The yarn above is from the blanket I just completed. The warp was 8.5 yards, and I wove three 82.5″  lengths and then seamed them to make a blanket of 75″ x 88″  including fringe. One of the lengths used weft very like the warp and the resulting fabric is warm-toned and reddish. The other two used neutrals, dark blue and purple and green, as well as a scattering of sparky contrasting colors. The neutral weft lengths went on the outside and the reddish one in the center.

The pattern I wove is called “log cabin”  that is quite different from quilter’s log cabin. Weaver’s log cabin starts with alternating light and dark warp threads; the weft threads also alternate dark and light. You can see how I set darks against lights in the photo at top. The color contrasts reveal a pattern of horizontal and vertical bars. The three strips (each 25″  wide) on the same warp are seamed together in the two photos immediately below.

The pattern sounds simple, but I am fond of it. There is a bit more to it than that, of course, but that’s the gist. You can see how the pattern varies in the four woven lengths stacked in the photo below. This is a different warp and shows four different approaches to weft. The one on the left is blue/purple. The one on the right used a handspun yarn in gradually shifting dark hues. There’s a dyed-in-the-wool skein from Washington state, shown up top, third from top on the left. Everything else on this page is woven of Koigu, a Canadian hand-painted merino yarn.

Years ago, weaving my first project, I played with a classic balanced coverlet pattern called “Snow Ball and Pine Tree to make a weft faced rug of Swedish cow hair. You could say that I took a pattern from one tradition and used it in another. I did that with weavers log cabin, too, stitching a quilt in alternating vertical and horizontal bars. One creative effort feeds another.

Some days feel abandoned, wasted and lost.

Other days feed the soul. A friend just became a grandmother, and I sent her a baby blanket for the little boy, the one at left below.

Some days pass without incident or accomplishment. Some days there is kindness in the air.