On to the Next

 

Another blast from the past, in part because I'm using essentially the same combination of yarns in the current warp as was used in this one.

The warp is 2/16 bamboo (from Brassard) and the weft will be various rayon yarns I have accumulated over the years.  A scarf takes a lot less weft than a shawl, so I'm hoping to use up some of the colours that are too little for a shawl, too much to toss.

This week is a bit busy, but yesterday I did manage to finish setting up the Megado, generate the file and take it to the laptop I use to run the computer dobby.  

The first weft was a fine silvery grey and while I should have probably added more interlacements to the tie up, decided to just go with a ppi slightly higher than the epi.  

The next scarf will be woven with a somewhat thicker rayon slub in a dark purple and might wind up slightly less picks per inch than ends per inch.  

I am not even trying to hit 'perfect' angle for the twill - close is good enough.

The craft fair went well for the guild and yesterday Doug carried all my stuff up the steep stairs to the guild room.  Today one of the guild members will start setting up the items for sale.  I'll drop in and see if she needs some help but only briefly as I have appointments.

I also need to focus on the documentation for Sweet Georgia.  I've just finally done a couple more pages, then printed off the instructions for the 'sample' we did in the video.  My instructions were a bit skimpy and I need to expand them for less experienced weavers.  

Perhaps I'll feel like weaving later this afternoon.  I hope so because only another 400 picks will finish the grey scarf off and it would feel nice to finish one thing today.

In order to keep myself on track I tend to break weaving down into stages so that I can have a feeling of completion/satisfaction when I finish a stage.  Otherwise it begins to feel like I'm not getting anywhere.

So this warp should produce 7 scarves, and I'm nearly done weaving one of them.  :)   The next warp will be the same combination of yarns, but I'll likely come up with a different threading draft because I only have a few colours for weft and I'd like to make them look different.  I may also change the accent colours to something different in future warps.  

The goal is to work from my stash, not buy more yarn.  We will see how that goes!

Organized

 

boxes of textiles

put out on the shelves

For the past week or so Doug has been working on the new pantry area in the laundry room.  Last year this time, he installed this wall of shelves which we filled with the overflow from the annex.

As the pandemic hit and we started to lay in a small back stock of  food and cleaning supplies, we ran out of room upstairs so he suggested taking some of the new shelves to use as our overflow pantry area.  Flats of canned food, toilet paper (bulky), kleenex, hand sanitizer and so on.  As the weeks wore on, we realized my access to non-allergenic food might become insecure so we started slowly building up some inventory of things like Wasa bread (which I can eat), and other things like the tuna packed in water (no spices!) and so on.  As we built up our winter reserves, the studio stuff began to be moved elsewhere.

Some things I had to just bite the bullet and get rid of.  Other things got re-packed to take up less room.

Doug claimed more of the shelves for pantry and decided to strengthen the shelves which were not originally meant to carry much weight.  While all my inventory was at the guild room was the perfect time to do this job because it was out of the way.

On the 20th, we packed up my stuff from the guild room, but he was still working on the shelving so the boxes of textiles rode around in the back of the van until yesterday when he brought all the boxes in and after a Zoom meeting I unpacked the boxes and crammed everything back onto the shelves that are to be dedicated to storing them.  

However.  During November and December I continued making more tea towels.  There is another shelving rack in the studio proper filled with tea towels that need to be tagged/priced and then moved in with the rest of the inventory.  I suspect they won't all fit.

So the plan is to begin photographing them and listing them in my ko-fi store.  I'm waiting for the holiday mail rush to be over. Canada Post was slammed and run off their feet.  I really didn't want to add to the burden by trying to sell and ship towels!

This week I will finish the grey/blue and put the red/orange into the loom and that will be that for tea towels.  For a while.  I have more yarn (lots more yarn!) to use up and a new scarf design would be good.  Scarves also don't need to be hemmed.  They do, however, need to be fringe twisted.  I'd actually rather hem than fringe twist, but...gotta do what is necessary.  I am also low on shawls, so I might do another shawl warp at some point.

