Round Tuits

three yarns I have used to make 'collapse' fabrics

table runner showing hem in plain weave, body in broken twill

Slowly, slowly energy is returning and I am beginning to deal with things that have needed to be done for some time but for which I never seemed to have a round tuit.

A number of years ago I got some yarn from a mill.  A couple of mills actually.  The single 6 cotton was a mistake shipped by one of the mills to me back in, oh, must be the early 1990's.  Recognizing the potential for collapse weaves in the highly twisted single, I kept one of the cases and returned the two others sent in error.  Fifty pound cases. 

I messed around with the singles 6 cotton and got some nice effects, but you do realize how much 50 pounds is, right?  Yes, I still have lots left!  In a further effort to bust my stash down to some sort of reasonable size, I finally started the cone winder chugging and have been breaking the large mill cones down into more manageable size - about 6 and 3/4 ounces.  That's about 1900 yards per cone.

I also got the rest of the last of the wool/lycra coned off so I have around 8 cones (approx. 6 ounce cones) of that left.  As near as I can remember that's a NM 28 so lots and lots of yardage on those cones, too.  The lycra is 2% of the mix and can be dyed, as I understand it, with the same acid dyes as wool.

Since the lycra is activated by the wet finishing, it is recommended that you weave first, dye later.

Last but not least I have some one pound (nominally) tubes of singles 40 (I think - another mill error) high twist wool.  If you have a copy of Magic in the Water, this is the same yarn as used for the scarves in project 19.

I'll be listing the yarns on my Art Fire Store shortly or you can order from me directly.

On the weaving front, stash busting proceeds there, too.  I have a bunch of wound warps which were intended to be dyed and woven up as scarves but that never did happen.  It took me a while to figure out what to do with them - I can only sell so many white scarves, after all.  :)  On the weekend I took two of the warps, rough sleyed them side by side and dressed the loom with them.  The warp is 22" in the reed and so the placemats will have hems top and botton instead of on the ends, but I don't think that will be a problem.

If they turn out, I'll likely finish the rest of those warps in this manner.  I can sell a lot more 'white' placemats and table runners than I can scarves!  And they will finally be woven up and another box will be gone off my studio floor.

Last but not least, I'd like to thank Syne for the book recommendation of The Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold.  For some reason I'd never gotten around to reading Bujold so her work was new to me.  Imagine my delight at all the textile references - and accurate ones, too!  If you like a story that acknowledges the value of textiles to society, you might enjoy this series.  I'm on the 3rd volume now, looking forward to finishing it.  There are four books in this series.  And I'll likely be looking for more of her books now that I've finally gotten a round tuit for that, too.  :^)