Random

I like random things.  Random number generators fascinate me.  It's geeky I know, but I'm a geeky girl and I can live with that.

When I decided to call David for the first time (we weren't REALLY dating yet), I flipped a coin.  I found that flipping a coin always helped me make a decision. Not necessarily by "telling" me what to do but by making the choice for me I would react, either relieved or upset, and know what I really wanted to do.  I flipped the coin, it said, "call David."  I flipped again, "call David."  I decided to go 3 out of 5, still got the message to call David.  Thought maybe the coin was messed up so got another, flipped again, went for 7 out of 9, then 11, then 13...at which point I realized that something random was really going on and I called the boy and the rest is history, so to speak.

David and I are traveling somewhere this summer.  We still don't know where because we are compiling our list.  We went through it while at the beach and pulled out the impractical trips (we do only have 1 week, so Australia doesn't seem reasonable) and used the random number generator app on David's phone to help us pick the replacement.  Coolness and fun.  We're going to go through it tonight and decide which trips we really aren't interested in anymore--we have been doing this for almost 3 months now--and do the same thing.  Random number to pick another trip on the list.

And why are we doing this?  Because on SUNDAY we will "draw" our trip.  And I'm very excited.  David wanted to draw early, but I'm holding us to this.  By Sunday we'll have 182 options, some repeats, huge variety, and we'll draw and pick one and that will be our trip. 

So me.

I like to design with randomness too.  Take the banana pudding warp I have on the loom right now.  I decided to use lots of different yellows with an accent of brown as I mentioned yesterday.  Then I pull out my random number sheet that I print out using Excel.  The numbers on it are between 1-9 and I then determine what I want my multiplier to be.  There are a few things that go into that decision:  how thick or thin the thread is, my sett, what I want it to be, and how much I really want one color to show over another.  On this warp I decided that all yellows except for one really bright one would be multiplied by 5 and the brown and the bright yellow would not be multiplied.  I then start winding the warp until I get enough yarn.  I am always amazed at how it works out that I use the different yarns exactly the way I want to.  Randomness is cool.

Here is what I did:  I lined my yarns up, there were 6 different colors.  I use the first number on the page to choose my color.  Let's say it was 7.  I count though my cones until I get to 7 and then pick that yarn.  It wasn't one of the single mulipliers, so I muliplied 7x5 and came up with 35.  I wound 35 ends and put the yarn in another line.  I looked at the next number.  Let's say it was 2.  I counted 2, picked that yarn, decided it it was a single or multiple of 5 and then counted out that yarn, and so on.  When I'd gone through the whole pile of yarn I started over.  I get a random ordering of color, random size of stripes, random placement of the accents (bright yellow and brown) and an overall project that "reads" like banana pudding. 

And I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to weave it with random stripes, or do something different...choices choices.

I honestly can't wait until you can see it, but that will be June, sorry.

In the theme of randomness, I'll show you some placemats I made a couple of years ago.  They were warped using random numbers and woven using random numbers.  I kept a constant of the gold separating the different stripes, just to give that leveling effect that all projects need.  I love these placemats.  I think they look very modern, and quite different than the original design.