Time's Awasting

Here I am on Sunday morning. What did I do on Saturday. Nothing! N-o-t-h-i-n-g...nothing. I cleaned up my house when I should have been spinning. And I cleaned up my studio which was beginning to look like a wool bomb had hit again. In digging through this and that to find fibres related to level 3 and 5 over the last few weeks I have noticed that baggies of fibre have been landing in my room in alarming amounts. So yesterday in a fit of frustration I figured I had better make a path through the mess so that I could get to the loom which I will need this week when I start the Shadow Weave challenge for the Fibre Academy (more on that in a minute). In making a path through the reams of fibre on the floor, I decided it was time to clean up, and so began the day in which the whole house got shipped out and then re-neatened and believe me, the studio is still in a ree raw. We are building shelves under the steps and we have once again moved around the dining room and we are adding shelves above the TV for DVD storage. We took the coffee table to the shed for the next few months while I work on my levels since I find it was in the way for my spinning wheel. So in the end I can say that I never got one thing done on my homework, and I still have a long way to go before I'm ready to spin today.

Now... to go back to that bit about the Fibre Academy. So here I sit with 2/8 cotton on hand, given to me by the one and only RG who has encouraged me to try my hand at Shadow Weave on my new loom. The Fibre Academy (which is part of our guild) in doing a Shadow Weave study for the next few months. There are eight of us and we all got together to pick a colour that we all agreed on, which happened to be blue. So all of us will receive blue. Then we all had to pick a colour of our own choice to go with the blue. Shadow weave is a weave structure that involves alternating rows of two colours using patterns that bloom as you weave these two colours together. If you are really interested in checking out shadow weave then you can look at the latest installment of Hand Woven magazine... it is full of information on Shadow Weave. We have chosen our colours and we have ordered the cotton and while we wait for our cotton to arrive we are weaving in any two colours that we have on hand, a test piece that has to be so big by so big and which will aid us in making sure that we are doing things right... because at the end of this when we thread our looms for real we will be weaving blocks that will have to match in size. Each and every one of us has to weave eight blocks and then we will share our blocks with the other eight students so that we can build a blanket of some sort. I'm looking forward to this challenge... but I have to have my sample block done by Saturday! Argh!!!!So I have to have my wee studio cleaned if I am going to get this warp on the loom in the next day or two and then weave off my block. Already I'm stressing.... The whole thing has to be done by June... that's two blocks a month.... I can do that right..?

Now today I think I need a picture or two... I haven't posted any for a while... so let's see what I've got...

Shadow weave colours.... the blue at the top is the base colour that we will all start with and then the other colours are our choices to go with the blue. This will be a really cool project.

My disaster of a studio as I try to clean up the mess.

Studio spillage onto the dining room table.

This week's unwashed samples... from left to right you can see them below closer up.

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50/50 bamboo/wool

Corn fibre....

I just realized that this sample is a complete waste because I buggered up and made it 70/30 wool/corn silk when it should have been 7030 corn silk/wool... Blast! And it was my favorite. : (

Let's see what else do I have for you....

Here we have a bunch of discarded samples that are not good enough to make it into my books.... and the previous one will be joining these. Argh!

....so this is the library under the steps in the works... shelf brackets are up and the shelves are measured and ready to go in too.

Bamboo ready to be blended with cotton for my socks for the level 5 homework.....

These are the stockings/socks that I want to knit for the level 5 homework... I'm not sure if I will make them this long.... teapot thinks they're sexy but I'm not sure anything will make my legs sexy... maybe I'll knit them for him to wear... har dee har har!

Failing the above.... these are my back up plan.

So that's it for me today.... I'm outta here... I got some cleaning to do before I redo the flippin' cornsilk and wool sample and ply the soy silk singles I have on my wheel. Then maybe just maybe if I'm really good I might get that warp on the loom for the Shadow Weave sample.

Happy mid-January to you... it won't be long now till the worst of the winter is over..... : ) See I'm not depressed!