Potholes

In addition to the nasty potholes in the streets I've run into a couple in the studio. :P~

Now that these three skeins are dried I realize that the mylar has broken in at least one place in each skein, sometimes two places.

Now if these skeins were for my own use I wouldn't worry about that too much. They are core spun and the broken mylar ply won't compromise the integrity of the yarn and I would just deal with it.

But these skeins are not for my own use - I'm trying to develop an inventory of handspun yarns I can work on when I can't weave, for sale to others. And I can't, in all conscience, offer them for sale when I know they have broken ply threads.

And so I have to look at alternatives. Not that I don't have some already in my stash!

I could also ply the mylar with something else to strengthen it, but that's just way more labour than I want to invest into something that I don't know people will be willing to pay for - at least pay enough to make it worth my while to make it. (Anyone interested in some 'seconds'?)

So I'll be digging through my stash to look for alternatives, two of which I'm pretty sure will work - just have to dig them out of storage.

The other pothole is the test warp I put onto the AVL the other day. I'm having problems getting it to beat in square and the auto cloth advance isn't working properly either. I think that's a function of the cloth not beating in to match the take up so I've just cut the second sample off the loom, removed the 8 dent reed and inserted a 10 and will change the set from 32 epi (4 in a dent) to 30 epi (3 in a dent).

Keeping fingers crossed that will fix that problem.

In the meantime I'm winding skeins and pushing for the scheduled dye day on Monday.

Currently reading Firestorm by Rachel Caine