Progress on Several Fronts

This photo shows the unpressed cloth on the left and the pressed cloth on the right.  The unpressed cloth is nice enough but after pressing it gleams.  I confess I'm a magpie so anything shiny is always more attractive to me than something that isn't, but I just feel the colours look so much richer after pressing.

Worked on the Handwoven article most of the afternoon yesterday and part of this afternoon.  I think I've got the explanatory text pretty much done although I'll proof read and edit at least once more, probably twice.

All that is left now is to take the final measurements of the various samples, write up the project notes and box everything up.  We will leave for Seattle early on Tuesday morning and I don't want to be messing around trying to finish this up over the weekend or on Monday.

I did do one thing which I don't know will make it into the magazine - as part of getting to know the yarns that were sent to me I tested one of them to see if it would full.  I had to work very hard to get it to full as much as it did, which wasn't a whole lot.  That's the butterfly on the left.

The butterfly on the right is the yarn I had on hand and I worked it about half as long as the one on the left and it's pretty much a solid mass.  I can tug some of the strands apart if I really work at it, but although the two yarns are both merino the one of the left has been treated to prevent fulling.  It is what is called a 'washable' wool.

Which of course just means that you can toss the cloth into the washing machine several times before it will start to full for all wool is 'washable', you just can't agitate it every time you clean it or you'll keep adding fulling.