at irene@cottonclouds.com to let me know how you do. I’d love to hear from you! 

More blog posts will continue with heart health and a peak into how we designed our Stitch Red kits.  We’ll keep you posted.

Happy New Year 2012!  Happy Heart Health!

Irene & Jodi

Weaving on my Rigid Heddle Loom

I love weaving on my Rigid Heddle Loom!

Working for Cotton Clouds has lots of perks. One of them is getting my hands on all the gorgeous yarns and colors to design my own scarf and to be able to share my ideas & designs with you.

This is me, Jodi Ybarra wearing my handwoven Rigid Heddle Sampler Scarf.

Starting with a variegated yarn (Waikiki), then chosing colors that blended and complemented each other made designing these scarves so easy & so much fun to weave. It’s one thing to see all the colors and textures in the warp but as I was weaving and saw how the weft brought it all together right before my eyes, was truly amazing! 

In my warp, I used  Waikiki Variegated as my base yarn, then added  Cotton Classic , Felicia, Bambu 7 and Cotton Twirl  yarns as warp stripes. It was then easy (and pretty quick) weaving a  3/2 Pearly Perle 100% mercerized cotton in  the weft.

Warping a Rigid Heddle loom takes so little time that you will be weaving in no time. I used a 20″ Schacht Flip Loom. Click here to see Cotton Clouds’ Flip Studio Special with everything you need to start weaving!

 I highly recommend “The Weaver’s Idea Book“ by Jane Patrick for many warping and weaving tips (click here) and a life-time source of textures and patterns you can use in your own rigid heddle weaving

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Cotton Clouds has designed 12 color combinationsfor this Sample Scarf kit.  You will be able to make 2 different scarves on one warp! Check out this Cotton Clouds Rigid Heddle Sampler Scarf and experience the fun of blending colors, textures and yarns in your weaving!

The Cotton Clouds’ Rigid Heddle Sampler Scarf kit

Wouldn’t it be great to keep on weaving all year long?  Why not join our Rigid Heddle Kit-of-the-Month Club and receive a kit every month (12 month club) or every other month (6 month club).  Shipping is free on all kit clubs to club members!  Order now and receive a FREE 2012  Handwoven Wall Calendar!

 What’s next? I’m weaving the Simple Country Towels kit (in the Homespun Plaid pattern with Natural & Rust 8/2 Aurora Earth).  They are part of the Rigid Heddle Kit-of-the-Month Club .  I’ll keep you posted as this project progresses.  I’m excited to get started!

M-A-K-E time for your weaving!

I say it often–”I don’t HAVE time to weave, I MAKE time to weave!” 

(See our Five Sure-Fire Tips to Get Weaving below)

Cottolin Kitchen Curtains from "Weaving for Home" Kit-of-the-Month Club

 But how are you going to MAKE time to weave? 

Our Kit-of-the-Month Clubs begin by saving you time figuring out what to order.  Shipping is Free so there’s no guilt in shopping online.  We deliver each kit right to your door!  It’s basically a no-brainer!

Aurora Earth Fiesta Napkins from our "Weaving for Home" Kit-of-the-Month Club

There’s something here for everyone!

Table runners, towels, more towels, holiday projects, lots of scarves, home accessories for both 2 & 4-shaft weaving including our newest Rigid Heddle Weaving Kit-of-the-Month Club.

Rio Grande Placemats from our "Rigid Heddle" Club

No excuses for you anymore!

 We’ll deliver a complete weaving kit, with all the yarns, warping, weaving and finishing instructions you’ll need to get it on and off the loom within 30 days, so you’ll be ready for the next new project arriving at your door. That’s how you MAKE time for weaving!

All the yarns you’ll need to weave 4 Rio Grande Placemats from our “Rigid Heddle” Kit-of-the-Month Club

Learn by Doing!

No amount of armchair weaving is the same as actually doing it!  When a thoughtfully designed and thoroughly tested project is dropped at your doorstep each month, you will find that you WILL MAKE time to weave (and learn) more! 

Leno Rigid Heddle Wall Hanging: Learn a variety of leno lace techniques on your rigid heddle loom

 MAKE weaving a habit!

