Paris Day 2 - Musee du Louvre

This quote echoed my feelings throughout our trip.  Sometimes, when asked where we were from, I felt a little silly saying "little 'ole Oklahoma".  But even though I do occupy a tiny place in the world, I aim to explore the corners far from me whenever possible.

We have since returned from our European vacation, but the absence of WIFI on the majority of our trip prevented me from posting.  So I'd love to catch you up on all we saw during Day 2 in Paris.

Our 2nd day in Paris led us to the Louvre.  The Louvre is massive, displaying more than 37,000 pieces of art within 675,000 square feet of exhibition space.  We read somewhere that if you considered each piece for 2 minutes, it would take you nearly 2 months to see it all.  We used Rick Steve's audio tour on our cell phones to narrow it down to the biggies, then explored on our own.  In all, we spent 7 hours there.

Chris standing in the Grand Gallery

The inverse pyramid viewed from below in the Carrousel du Louvre shopping center, where we entered.

View from within the pyramid

The famous Venus de Milo, carved in 120 BC

My favorite: The Winged Victory, which depicts the act of descending from Olympus.  It was a very emotional piece.

The Mona Lisa by Da Vinci.

Chris examining The Wedding Feast at Cana by Veronese

The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David.  Napoleon stepped on the toes of the pope and crowned himself, then placed the crown on his wife Josephine.

The Slaves by Michelangelo

The museum itself is beautiful.  Stunning, really.  There are ornate carvings, majestic ceilings, intricate marble floors, beautiful courtyards, and of course tons of people.  Our feet were so tired at the end of the day!

We stopped for lunch in a cafe within the museum and were blessed with a fantastic view!  The food was great too!

St. Michael Vanquishing Satan by Raphael

You always hear the Mona Lisa is small, but it's quite striking how small it is.  In a huge room, it is swallowed by a glass pane, wood barricade, and the sea of people swarming around it.

The Raft of the Medusa by Gericault

Me next to Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VIII by Ingres

This is me touring the apartments of Napoleon

In one of the glorious courtyards

Hey look!  We found an American!

The massive Lamassau

Chris next to Muse Melpomene

We returned to the hotel and rested, then got ready for our dinner reservations: Le Meurice.  This restaurant is a 3-Michelin Star rated establishment, guided by chef Alain Ducasse.  For those who aren't familiar with Michelin Stars, 3 is the highest rating.  In the USA, there are only 4 restaurants with this distinction, 3 in New York and 1 in Chicago.  The meal was THE BEST food we have EVER eaten.  Creative, beautifully presented, flavorful, rich.  It was an experience that just lit our fires.  (We're foodies!)  Chris ordered the chef's tasting menu, and I ordered lobster.

The room was extravagant, the service was spectacular (we had no less than 6 waiters, and the maitre-d appeared several times), and Chris tried about 40 types of cheeses.   A perfect evening.

Worn out and with a box of truffles in our hand from the restaurant, we returned to the Renaissance for some much-deserved sleep.  Tomorrow, The Musee de Orsay. Eiffel tower, Opera Garnier, and Seine river cruse!

Paris Day 1

Indeed. 

I've had a blast planning this big trip, and it's finally here. We had a great trip across the big pond. We flew Delta and had a good experience. (They didn't lose our luggage, and all the rest is pretty much the same for me!). From Atlanta to Paris was an 8.5 hr flight on the 777, and luckily our travel agent got us Premium Economy tickets, and they were great. We had fully reclining seats with footrests, upgraded menu with "beverages", a toiletry kit with socks, eye masks, tooth brush, and other nice things.

AND. I could not believe the size of the engine out my window. :)

Here's Chris getting comfy in our seats before takeoff. We watched two movies each, then ate a pretty good meal and tried to sleep. It was pretty darn hard to sleep. We were either hot or cold, or being disturbed by someone, so we didn't get more than 3-4 hours. 

But I got to see a fabulous sunrise over the Atlantic.

We landed at 8am local time, and knew we needed to keep on our feet to beat jet lag. And boy, did we ever. 

First, we walked a few blocks from the hotel and walked along the Seine river: Chris is below with the Museè de Orsay in the background. 

We followed the river walkway all the way to Notre Dame, which is stunning and amazing as it towers above you.

We walked through the inside, and the vast, high arched ceilings are impossible looking.

The stained glass is breathtaking. This church was begun in the 1100's!!  It really makes you feel how small you are in the scheme of things...

There were some great views from the top, 69 meters (about 210 ft) and 400 steps up:

And many, many narrow steep little steps. Our legs are jell-o. 

Then it was over to the Arc de Triomphe.

This thing, built by Napoleon, is massive.

And, with little foresight on my part in planning, we had a ton of more stairs to climb. 284 to be exact. But we were rewarded with more fabulous views of the city:

My impressions of the city: it's a melting pot of many nationalities. You can hear multiple languages spoken by those around you, but nearly everyone we've encountered at restaurants, hotels and such speak English well. Signs are written in English also and the metro was surprisingly easy to figure out, comparable to our experiences with DC metro. There are places that smell, and areas I wouldn't want to be in at night, but there's a HUGE police presence. And I mean even ones with machine guns. I haven't felt threatened with pick pocketing. The buildings in downtown are beautiful with stunning architecture and history. So far, I'm impressed and am glad we came.