But it took me a year to use up my 2/16 cotton inventory.  I expect it will take quite a while to use up my rayon inventory.  While I don't have nearly as much 2/16 bamboo/rayon, I do have quite a bit of various kinds/types of rayon so the plan is to put on the 2/16 bamboo as warp and use up as much of the Tencel and various other kinds of rayon in my stash as weft.

I think that's 2021 sorted...

Flexibility

 

With my stated goal of weaving down my stash, I am coming to the nubbins of a lot of tubes of the 2/16 cotton.  

When I put these yarns together, I knew I would be playing yarn chicken with some of the tubes, but seems there are more running out than will make it through this entire warp.  Several of the tubes have even less yardage on them than I hoped, and I was faced with the reality that I wasn't going to be able to replace those pale green ones with more of the pale green.

What to do?  What to do?

Well, there is no law that says a warp MUST be the same from selvedge to selvedge, so I shrugged and pulled out some pale blue tubes and as the green runs out they will be replaced with a pale blue.

I am over the half way mark of the width of this warp so about 1/3rd of the warp will slowly morph (or not so slowly - it depends!) from a medium blue stripe with 5 ends of pale green to a medium blue with pale blue ends.

And you know what?  These tea towels will still dry dishes.  

As human beings we sometimes have a very narrow definition of what 'perfect' is.  Sometimes it's a good exercise to let go of our 'perfect' offering and let the light in.

One of the things I did yesterday before coming up from the studio was to start collecting the 2/16 cotton tubes and clearing off a couple of shelves.  Then started setting out the 2/16 bamboo so that I can see what I have of that yarn.  Like the 2/16 cotton, the 2/16 bamboo also has over 6000 yards per pound.  I have many pounds of it, enough to make scarves for the rest of my life I think!  I also have a bunch of finer rayon yarns, plus some 2/8 Tencel that needs using up.  So I will be putting the bamboo on as warp, then weaving with various rayon yarns, also trying to use up that part of my stash.  

I think that's 2021 sorted...

Potential

I've talked about my resources before, my 'libraries' of drafts that I can browse through, evaluate for their potential for being the 'next' warp in the queue.

The one open is the latest, the draft I'm using being the one partially covered by the blue arrow.  The booklet is called The Fanciest Twills by Irene Wood, based on the drafts developed by Fred Pennington, as I understand it.  All (or most, there are a very few at the back that are on more than 16 shafts) are done on a 16 shaft point progression.  Most are symmetrical, although not all, such as the one I'm currently using.  which has a symmetry, but not up and down as well as side to side.  As such it creates stripes in the cloth.

Other books have been in my library for a very long time, like the Oelsner, which has drafts for 4, 6, 8, 10 and on up.  There is a section for twill based weaves, but also sections for other weave structures.  Well worth the price if it is something you are interested in.  Should be readily available second hand, although it might be a Dover publication, so not terribly expensive new, either.

The other book is a much newer book, purchased on a trip to Sweden.  As it happens Kerstin Fro:berg knows one of the authors, and introduced me to her when we ran into each other somewhere.  It is a book similar insofar as it is drafts, various numbers of shafts involved.  It has a number of weave structures that are not very common in North American, and because I had actually met one of the authors, bought it. 

I use these books as jumping off places.  I browse through them looking for ideas, for inspiration.  Usually I know what I want to make (what function the cloth is to perform) but I may not have a clear idea as to design or weave structure, beyond a category (twill, lace, etc.)

So I idly thumb through with my idea simmering on the back burner, looking for something that appeals to me that would be suitable for the function, and perhaps the colours I have on hand.

Right now my primary mission is to use up what I have, not buy more, so there is that creative constraint as well.

I'm pleased enough with how the red and black is weaving up that I will go ahead with the other three warps I've pulled, plus look to see if I can re-combine the yarns to make one or two more warps in this same design.

And after that?  Well, I will just have to wait and see.  There are scarves to be made and 2/16 bamboo from Brassard to use, a variety of fine rayons in lots of different colours and textures to use up.  And all that silk.  The silk may take a while longer to simmer before I feel up to tackling it.