Did you know that a task repeated over a period of 30-60 days becomes a habit.  It is addictive. You know you love it, you know it brings peace and joy to your life, so what are you waiting for?

         Free Handwoven Wall Calendar with Kit-of-the-Month Membership 

 Join any one of our Kit-of-the-Month Clubs now.  Shipping is Free on each kit (that’s a huge savings!)  And while supplies last, we’ll be including FREE with your first new kit, the 2012 Handwoven Wall Calendar to keep track of the next 12 months of anticipated weaving.

You can MAKE it happen!

MAKE time for your weaving, the rewards are priceless!

CLICK HERE to our Five Sure-Fire Tips to Get Weaving!

Happy Holidays!

All of us at Cotton Clouds are wishing you and your loved ones a joyous holiday season.  May your weaving pleasures multiply and may you MAKE time this holiday season to keep on weaving, for the pleasures of it do mulitply.         Irene, Jodi, Frankie & Ron

How Do I Get Great Colors? By Cheating Of Course!

Take advantage of our 10% off cone yarn sale!

Does your brain go into a panic when you have to choose colors? If you’ve ever been stumped on how to work with color, you’ve come to the right place! We at Cotton Clouds make working with color easy!

Throw away your color wheel; forget about hue, value, staturation! I never think of those words when working with color!

How do I do it? Well, I cheat of course! This Cheating on Color blog will show you some quick and easy ways to put fabulous yarn color combinations together for real sucess that you’ll love. Here are three ways to Cheat on Color that have been working for me not only in my own personal weavings, but in the 33 years I’ve been putting knitting, weaving & crochet yarn kits together at Cotton Clouds.

1. CHOOSE A VARIEGATED YARN: Manufacturers have good color sense in combining colors that work well together. Take advantage of that by choosing a variegated yarn and matching two or three solid colors to balance the concentration of colors in the variegated. While you don’t have to choose the same yarn line for the solids as the variegated, it will be easier to match colors. This is how I’ve chosen the colors for our popular Bambu Variegated Scarf kit with one Bambu 7 Variegated yarn and two Bambu 7 Solid yarn colors. It works!

2. SWIPE A PHOTO (From Home Decor): Keep a camera handy and take photos whenever and wherever you are inspired. While on vacation in Florida, I was unexpectedly inspired by couch fabric at a friend’s home. So I whipped out my camera and now have a yarn wrap for a future weaving. Wouldn’t this make a great scarf or throw!

I love this couch fabric!

So I tried to find the closest colors in Bambu 7 Mini Cones to match the fabric and wound a random stripe just to give me an idea. What do you think?

3.SWIPE A PHOTO (From Nature): Nature always inspires me, but it’s not always sunsets. Subtle or bold colors of flowers, sea shells, leaves or sea pods can give you all the color inspiration you need to first make a color wrap, and then transform it to a weaving, knitting or crochet project.

I fell in love with the unusual color combination in this hothouse orchid. Since my grand-niece needed a baby blanket, I decided to design her an unusual blanket with these colors.

I wouldn’t have ever thought to choose these colors just from the Aurora Earth Color Card.

I used five colors of our new Aurora Earth Mini Cones (4 oz for $6.50 each) to do my sampling. Aurora Earth is now also available on great for sampling 2 oz Mini Cones for $4.00 each.

Aurora Earth 8/2 unmercerized cotton in Maize #32, Gold #33, Yellow #31, Magenta #30 & Rose #27.

I enjoyed doing the wrap and visualizing how I would warp and weave this baby blanket. Warp stripe, plaid, twill or tabby? The image of the orchid inspired me to add only accents of the vibrant magenta and rose. The Gold #33 was an afterthought and I like the boldness of it. What do you think?

So get rid of those color blues (no pun intended) and get inspired by your world around you. There are color combinations out there that work. Just do a little cheating on color and you’ll find great success and satisfaction in all your fiberarts projects.

The Aurora Earth 8/2 Color Card with over 60 sublte shades of color (shown above) has enough actual dyed yarn to unwind from the card to do your own color wraps. Or play with color with Aurora Earth’s new 4 oz Mini Cones or 2 oz Mini Cones. We’ve made them very affordable! Take advantage of our 10% off cone yarn sale and Free Shipping Kit Sale!