Tomorrow: the Louvre!  And now: sleep!

Topiary Wrap

I bought 7 skeins of Knit Picks Andean Silk a few years ago to make a sweater.  Sometime after I bought it, I decided I didn't care much for making sweaters, so I looked for a new use for the yarn.

Andean Silk is a great yarn: 55% alpaca, 23% silk and 22% merino wool.  It has since been discontinued by Knit Picks, but I do like it.  It's soft, warm, and cushy.  The color I used was "truffle", a deep brown color.

I decided to make Michelle Wang's Topiary with it, and set in. 

This pattern on the left, right, and middle, has a cable that needs to be crossed on every right side row.  I wasn't anticipating how much I would dislike that, but it really was a deflater for me.  I had to force myself to do 14 rows a day, and while I enjoyed the cable pattern panels, I hated those cabled borders. 

 Nevertheless, I finally finished it and it turned out great.

My photographer Elijah helped me with these photos.  Excuse my no-makeupness.  :)

And while I really like the result, I don't see myself using this wrap.  Do you?  If you like it, comment below or on my FB page and I'll send it to you!

Chocolate and wine towels

My newest set of towels is hot off the loom, and I love them!

This is a design I devised, beginning with picking 3 colors. Now if I'm completely honest with you, when I ordered the yarn, I had a professional's pattern picked out to weave. I ordered, then started in on another set of towels, and then I lost my sticky note where I wrote down what I had decided!  So I just decided to design it myself. 

I initially had planned 3 towels, with a similar design except for alternating colors and different treadling on each towel. However, at the end of my 3 towels, I realized I had a TON of warp length remaining, and discovered that I had calculated for my usual 4 towels, not 3. Well, I just decided it was fate!  Four towels it is. The fourth was gonna be drastically different though...

Towel 1:

Towel 2:

Towel 3:

And the black sheep:

I actually ended up liking the black sheep the best!  I might design a full set of 4 like it.  Weird how stuff works out. 

Here they all are together:

Details:

8/2 unmercerized cotton in natural, chocolate, and wine. 

4 shaft 36" Leclerc Nilus

Undulating twill threading, 4 different treadling sequences. 

I do have to pat myself on the back: my selvedges are looking quite professional.

A learning tidbit:  I found it really helpful with stripes to use a 6" sewing ruler with a slider. I would place it in the middle of the finished fabric, with my desired length  indicated by the slider. As I wove along, beating in each weft pick, I would tap the ruler up to the beater and get a good measurement. This obviously doesn't work on sections larger than 6", but worked great for these towels. 

In the above picture, I would see by my measurement that I should throw one more pick before changing colors.

If you would like my drafts and calculations pages, please contact me.  I'd be happy to share them with you.

This is the last weaving project before our upcoming trip, so more towels will come until after that!  Stay tuned...

Shadow Weave Towels

I was commissioned to make towels for a very special someone, and I had a blast planning, picking colors, and weaving it.  Here's the story:

I was really liked a project in the Jan/Feb issue of Handwoven - Floating Shadows Towels.  So I gave it a try!

Details:
8/2 unmercerized cotton in 2 colors: Lipstick and Charcoal, 20/2 cotton in black for the hem areas. (I never took pictures of the hem...)
Loom: my 4 shaft 36" Leclerc Nilus.

Each towel had a different treading sequence, making four distinct towels:

From the beginning, I had troubles with these towels. I wasn't happy with sett: being 20 epi, I ended up having to beat hard to get the desired ppi. Then I began having trouble with loose warps at the edges. Grr. But I forged on, and finished! After taking them off the loom, they were quite wrinkled, and though a firm double pressing helped (I even tried a wet towel on top), they're still a little kinky. But have no fear: they will still dry dishes fabulously!

I was fascinated throughout weaving how the shadow weave made little optical illusions. It was a lot of fun to watch them unfold!  I'm sure to try more shadow weave in the future!

These are on their way to their new home.  On to the next set of towels!

Completed infinity scarf

I've finished my mom's infinity scarf!  This is a super-late Mother's Day gift (sorry, Mom), but I hope that she won't mind.

To date, this is the most complicated weave I've done.  The blue sections utilized all 8 shafts of my Leclerc Voyageur, and I had a complicated lift plan to follow - the draft is on my previous post.  I estimate it took about 20 hours to weave, start to finish.

As stated before, I used Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light in this project, and while it is a knitting yarn, it really wove up well.  And the finished product is so smooth and soft, it'll be a pleasure to wear around Mom's neck.

The finished measurements: 37.5" infinity scarf, so 75" woven length.  My calculations overestimated on loom waste and shrinkage, so it ended up 3" longer than expected.  No problem!  It drew in only 1/2", so is 7.5" wide.  As I hoped, the yarn bloomed and made a cohesive fabric.

To finish the scarf, I zig-zag stitched the ends on my machine, then straight stitched the two ends together to make a circle.  Pretty simple!

I can say that for the first time, I really didn't make any big mistakes or feel I should have done something different with this weave.  I did have a threading error (a first), but I quickly identified it while I was starting and it was easily fixed.  I also changed sett after that initial weave, but the results made it totally worth it!

I hope you love it, Mom!  Happy mother's day (in August!)

I'd be happy to send you a copy of my record sheet, if you'd like to weave one yourself.  Just contact me!