Currently reading Benefit of Hindsight by  Susan Hill

Next Test Warp

The Megado is definitely a different loom from the AVL.  There were many things about the AVL that worked for me very well and beaming sectionally was one of them.  The beam of preference was up high which meant I could stand and turn the crank, cut off and tape the section, then easily attach the leader string to the next.  And all the while, the sections were visible and I could ensure that the 'ribbon' of warp was going into the section flat, not bunched up against one or other of the dividers.

The Megado is a much smaller loom with a lower profile.  The beam is down low and the first couple of warps I struggled with the new location and how best to address filling each section.  Part of the problem is that the sections are below the back beam and the box 'race'.  I'm using the AVL tension box because I prefer it over the Louet that was supplied.  For one thing it has a 10 dent reed to guide the threads, and the reed mount swivels, so I can make the ribbon narrower if necessary.  Or do a compound sleying to keep the ribbon about the correct width.  The AVL beam was also a full yard, while the Megado is just 14".  So lots more turns to get the same warp length.

I didn't like working in the shadow, needing to bend over to be able to see if the ribbon was laying flat so this time I added a light to illuminate my actual work area.  Especially with this very dark warp which is mostly a very dark navy, 4 fairly dark green and the rest black.  Hard to see in the first place, then even more so on another gloomy day, in the shadow of the loom.

The stool is the exact height that makes the job do-able, but it means leaning over to crank, especially on this wider warp, so I'm taking more frequent rest breaks to make sure my back doesn't get too...cranky...in doing the job.

I am also having to tweak my hand motions - how and where I tape the bouts, then tie off the ribbon for the next section, then attach the leader string.  After 20 sections, it's becoming smoother and I'm not having to stop and think about it every single time.  But it still isn't my new default, and may not be even for the next few warps.

My goal is to get this warp beamed today and begin threading.  There are 1080 ends in the warp and it is going to take a while.  I'm hoping to get it threaded before we leave, but if not it will get finished when we get home.

The threading is a re-run of the last tea towel warp I did on the AVL, adjusted for this wider warp.  The tie up and treadlings will be changed.  It is a 'fancy' twill over 16 shafts, with the motif repeated across the width and straight draw borders.

As a test warp, it will do.

The warp should be long enough for four shawls.  I will use the same red, blue and purple for three of them, then finish with a slightly finer grey rayon slub.  For that I will most likely add extra interlacements to increase stability.  The scarves have a lot of drape so the shawls should as well.  I may beat a little harder because wider warps generally have more resistance than narrower ones.  And a slightly denser (more ppi) cloth will also have more stability than one with less.  I think that might be A Good Thing in a shawl.

Change one thing...everything can change...

Adjustment

So, I'm back working on those scarf warps I wound last year and thought about a comment someone made, somewhere, about whether or not you could manipulate yarns into their 'proper' place.

Yes you can. 

Depending on the yarn, you can actually displace most (not all) yarns by up to about an inch.  What does it depend on exactly?

Well, first the yarn itself.  It has to have at least a little bit of elasticity.  It depends on the loom.  The longer the distance from the heddles to the back beam, the more you can displace the yarn from its path.

So for these scarf warps, I have been winding two ends, one fairly smooth, one very textured.  I thread them randomly, except for the selvedge.  Why?  Because I have found that a highly textured yarn at the selvedge can sometimes make a bit of a 'messy' selvedge, plus sometimes such highly textured yarns are weaker than smoother ones.  In this case, the textured yarn has less elasticity than the smooth one, but it can still be manipulated so that instead of being in one of the outside two heddles, I can move the two smoother yarns to the outside and shift the textured ones inside the selvedge.

This particular series is being woven in plain weave, but even if it was twill, I would still shift the selvedge threads in this way.

I tend to wind my warps with two ends at a time, in part to halve the winding time, in part to do something like this textile which will have the yarns threaded randomly for a less structured look to the cloth.

As always, sample first to make sure the yarns you are working with will tolerate what you intend to do with them.  As it happens these are yarns I used to use for 9 years weaving for the fashion designer and I am very familiar with them and how they behave.

For the book I included one colour and weave scarf woven in four end pinwheels.  I wound the two colours then when threading I manipulated the colours into their 4 x 4 end sequence to create the pinwheels. 

