The Ups and Down of Playing with Fiber

The last 10 days or so have been just a rollercoaster of success and fails while playing with yarn and fiber.

First of all, I decided to try pickup on the mini Wave.  I took a pattern from Around the Baltic Sea, Notebook #4, Lithuania 2 by Hilegund Hergenhan.  I have a number of her bandweaving pattern books and they are a delight.  I can so appreciated all of the time and effort she put into these publications and find them to be a real treasure trove of Baltic band designs.

So I broke out my graph paper and colored pencils and modified one of the designs.  I found the Singer 301 cardtable a great place to sit and design:-)

I wound the warp and dressed the loom and tried to weave.  There were little warning bells🔔 going off in the back of my mind as I threaded, but I ignored it.  I start to weave and realize that I did not wind enough background threads - grrrrr!  Another warp trashed.  I recalculated how many ends were needed, wound, dressed, and started weaving.  Great, the pattern threads are not showing up as I would like.  In disgust, I have set the loom aside.  I need to decide to continue weaving as pickup, or just weave it off as plain weave.

Next problem, I pulled some 2/9 wools in blues that I have had for years to weave a wool pad for my ironing board.  I have read in various places how a wool pad really helps when steam pressing and people buy wool blankets at thrift stores and cut to fit.  I figured I have wool, so weave one.

This was an opportunity to use the triangle pulleys on the 110cm Glimakra.   I have been wanting to play with them and I have been so enamored with twills lately that it was a perfect time to weave a 3-shaft twill.  It went really well, weaving with the loom set up as counterbalance was great!  Good sheds and easy treadling. The shaft bars looked cattywampus, but everything went well.

 Well it went well until I cut the fabric from the loom and laid it out on my ironing board.  Duh!  I forgot to include loom waste when I wound the warp.  What is that all about?  I have been weaving over 15 years and I forget loom waste!?!  Now I will have to piece it after full it -geez!

Yep, that fabric is too short.

Now for the straw that almost broke my back.  I am participating in Tour de Fleece with team Warped Weaver's and years ago I wove spinning lap towel.  I decided to

weave one as a prize for our team.  Again, wound the warp, wove the towel, sewed it all up and it is some of the worst weaving I have done in years. I cannot believe how bad it looks.  Terrible selvages, obvious tension issues, it looks like a 3 year old wove it. So, back to winding, dressing, and weaving - again!  When I put myself on a yarn moratorium it was not my plan to trash so many warps as a way of reducing my stash.

Now, the actual spinning is going great!  I am spinning a number of bumps of mixed fibers.  All of the balls are a mix of wool, angora, alpaca,  and llama in natural colors that I had bought years ago to try lockerhooking but never did that.  I have been using the bumps to teach myself to spin.

I spun up 2 bumps that were a combo of greys and browns and finished plying them this morning.  I have a full jumbo bobbin of 2-ply that I have to skein.

Up to this point, I had only plied handspun a couple of times before.  Last night when I started to ply, I was just using the Lendrum lazy kate and did not care for how it was going just having one yarn guide.  I left the bobbins on the kate and threaded each single through a yarn guide on my winding stand and it really worked well for me.

It looks like I am doing better making yarn than using yarn😃