Planning

Now that I'm well over the half way mark on test warp #3(?), my thoughts are turning to the next warp.

In the stash reducing effort, I had planned some more tea towel warps in order to use up the fine single linen yarns that I accidentally (ahem) acquired.  I used a little of this coppery brown on a previous warp and was quite pleased with how it turned out. 

While I have a lot of yarn, it is in limited colourways because as a production weaver, I would tend to beam long warps sectionally.  So I needed enough yarn packages to wind each 1" section.  In the case of the 2/16 cotton for tea towels, that generally meant 32 epi when using the linen for weft.  (I may change the density to 36 once I run out of linen and start weaving up the rest of the cotton with cotton weft.  TBD.)

Beige/browns are not my personal favourite colours, but I have all this yarn left so I'm going to use it next and see how much of it I can use up.  I'm not sure I can use up all of the brown on 20 yards, but I'm still feeling my way with the Megado, and I'm not sure I want to go longer than 20 yards yet.  The current warp is around 15 yards (I forget) and 20 seems like a nice comfortable next step.  Just to make sure I'm getting the beaming down so that I get good tension.  Also, I'm not sure how much cloth I can put onto the cloth beam before I need to cut off and re-tie.  As the cloth builds up, setting the tension can become more challenging.  I'm used to being able to just keep on weaving, letting the cloth build up on the storage roller on the AVL, but the Megado has a more traditional set up and the cloth beam might - or might not - be happy letting 20 yards worth of woven cloth build up.  Again - TBD.  All part of getting to know the loom!

As we transition away from production weaving, re-organizing the studio, getting rid of production equipment, I am keeping a close eye on the calendar.  This weekend is my final 'sale' of the year - and my business.  I will be sorting through AVL loom parts and figuring out what might be of interest to AVL loom owners as replacement parts - I did invest in new gears in an effort to get the loom to behave, so someone might want to purchase those.  They are brand new and I paid a lot of money for them, so it would be nice to get some money back on them.

Plus I will be getting photos of some of my inventory and posting them here.  As someone pointed out my prices are in Canadian dollars (although I would never refuse US$!  I mean, in case someone wanted to 'tip'!!!)

Today I have a massage booked and she always tells me to rest afterwards.  So I'm going to go to the loom this morning, see if I can finish shawl #3 and make a start on #4.  The goal is to get them fringe twisted so that Doug can press them this weekend or Monday.  And then we'll be talking to some people who have expressed an interest in obtaining the press.

Little by little.