Again, I had worked with this yarn previously and knew it would tolerate this much deflection, in my Leclerc Fanny. 

Sample, sample, sample!

New Normal

It feels like my 'normal' for the past 10 years is trying to weave down my stash.  So what's new about that?

Well, my energy levels, for one thing.  One of the adverse effects of the cancer drug is to feel tired.  Even on the lowest possible dose I feel tired all day long and this summer has seen me struggling to overcome that feeling and carry on anyway.

The good news is that the fatigue brain fog is gone, and now that I'm well into the new scarf design, the colour combination possibilities just keep coming.  I currently have six warps wound waiting to go into the loom and ideas for at least another dozen.  I just happen to be out of time right now to do much because I leave tomorrow for a two week trip.

While I am very happy to get out of here and hopefully away from the smoke, it is with a pang as I leave these unwoven warps to await my return.  (Yes, I have packed one wound warp and yarn to wind another - because where I am going there are looms and one of them has my name on it.)

:)

One of the ways I am finding to cope with the Tired is to try let go of my expectations based on my old 'normal'.  My body is not well and in order to stick around I have to take this drug with all its adverse effects.  As usual, if there are 10 adverse effects, I will have 7 of them - to a greater or lesser degree. 

I have also been dealing with the stress and emotional reaction to writing a book, smoke allergy and conference planning.  The fact that I am getting anything done in the studio at all needs to be seen as great progress, not as a failure on my part because I'm not able to weave 3+ hours every day anymore.

So I post here a photo of two of the cones that have been emptied - one yesterday, one this morning.

Every journey begins with a single step.  Every cone emptied is a step in the right direction.  Because it is all progress.  And accepting that this is my new 'normal' - for now at least - means I don't beat myself up because I cannot do what I could, even five years ago, even three years ago.

Currently reading A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes.  I don't have time to finish it so I may have to request it from the library again once I'm done all this traveling!

Choose One Thing

This summer has been challenging for a long list of reasons.  We have been dealing with daily smoke, better or worse, for going on two weeks.  I rather suspect that the smoke is getting to everyone.  Nerves are getting frayed.  Children and people with lung issues (or allergy to smoke) are being urged to stay indoors.  So our altogether too short summer has been shortened even further because people can't do the usual summer activities - gardening, boating, fishing, just enjoying the sun while it's here.

The smoke has created some pretty amazing effects in terms of the sky, from blood red suns to spectacular sun rises and sets.  But it is also eerie and unsettling.  Not to mention knowing our neighbours are being hit hard.  Evacuation orders are in effect and last I heard our town had 3000+ evacuees, some of whom have lost their homes, livelihoods, animals.

Since I was already struggling with adverse drug effects and the toll of a very busy spring, I have not bounced back to even my 'usual' level of energy.  Far from it.

On the other hand, if I allow myself to succumb to my feelings of 'don wanna', I just wind up feeling worse.  It seems the more I try to take it 'easy', the more tired and dispirited I feel.

So I try to choose one thing to do per day.  If I just wind myself up and get to the studio, I not only feel better physically, I feel better emotionally.  Because from now until the end of the year it is one rolling deadline after another.

And then, of course, registration for the conference is scheduled to begin sometime in January.

The bulk of my contribution to the conference is pretty much done - for now - or will be in a few days.  There will be more to do in the spring, but my efforts were largely geared towards the shape of the conference, approaching instructors, working out their details and so on, deciding on the events that will happen.

To that end, I think the committee has done a great job.  Some of the committee members are out of town on holiday and hopefully by the time they get back the smoke will have abated.  I know my upcoming trip will allow me to breathe deeply and get away from it all for a couple of weeks.

Today I chose to weave a tea towel in the morning.  After lunch I wound bobbins for the next batch (it was time to change colours) and then I wound some more scarf warps.  It has helped, playing with colour.  Since I am not allowing myself to buy more yarn, I am forced to work with what I have.  Some colour combinations are easy, some are a little more daring.  I'm being forced to push the boundaries of my comfort zone in terms of colours.

But that is A Good Thing.  And so is using up stash!

