SpinnySpinny

I’ve got both yarns skeined, blocked and measured. The second S yarn came out slightly finer but not enough that it’s a problem. I still have fiber left so I can always spin more. It came out a bit hairy, what I would expect for a coarse fiber, so I’ll need to thread it on more shafts than you might think for simple plain weave. In this case, I think 4 should be fine.

Z 643m, 145g
S 707m, 142g

The hard part is going to be keeping them straight. I already had to check my numbers several times to make sure I got the right measurement with the right yarn. I hope to have this warped and well underway while The Boyfriend is out of town else I’ll never get enough quiet time to get it done right.

I went hunting for a piece of fabric buried in the closet this afternoon and ended up doing a minor re-org. That happens when what I’m looking for has been in there a while. It’s much wider than it is deep, which makes it a pain to organize. I have several large utility shelves and still stuff is stacked on the floor and hanging off the back of the door.

I’ve been pretty good about not buying more than I can figure out where to store. I have years worth of project material in there already. Of course, my usual solution to that dilemma is to get better at packing it all in. Because, well, today Thai Silks had some really nice batik half off.

There are a few posts to catch up on so I’m going to try to get some of them out of the way while it’s still too early to be up and making noise around here. And, yes, there will be pictures now that the camera situation has gotten straightened out.

A mysterious package arrived at the mailbox this week and it contained holiday gifts. (I’m not going to comment on schedule because several of ours are still sitting here waiting to be packed up.) It was from The Boyfriend’s brother and his wife, whose wedding we attended last summer. And there were Textiles! Which is totally cool. Really, really nice ones. They went to Scotland for their honeymoon and clearly did some shopping. These are commercially spun and woven but I’m going to post them anyway.

Here’s the first, a large Shetland wool throw. It’s pale green heather single both warp and weft in plain weave, with warp fringe. It’s nicely finished with the felted fringe that won’t get all skanky after a few washings.

The second item is a cashmere scarf, which I couldn’t resist showing with the new tweed jacket. There was a comment made how somebody felt like he should be off rambling the moor.

Cashmere is seriously warm, so this is actually a very practical travel item for those Italy trips.

I needed something to work on at the Swedish Christmas Fair, so I dug out some Romney fleece I had sitting around and started on a medium-weight single. It’s really long staple (20 cm) so combing out with the dog brush is fine and it’s fast to spin. Normally demo yarn is total crap but this stuff is so mindless to work with that it’s coming out fine.

I’m finally following through on a project I’ve been talking about for years, spin direction patterns. You can get interesting subtle patterns like checks and stripes in a plain-weave fabric by changing the direction the yarn is spun. Light reflects differently off each yarn and it makes it look like a much more complex fabric.

This was common in early Scandinavian weaving of the Viking era, so I want to do a sample for an upcoming talk at the local Swedish cultural society meeting. I also saw a really nice Peruvian piece at the Textile Museum a few years back, done with 2-ply. It’s one of those interesting techniques that you can only do with handspun because you just can’t buy the right yarn.

So far I’ve gotten almost a full bobbin done Z. It’s not great yarn for me as I’m not much paying attention to size but it will be fine for a sample. I will probably have to do it on the table loom just because the smaller one has less yarn lost to loom waste. That’s a big deal when you are spinning it all.

It’s also using up some fiber I’ll never make a real project from. I bought some of this fleece years ago to use for students and never did anything with it. It’s coarse and not great for clothing, not to mention the annoying canary stain that causes it to all come out vaguely yellowish.

I went to the book store last night for something entirely not about textiles but of course wandered over to the craft section. Much to my amazement, there were multiple books about spinning. (And, for the first time in forever, I can get Spin-Off lots of places but am having trouble finding a copy of Handwoven.)

But hidden in the miscellaneous textiles section was Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands by Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez. I have somehow managed to miss meeting Nilda on several occasions, but have heard much of her work from publications and my friend Abby Franquemont. She taught me about Peruvian weaving, which she learned as a child in Nilda’s village.

I haven’t had a chance to really read the book yet, but already there are interesting patterns I want to weave. And finally photos of how the woven edge finish works. I really like spinning Peruvian-style weaving yarn, partly because it’s totally unlike the well-behaved modern mill yarns. It has so much twist that it’s traditionally kept in balls to maintain tension. But it works perfectly for traditional fabrics that withstand decades of daily use. I just wish I had more time to spin and weave my own.