So my knotted pile project is now dry and trimmed and looking beautiful. I love it. I did mine in tussah silk that was dyed by Sara Lamb. This is the project I started at SOAR in 2008 and then it sat and languished in the corner of the shop for a long, long time. Now it is finished and the loom has been rewarped with wool and my next project with be with English Leicester locks. They are the wool that the project is sitting on.
In addition I have been working on a lace shawl design. I cast on on Tuesday night and have been knitting more rows than I am ripping so that is good. The wool is something I bought at Rhinebeck a few years ago from a small farm that has all their wool spun and dyed. It still has some lanolin in it and I like that feeling. Not sure what the wool type is but it feels like Romney to me.
There was plenty of wool washing going on because the Retreat is coming up fast and I need washed samples for 18 students of 12 types of wool. I am washing 16-24 ounces at a time and it takes about 3 days to dry outside on a screen. The photo above is Wensleydale (top) and Leicester Longwool (bottom).
This photo is Dorset Horn (bottom) and Lincoln (top)
Chelsea is putting together some Super Fiber Samplers. it is her favorite thing to do:-)
Here is some of the English Leicester locks that I am combing for my next knotted pile project.
And in the midst of all that I am beginning a weaving project. The yarn is 2 ply Alpaca laceweight (about 32 wpi). The sett will be 40 ends per inch in a 10 dent reed. The yarn was dyed with natural materials by my friend Kathy Rowe. Kathy died from cancer a little over a year ago. I used to sell her yarns in the shop and the day i heard she died I took it all home. I have been saving it until I felt like I could do something with it and the right project presented itself.
I am warping with these greenish shades and I will be weaving with 3 shades of blue. It will be an all over twill pattern on my Schacht Baby Wolf.
I have two warp chains wound. There will be 1040 ends all together and I estimate that I have about 650 ends wound at the moment. This will be the finest weaving project I have ever done and I am a little nervous but it will all be fine and lovely and drapy in the end.
In the midst of all this productivity, little Maggie thought she might go outside and rollerblade a little bit. Well, the rollerblades wanted to go faster than she did and they got out from under her. At least that's how Maggie tells the story. She fell backward and put out her hand to catch herself...Now she has a fractured wrist and this delightfully artistic cast for the next 3 weeks. Three weeks in a cast and then hopefully 3 weeks in a splint if everything is going well.
Tomorrow, there is a spindle class in the morning and then more warp winding!
4 comments:
Maggie is such a copycat. Now she's going to have to wait 20 years for a cyst to form so she can have surgery Just Like Abby.
WOW!!!
That's a lot of things going on at one time.
Good heavens, you ARE busy! The knotted pile looks great. I want to do one, too, but how many WIPs can I have going? (I know, I know, thousands.) One caution about the alpaca: I've had an alpaca warp stretch beyond belief. It all worked out in the end, because I put lots of weights on all the ends that stretched, but I thought I better worn you.
And hugs to Maggie. I fractured my wrist tripping over my field hockey stick when I was 12 or so, and I've never had any problems since (certainly no cyst!). Just keep Maggie away from field hockey!
Poor, poor Maggie. Tell her that next time she should just let her butt catch her. That's what it's for!
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