Warps in Waiting

Earlier today I wove a couple of tea towels, but as much as I would like to get that warp finished, I am also getting concerned about my other craft fair inventory.  I'm very low on scarves, and since I have boxes and boxes of various kinds of rayon in my stash, I switched to winding warps.

Now, when I say I have boxes and boxes, that doesn't mean I have a lot of choices for colour.  In fact I have depth of stock in a limited range of colours.  Since I'm wanting to have as large a range of options for customers to choose from, I'm winding warps just long enough for two scarves, changing the colour options in each warp.

For some of the warps I will use two different wefts in order to increase the options even further.

People come to a craft fair to get unique items, not see dozens of the same thing in the display, so even though I'm making the same quality of cloth, it's a good thing to have a wide range of colour combinations for them to choose from.

Since stash reduction is a priority, I'm forcing myself to work with what I have on hand.  This also forces me to be a lot bolder in the combinations I put together.  And that is also A Good Thing.

Will I like any of these scarves, personally?  Not necessarily.  They just have to be appealing and look good generally.  But as it happens, most of what I have left are 'my' colours.  So I'm taking the opportunity to play with how they go together. 

But time is running out, quickly.  I leave on the 27th for TN/NC, back on the 8th, then leave again for a week after (our) Thanksgiving, coming home to the first craft fair of the season.

The goal is to have as many of these scarves ready as I can possibly get ready. 

Fingers crossed!  Because I also have about 8 hours of conference planning to do and shifts at the fall fair this weekend.  And we have been in the smoke plume from the wildfires throughout the province for a week.  It's getting more and more difficult to keep going.  

Two By Two

When it is feasible, I wind warps holding two threads. Winding two ends at a time means winding goes twice as quickly as winding one at a time.  I prefer a 2 x 2 cross, especially when the yarns are textured, as in this warp.  Textured yarns may tend to grab onto their neighbours and this can sometimes cause problems during beaming.

This warp is two different yarns, both rayon, both 'wobbly', both textured, one more than the other.

When winding a warp with a 2 x 2 cross, the ends must be kept together.  If the loop is separated, this will prevent the cross from being transferred.

With this warp at 16 epi, wound two at a time, I am using a four dent reed putting four ends per dent.  If the warp was wider (this is a 'short' reed, plenty long enough for the 12" wide warp) and I had to use the longer 8 dent reed I would still put four ends per dent, but would then leave an empty one in order to achieve the spacing needed for the cloth.

During threading I will be random in how they go into the heddles.  I find this gives a more interesting look to the cloth as the threads do not alternate, but sometimes the ends might be side by side, or alternate. 

The only thing I do with this yarn is make sure the end in the outside heddle at the selvedge is the less textured of the two yarns because that one is stronger than the more textured one.

This warp is another prototype warp.  I will wind up with two scarves that I will weave with two different wefts.  After wet finishing I will choose which weft I will put into production.  While I'm pretty sure I know which one will be the 'best' weft, I won't know for sure until I get the scarves woven and wet finished.

Sometimes you do need to do a 'full size' sample.

Plus I need to weave down my stash, so I'm trying really hard to only work from my stash!

Til It’s Done

Getting some of the book/inspirational projects finished this morning.  The above is a pinwheel design on four shafts, woven from Tencel (a type of rayon).

Rayon in general is a very dense fibre which holds a lot of water.  As a result, when rayon is fully saturated it feels very stiff and not very appealing to the touch (in my opinion).

However, when it is dry it is very flexible and feels very silk-like, mainly because it was engineered to be as much like silk as possible.  In fact it was originally called 'art silk' until more accurate labeling laws became a thing.

This is a scanning electron microscopic view of rayon.  It's pretty smooth and pretty dense.

This photo was taken with an 'ordinary' digital microscope at about 800 times magnification.  On the left is Tencel, the right is cotton.

Both yarns are cellulose but being extruded rayon (Tencel) fibres can be very long while cotton fibres are much shorter.  Both are spun to the same number of yards per pound (3360) or a 2/8 count.

You can clearly see how much thinner the Tencel is than the cotton because of the difference in density.

With the Tencel holding water, not really wanting to release it, it takes longer to dry than cotton.

