Trying Times... If We Only Knew The Half Of It

Shadow Weave has been giving me issues. Yesterday I sat down to try weaving on the loom and I needed to tie on to the front beam since I had noticed a couple of weeks ago that there were a couple of crossed threads and when I started to tie on to the front beam I discovered that there was a HUGE mistake with the tension.... and I hadn't even tied on yet. Teapot had been helping me wind on to the back beam... while I was pulling and untangling the fibres at the front of the loom Teapot was winding on the warp on the back and making sure that the newspaper was in between the layers of threads. Only when we got it finished I never thought to check his work... and that was a bad mistake in and of itself. So after that I discovered that Teapot had wound the warp on in such a way that it is not even on the back but thicker in the middle than on the edges...

The threads in the middle are NOT supposed to be shorter than the ones on either side.... this is what lead me to realize the problem... It means another full day of work just to get it to the point where I can weave. I'm growling just thinking about it.

this means that the tensions will suck worse and worse as I go along. So tomorrow I will have to spend the day trying to sort it out... by myself. : (

Meanwhile I haven't spun much for two days. Today my two dear friend came out from FSJ to have lunch with me and spend the day spinning and chatting about our yarns. By the time we had gone through our books (one of them is working on her MSP too and the other did some of the MSP courses but never went further) and going through all the things that we've been doing over the last few months, there was little or no time for spinning.  We also had to make a quick trip to the Thrift store here in HH looking for a roll of wallpaper that I am told will fix my tension issue on the loom.Not sure how that will work but I guess I will be head down and arse up tomorrow on that...

Meantime I am starting to work on the spinning composition for my 50 hour project which if you will recall is a pair of lace socks that look like this...

My blend will be 50% cotton, 40% bamboo, and 10% ramie. The cotton is lovely and soft, the bamboo has a little lustre and the ramie adds strength. I am looking forward to working on this project. I love these wee babies and maybe just maybe I might part with them as a Christmas gift.

In other areas of spinning I have pictures of the woollen and point of contact yarn. The pic of the woollen yarn just doesn't come close to showing how beautiful the yarn actually is... it is the softest... most sumptuous glorious fleece. Softer even I think than merino.

The yarn on the left the greyier one is the woollen spun yarn that I am so in love with. The other one is the same kind of fleece but a slightly browner and coarser fleece.  They are both Icelandic fleeces (type of sheep) and both are nice but the one on the left is just wow!

So let's see... here's the spiral...

The core is spun in Lyocel and the spiral single is spun in wool (Northern Lights) and it is spun thick and thin.

This flake yarn is two singles in Tussah silk plied together and I dropped in a flake of silk waste every so often.

If you look closely at this you can just see the little snarls of twisted single coming out of the yarn... this was a very poopy yarn to spin... it didn't want to work at all and eventually when I did get it to work it still sucks... what anyone would want with this is beyond me!

This is a marl yarn which is a fancy way of saying that it is a rag yarn... that means that it is one single one colour and the other single another colour.

This is my very strange designer yarn... It is cabled ramie and cotton blended and then tufts of cotton dropped into the cable as it is twisting.

So that's it... I have the fifty hour project left. and tomorrow begins the very hard work of getting it started. I will be spinning the first single for a 3 ply yarn. Very fine.... very fine.... not sure about the t.p.i. yet. We'll see.

Meanwhile the two friends that came today helped me once again celebrate my birthday.... a lovely kerosene lamp like the ones of old used in the bedroom... it's tiny and has a lovely spinning wheel. Then I was also given a very cool spindle bag and a cute little wooden box that has a magnetized top... it will be perfect for holding little things like pins and needles.... or maybe a ring or something equally small. (The wood smells really nice... it must have been rubbed with bee's wax.) I am a very lucky gal to have been given such thoughtful gifts. Or maybe my little box can hold the beaded spinny things for my Trindle Spindle... I have several sets of beads that would fit in that box just nicely.... but that Trindle spindle is a story for another day.

Teapot and Daughter #1 have gone to their regular monthly JCR meeting. Daughter #2 is just reading (her usual past time....). she is pleased with herself tonight as she has written a story for her grade 9 Language Arts class and received full marks for her efforts. As a matter of a fact she even received 5 extra bonus points for writing and passing in her plot outline. She has talent in the writing area and writes stories that even grab my interest.

Speaking of stories that grab my interest... I am reading a book that I got for Easter which is called Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant.  It is the story of Santa Catarina which is a fictional nunnery located in Ferrara Italy in the 1500s. The story is one of women who are sent to the nunnery after being deemed unmarriageable in the eyes of their families whether it be because of deformities or because they are second daughters and there is not enough money for their dowry. It is a startling reminder of how lucky we are to live in an age when women have rights under the law. the women of that time had no choice but to make good on an almost unbearable situation. They find a certain type of freedom within the walls of the nunnery even though they are subject to strict discipline and forced poverty. So far, I am enjoying it very well.

Anyway, I will end here... as I have tried to get this posted several times today and I kept losing it or the phone would ring or the kids would distract me or the pictures were not clear enough... you know... stuff kept happening to take me away from what I was trying to do.  I'll end here since right at the moment it's looking like if I hit publish it might actually get done!