Mercerized vs unmercerized: Which will it be?

We cotton  lovers are really quite spoiled, compared with knitters, weavers & crochetters of the past.  The 21st century has given us such a great variety of high quality cotton yarns in a never-ending rainbow of vibrant colors!  But what to choose?  That’s the big question.  Mercerized vs unmercerized–what’s the difference?

Notice the sheen on the Pearly Perle mercerized yarns

Mercerized  Cotton:
The modern production method for mercerized cotton, also known as “pearl” or “pearle” cotton (that’s how we got the name Pearly Perle!) , gives cotton yarn a sodium hydroxide bath that is then neutralized with an acid bath. This treatment increases lustre, strength, affinity to dye, resistance to mildew and shrinkage. Mercerized yarns more readily accepts dye and hold the color longer. Cotton with long staple fibre lengths responds best to mercerization.

Smooth fibers after mercerization (bottom images)

Our Pearly Perle yarns fit the bill 100%!

It’s strength makes Pearly Perle a great choice for firm sturdy fabrics such as table runners and place mats or structures that can put stress on the yarn such as closely sett doubleweave or rep weave.

Check out our many Pearly Perle kits at www.cottonclouds.com

Pearly Perle is guaranteed to be light fast so it is also a great choice for other household textiles that are exposed to sunlight such as curtains, rugs, or pillows and it works well in garment fabrics. It also makes a nice crochet cotton or can be used by the machine
knitter.

It is avilable in a number of sizes from comes in a number of sizes (3/2, 5/2, 10/2 & 20/2). (Befuddled by these sizes? Check out our tips page for a quick rundown of what these numbers mean.)

Unmercerized Cotton
If it’s not mercerized (see above) then it’s got to be unmercerized!  So what’s the difference?

Mercerization made cotton easier to dye, but it also make it less absorbent—ironic huh? Unmercerized cottons retains the natural look of cotton and increased absorbency. Click Here to learn more about what makes cotton absorbent.

Check out our Aurora Earth kits at www.cottonclouds.com

Aurora Earth is an unmercerized cotton. Aurora Earth is a great choice for a weaver’s favorite—the hand towel. It is also great for napkins, bread cloths, and other absorbent fabrics. It is available in over 60 solid and 6 variegated colorways.

We also carry a wide variety of organic unmercerized cottons such as Fox Fiber 10/2, Pakucho Dark 10/2, Pakucho Light 10/2 and Ecocot. Organic cottons retain a lot of the cotton’s natural wax which leaves your fabric with a rich butter feeling that is still highly absorbent. Garments made out of organic unmercerized cotton are dreamy.

A Sampling of Cotton Clouds' Unmercerized & Mercerized Yarns

Both mercerized and unmercerized yarns are extremely affordable making it easyto throw on long warps and still do plenty of sampling before you begin your project. You will remember to sample, right? If you don’t’ feel like it better get one of our kits to make sure your project comes out perfect!

6 Steps to Releive Holiday Stress

Don't let the thought of the Holidays stress you!

We’ve put together a Pre-Holiday survival kit of helpful (although exotic) ideas on staying calm in the months ahead.

Whatever works!

 1.Boy Scout Motto: Be prepared.  Plan ahead.  Start easy projects now.  Set a deadline for each.  Planning ahead and knowing the direction your headed will help releive unneccessary stress now!  

Drink more water!

2.Hit the Bottle:  Not the booze.  But water!  Keeping hydrated is one of the main causes of fatigue.  Daily drink you body weight in ounces.  If you weigh 120 pounds, drink 120 ounces(3.75 quarts; almost a gallon).  You’ll notice the difference and get more done

An exercise routine is essential!

3.Run Away: Not really!  But a steady exercise program of running, walking (stairs work too), swimming, NIA dance (my choice) will keep you energized, focused and bring more blood to your brain so you can actually think what you are doing and not get foggy minded during the holidays! 

Free Shipping to you & recipient!

