Thursday, December 28, 2006

Getting Back on Track

By Leigh

Whew. The holiday weekend has been long and continues to be exceptionally busy. We've had a full house, full tummies, and full hearts. My focus has been on family and friends; consequently, I haven't been on the computer much, nor made progress on the fiber front.

Knitting has progressed no more than a few rows beyond this. Not because I haven't been working on it, but because the spacing between the rightmost sheep and the lamb bugged me so much that I frogged it and have been reknitting, one stitch closer together. Bibliotecaria's comment verbalized something I was musing over, so I took the plunge to reknit.

My decision to do things like this usually boils down to this: which is worse; the thought of having to re-do an entire section of a project, or having to live with the regret that I didn't do something about it while I had the chance. I haven't caught up yet to where I was when I decided to do this, but hope to make good progress over the next several days.

For spinning, I am getting anxious to start on this, which was dark to photograph and therefore difficult to see.......

........10 ounces of luscious raw black Rambouillet, received in a trade with Dianna. It is a new breed for me, and I am looking forward to making my wheel sing with it.

Weaving. Well, I wish I had more to report, but the loom only looks like this:

Since completing the Lace Weaving Workshop last November, it has been on my mind to go back over the workshop notes and explore what I learned in greater depth. My plan is to start back at the beginning, with huck. But this time, instead of weaving samplers, I plan to weave a series of dish towels.

A long time ago I took up a good suggestion to weave scarves as samples, and I have done a lot of these. However, I'm not exactly a scarf person, and now that I've exhausted my giving list from my scarf stash, I still have more than I know what to do with.

A some point along the way, it occurred to me that I could weave something else as I explored various weave structures, color effects, and yarns. Huck is a traditional weave for towels, so that seemed to be a good project to switch to.

Actually I love kitchen things. I love kitchen stores and the kitchen department in any store. I love looking at dishes, pottery, containers, kitchen towels, and table linens. So the dish towels seem like a more logical project for me than scarves.

Having queried several of my towel weaving friends, I have measured 5 yards of white, 8/2 cotton. As you have seen I've gotten it beamed, threaded, and sleyed. I'm planning to use a royal blue for the weft.

I also hope to start visiting and reading blogs again, though the blogosphere is not surprisingly quite these days. In addition to the December holidays, we also have a late December birthday to celebrate in our family. Even so, a calendar imposed break isn't too bad. I'm finding it is renewing my motivation and enthusiasm, which will be a good way to start the new year.


Related Posts:
Huck Towels 1
Rambouillet - From Fleece to Yarn

8 comments:

Jackie said...

Weaving towels as samples is a great idea! Have fun with them.

Renee Nefe said...

Darly does know how to crochet...we're still working on making her loops even though.

Valerie said...

Leigh, did you notice that Handwoven has a color and weave huck pattern posted as a pdf file on their website? Thought you might be interested based on your post about combining color w/ lace. Look at: http://www.interweave.com/weave/projects_articles/green_huck.pdf

Tina T-P said...

I was telling a fiber friend about your rare breeds sweater & about the suspicious holes in your water jug weights for your loom and she said she had seen some looms with jugs full of SAND for weight - it sounded like a good idea to pass along -

Hope you and the furr balls are having a wonderful New Year!

Best to you. T.

Anonymous said...

Happy New Year!!!!!

Leigh said...

Valerie and Tina, thanks for the ideas!

bibliotecaria said...

Man, I feel such a sense of -- well -- power! One little comment! I look forward to seeing the redone sheep.
bibliotecaria

Anonymous said...

Take heart, as least your loom has a warp on it while mine stands stark naked and has done for the last month or so!