This morning I was pressing two Tencel scarves.  When I started the scarf I was pressing was wetter than it should have been for efficiency.  What that means is that I had to get it dryer before the fibres would begin to react with the compression, flatten and smooth.  It also took quite a while for the drape of Tencel to begin to manifest.

Instead of my more usual side A, side B, side A pressing, I had to continue to press.  How many sides?  Don't know.  Until it was 'done'.

In other words, when the cloth flattened due to the compression, I felt whole cloth between my fingers as I rubbed the cloth between them, and the lovely drape had developed.

The second scarf got tossed into the dryer for a further 10 minutes or so and that one went much more quickly - maybe 5 sides.

By the way - that difference in thickness means that at times a higher density than the same count of cotton may be needed, especially since Tencel is also slipperier than cotton.

A Change of Mind

There is a meme on Facebook going around that says something to the effect that we should not stick with a mistake just because we took a long time making it...

So I changed my mind about what I was doing in regards to a new scarf design and put this warp on the loom this morning.  Sometimes Plan B really is 'better' than Plan A...

For the first scarf I used the same solid pale lavender in the warp in the weft and was quite pleased.  For the second scarf (there are only two scarves per warp), I used the same colour but in a darker value.  This subtly shifts the colour, making the really pale areas in the variegated yarn pop.  I think this may be my new scarf design.  

A Little Cheating

I'm sure the photo below looks very, very 'wrong'.  All those crossed threads!  Goes against everything most people have been told about good practice.

Thing is, if you know and understand your materials, you know just how far you can bend the rules and still get the results you desire.

Now everyone knows I'm all about the efficiency.  In the photo below, you can plainly see that for one third of the warp the two colours are a) ABABAB, then b) AABBAABB then AAAABBBB.

Since winding one end of one colour then one end of the next, or even four and four is a bit of a pain, what I do instead is simply wind both colours at once (with a finger between them to minimize twisting, although many people say they don't bother and everything is fine), then when it comes to threading, I just manipulate the colours to be in the sequence I want them in.

The yarn is a highly textured rayon, very slippery.  The less I mess with it in the warp winding the happier it, and I, will be.

Currently reading Boar Island by Nevada Barr

Day Two

overall look at the booth

close up of painted rayon warp scarf

close up of bamboo warp, Tencel weft shawl

close up of bamboo warp, rayon weft shawl

Since today was Hallowe'en, I figured it would be pretty slow after around 4 pm.  And so it was.  So I took some photos.  

I rarely remember to get 'beauty' shots of my textiles.  Mostly my blogging is just sharing what I'm doing with people.  But I also need photos for media and promotion.  I think the last one shows the iridescence of the plum shawl rather well.

Change of Pace

In years past, I would scramble like a mad woman trying to get one more, one more, one more warp woven off in time for the shows.  After 6 years of dealing with health issues (and the fatigue from the undiagnosed issues for several years before that) I think I am finally learning that there comes a time when it really is too late to squeeze just one more, one more, one more thing into the schedule.

In spite of wanting to have these red scarves ready for this year, it isn't going to happen.  And I find myself strangely content with that concept.

They say with age comes wisdom.  Perhaps now I'm old enough to be wise?

Currently reading Shifting Shadows by Patricia Briggs (short story collection)

Craftsy Blog

The latest Craftsy blog I wrote has been published here

This weekend Cindy and I (and 10 other guild members) are attending a workshop being presented by Kim McKenna, learning about the new regenerated fibres.  It's been a while since I had done any spinning so I'm fumbling my way through the samples, mostly slippery fibres.  :)

Even though they are all regenerated, some from cellulose, some from protein, they each have their own characteristics.  I was most surprised at how slippery some of them are, although why that should be I'm not sure - they were developed to be silk substitutes, after all.

If you ever have a chance to take a workshop with Kim, you will learn a lot about fibres and yarns.  I'm hoping to become a better weaver by adding to my database of how fibres look, feel and function, in order to make better choices for my hand woven cloth.

Hen Party

Cleaning up, Doug came across one of my old postcards I used for marketing eons ago.

