Rolling Onwards

 

Today dawned overcast and dreary with a high probability of rain later.  Well the rain arrived and I opted to not walk today.  I couldn't face the chilly wet.

However, I did manage to press the 8 towels that ran through the washer/dryer yesterday, then got the next warp ready to beam.  It's hard to see in the photo but there are shades of blue - a darker somewhat greyed blue and a lighter value blue, sometimes called baby blue.  There are also four spools of baby mix variegated with a little white, blue, pink, even a bit of green if I remember correctly.  This warp will have a darker greyed blue cotton flake for half of it, then whatever warp is left will get woven off with white flake.

By the end of the day (4:30 pm) the warp was entirely beamed, the spool rack parked in its spot in the studio, but the yarn has not been put away in case I need any to repair a broken thread.  Much of this warp will go into another mostly blue warp later, in part because I have a lot of blue and a lot of white flake.  

Then I set up the loom in preparation for threading.  The draft (threading only) is printed out and clipped to my clipboard, the reed and beater top taken off as well as the breast beam, the shorter stool in place.  The bouts were taped to a long stick which is now ready behind the heddles.  All that's left is to set up my task lighting.  I may do that tonight when I shut down the studio.

I'm still running a humidifier, although that should probably be unnecessary soon, especially with close to a week of forecast rain.  The humidity should start going up from the low 30s to above 40 soon.  At least it isn't in the mid 20s anymore.

Tonight there will be hemming and who knows, maybe even some more fibre prep.  The bin is nearly half full and should be at least 3/4s full by the time I've used up the dyed braid - mostly cyan, magenta and a wee bit of natural white.  I will probably do one more braid before I put the fibre away and start spinning.  

In case I don't want to do any of that, there is also another scarf on the needles.  My goal is to get enough knitted that I can donate to St. Vincent de Paul, or other charitable organization.  Or maybe put scarves on the sculptures that someone has been making warm hats for the past few years.  Anyone who needs a hat can take one.  If they need a hat, maybe they need a scarf.  But regardless, I have no shortage of yarn to knit with, too.

And now that I am getting close to using up most of my 2/8 cotton and cotton flake, I'm thinking about what is next.  To that end, I have set aside enough yarn for a 2/8 warp which will get woven off with an 8/2 variegated cotton.  It's weak enough it could break and I don't like fighting with my yarn, so weft it will be.

Then there is another bin set aside with darker beiges and a large cone of fine linen in natural beige will get used as weft on that.  I doubt either warp will use up the 8/2 or the linen, but they will make a dent in the cones, and that's all to the good.  Since I had Fiberworks open to print out the threading for the current warp, I also generated a draft for those two stash busting warps.  I'd thought about them for a very long time - months, to be honest - and am finally satisfied enough with my idea to go ahead and put it into Fiberworks.  I'm not saying I won't change my mind, but right now I'm satisfied with it.  I just have to think about hem weft yarn.  I'm thinking of using the same variegated for the hems on those towels, and 2/16 cotton on the beige/linen warp.  Or maybe, because linen doesn't lose dimension as much as cotton, I'll use the linen for hems on that warp.  More pondering to do.