4.Delay All Action: You absolutely do not have to get everything made on time.  If you are running out of time, why not give a Cotton Clouds’ Gift Certificate for a promised item that can be made after the holidays. Gift Certificates of $100 or more will receive a Free Shipping coupon not only for recipient but one for you too on your next order. Now that’s a win-win gift!  Don’t forget to ask Santa for one too!

Weave for the holidays all year long!

5.Join the Club: Start right now to weave Holiday gifts for this year and continue on throughout next with our Deck-the-Halls Kit-of-the-Month Club.  Receive Free Shipping on every club kit shipped. Great savings, great fun!

You're not alone! Just laugh!

6. Watch video for a good laugh! The 12 Days of Weaving  video is a parody of the old holiday song “12 days of Christmas” presented to the Seattle Weavers Guild in 1996 by Bonnie Tarses designer of our Color Horoscope Weaving Kits. You won’t stop laughing!

Hope this helped, for a laugh anyway!  That’s another great stress-buster!  Happy Holidays!  Irene & Jodi

Doubleweave: It’s Double the Fun!

What’s your weaving demon? Something you’ve been a little afraid of tackling, but would really love to try? Halloween might scare you, but we promise that our time-tested kits and tips for making most weavers’ weaving demons a personal success! This Halloween we’re taking the scary out of Doubleweave.

Click Here for lots of helpful tips on weaving Doubleweave.

I love Doubleweave! It’s always fascinated me. It’s such a clever weaving technique! So you ask, “What’s so intriquing about Doubleweave?” With Doubleweave you can……….

Forget FLAT! Doubleweave allows you to make tubes, puckers, puffs and even tapestries. And it’s my favorite Doubleweave application. This Doubleweave Padded Yoga Mat Kit was inspired by one I saw online. I knew I could easily re-create it by weaving a few inches of two layers of fabric, stuffing right on the loom and then locking the padding in place by bringing just two shots of the bottom layer up to the top and continuing this simple technique throughout the weaving. Presto! I had a padded fabric and my yoga mat! I use it not only for yoga relaxation but on my lawn chair in the summer! Thanks to Suzie Liles, this idea was brought to fruition and appeared in Handwoven magazine.

Forget LIMITS! Doubleweave let’s you make fabrics wider than the standard weaving width of your loom. If you have a 4-shaft 25″ loom you can weave any plain weave pattern up to 50″ wide. That opens a whole new world to you and won’t limit you, should you want to weave, say our Chenille Throw kit (38-39″ wide). And if you have an 8-shaft loom and love a challenge (better than Sukuko!) you can use Doubleweave to create wider fabrics with more advanced patterns like twill, rosepath, honeycomb. There are tips and hints for how to keep track of your treadling that makes it easier!

Forget COLOR SHADING! Doubleweave is one of the few weave structures that let’s you place solid color side-by-side in solid blocks. The possibilities are endless.

Jennifer Moore’s new book Doubleweave is a wonderful exploration (with get-on-your-loom projects) into color block weaving.

This Doubleweave Checkerboard Game set is a simple way to learn this technique and end up with a great gift for your favorite game player. Grandchildren come to mind immediately!

We’ve joining the Weavolution HalloWeave Challenge! This event is intended to help push our own boundaries to motivate us towards weaving everyday.Weaving is one of the things we all love and doing what we love makes our lives that much more enjoyable.

We’ve chosen DoubleWeave as our HalloWeave Challenge for you! Weavolution’s Claudia Segal says, “I DOUBLE DARE anyone to join me in an exploration of double weave. Let’s learn how to do it and create a bookmark, towel, scarf, shawl , anything as long as it’s double weave. This team will work together to explore double weave and weave something by Halloween, Oct 31, 2011.”

Click Here to  join the group! It’s going to be fun! Why not start your challenge with one of these Doubleweave kits mentioned above. We make it easy!

Colors I See

Color fascinates me. Color excites me. Color talks to me. Color heals me. Color is my world.

I’ve been trying to open my eyes to see color in all it’s shapes and guises here in Florida while on vacation.

Next month Cotton Clouds will focus on how to make color your friend in all your fiber arts project and open your eyes (that’s how we perceive it anyway) to a whole new way at seeing color and have it work for you!

So here’re are some impressions of the world of color around me. Enjoy! ;
I love the Subtle patterns of color in these seed pods fallen onto a cement surface after a tropical fall wind.