This was one of my more popular place mat designs which I wove by the 100's - literally.  Warps were generally 40 yards long, woven 3 mats at a time or about 150 place mats from each warp.

Nothing like finally digging into the piles of rubble to find stuff you'd long forgotten about!

The reason for the clean up is that a friend was coming to visit and we needed her to be able to actually sleep in the bed in the guest room come office.

Cindy arrived on time last night and today we spent a leisurely day sight seeing around the town.  Autumn has arrived and over the next few days the colours should be pretty spectacular.  It was also nice that the rain forecast for today arrived last night, so we had a really pleasant day wandering around, sight seeing.

This afternoon I let her loose on the spinning wheel I borrowed for her to use at the workshop this weekend.  I'm not a very good spinner, nor do I have any particular aspirations in that direction, so you might wonder why I signed up for a spinning workshop.

Well, the topic, for one.  Kim McKenna will be explaining the fibre characteristics of the new regenerated fibres.  I figure anything I learn will be more grist for the mill in terms of my being able to make appropriate choices in my weaving.

And who knows, she might be able to teach me how to spin more effectively.  Although after putzing around on the borrowed wheel, I've come to realize that part of my problem is that I'm not getting sufficient twist into the fibres.  Which would explain why my 'yarn' so often breaks as I'm trying to reel it off the bobbin.

Always something more to learn when it comes to fibres, yarn and how to make better cloth.

Currently reading Revenant by Kat Richardson

Scarf #3

This morning I started weaving the third and last scarf on this warp, and wish I'd gone with the teal sooner!

Oh well.

The warp is off the loom, and now I'm wanting to work on something else - something other than the AVL - and not sure what to tackle. Maybe knitting on the sample shawl would be good?

I've got massage and doctor tomorrow afternoon - I could leave winding the next warp for the Fanny for Karena to do......... :)

Time for dinner anyway - think I'll make soup with the bits and leftovers in the fridge and clean that out.

Too Much Quiet

The house seemed awfully empty and terribly quiet once our 'playmates' had left and I just didn't feel up to fighting with the fly shuttle box on the AVL.

So, consulting the handy job list, I was reminded that I needed to weave some samples of the yarn I will be offering for sale (some of it is already listed in my Art Fire store http://LauraFry.artfire.com)

The skeins of painted rayon slub have about 800 yards per skein - too much for a warp for one scarf, not enough for two. However I also have some painted Tencel from Yarns Plus in the right colour, so I coned off a skein of each and wound a 7 meter long warp using the two yarns together. A 7 meter long warp should easily give me 3 scarves.

Since this was for sample scarves I wasn't too fussed about exactly how wide the warp would be and simply kept winding until I ran out of yarn - 9 inches plus 4 ends wide.

The warp is set at 24 epi and for the first scarf I'm using Bambu 7 for weft.

The threading was a straight twill with Wall of Troy every once in a while. I'm not really sure why so many people say you must use only plain weave with variegated yarns. I think fancy twills look quite nice, too. :)

Not sure what else I'll use for weft for the other two scarves. I'm toying with trying a 1450 rayon chenille for one as I've several shades of blue that would probably look nice, too. If I use rayon chenille, I will use plain weave, though. Will see where the Muse leads me.

Tomorrow is lace - I'll let my Lace Ladies know the article in WeaveZine is published as they beta tested the pricking for it. :) http://www.weavezine.com

Currently reading The Devil's Disciples by Susanna Gregory

Eye Candy!

On a day like this........... (view from my front window at 3:30 pm - yes, that's snow!)



.....this arrived..........yum!



This is the first shipment of a rayon yarn (approx. a 2/5 cotton grist) I had Teresa dye to re-sell at the Fibres West Festival March 20/21.

Gosh but I don't want to sell it!!! OTOH, I know how to get more. :) We'll also have some at the HWSDA conference in Olds, Alberta May 21-24 and the ANWG conference in Teresa's booth in Spokane May 28-June 1.

Previously I had Teresa paint warps for me from this yarn for scarves and with a Tencel weft they turned out really nice. Now I can hardly wait to finish these fine, fine cotton/linen tea towels so I can do some new scarves. :D