Excuse my indulgence but I just love images of freshly caught fish. These Red Grouper (my favorite fish here in Florida) just in from the Gulf on ice at the local seafood market. Note the subtle reds and oranges and even browns.

And of course, can’t leave you without a magical sunset, my favorite colors of all! Now it’s your turn to look around you for the color in your world. I’m sure you’ll find great inspiration . Check back for updates.

Florida Vacation

Every gal needs a vacation, don’t ya think?

So I headed to my favorite Florida retreat on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico….

…where I met up with my dear friend Jamie Leigh White.

We basked in the warm Florida sun, got our toes in the crystal white sand, ate our fill of ripe tropical fruits (papaya, mangos, pineapple, coconut) and local veggies (avocados the size of footballs– I kid you not–and fresh local tomatoes plus my favorite right-out-of-the sea shrimp and fish that I had filleted right before my eyes. What could be bad with all that?

We left a part of ourselves there on the sand in my favorite kind of self portrait, our shadows in the sand. My wish to all you beach lovers past and future is that “you always keep a shell in your pocket and sand in your shoes”.

Beauty surrounds me here from the swaying palms to the soaring ospreys fishing above the gulf. But what inspires me most is sitting on Sarasota bay at sunset with the thousands of birds going to roost and the glow of a fun filled day setting on the horizon.

But it’s not all play here. I’m working on an exciting new blog that will provide you with all those useful hints and tips that will surely make your fiber arts experience more fun and more rewarding. So be sure to check back in the next few weeks to see what I’ve got up my sleeve. Florida has a way of inspiring a gal, don’t ya think? It’s been great fun!

Embellish Your Life!

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I’ve always been in love with beaded fabrics. Back in the 70′s I’d search out every Indian clothing boutique for clothing that was richly embellished with beads, sequins and mirrors. I wore one shirt with ishi mirrors until the sleeves had holes in them! It was difficult to give that one up!

So when I saw the book, The Beaded Edge,  a memory of days-gone-by was sparked.  I  decided then and there that I’d been embellishment-deprived for too long!

After watching the amazing preview video of  The Beaded Edge I knew that I needed to get to my bead and yarn stash immediately.

I knew that I could do this.  Even though I’m not very good at crochet, the video was so clear that if I just followed the illustrated step-by-step instructions, I could get started.  Of course, I knew that I’d learn even more once I received the book in early October!

So just to give it a try, I got out a piece of handwoven fabric and a little finished sachet pillow to practice on.  I figured, if I gave it about an hour of my time and I liked it, I could go on to embellish all sorts of fabrics in my stash of handwovens and even in my wardrobe!

I chose some 6 mm silverlined pinkish seed beads, and 10/2 Pearly Perle yarn.  Since you have to first string the beads on all the yarn you’ll be using, I was cautious in choosing a yarn fine enough to thread through the beads.  But the 10/2 was too thin and difficult to work with. So I switched to an undyed 5/2 Pearly Perle yarn which worked better, but I still could have used a thicker yarn; either a 3/2 Pearly Perle or perhaps even Cotton Classic Lite.  I’ll try these tonight. (I’m so anxious to get back to it, it’s difficult concentrating on even writing this blog!)

My first attempt!  Yeah, I did it!  Not difficult at all.  Just need to keep practicing. The video is great in showing me how to do this over and over and over again, so that by the time I did about four repeats I had the rhythm!  Have you watched the video yet?

Now I feel confident to keep going. My mind is racing ahead as to how I can add this interesting embellishment to a handwoven scarf that I’ve always thought was a bit too dull and uninspired.  This next time I’m going to use a rainbow of my favorite beads and add these “flower chains” not only along the edge of the scarf but across the fabric in rows  perhaps 3″ – 4″ apart .  It will be wild, but hey, that’s me and it’s time to bring back some of that 70′s freedom of spirit to my life.  I think The Beaded Edge  is just the receipe for that!

Remembering my 70's spirit!

Coming next to this blog: More images and inspiration from The Beaded Edge.

Thanks to my right hand gal, Jodi Ybarra for her behind the scences help with this project!