Christmas spinning

The loom did not come as any sort of surprise, and I was so excited by the mere prospect of weaving that three days before Christmas I had the girls pick out some fiber from the stash that I could spin up for scarves for them.

Dev chose some Hello Yarn Shetland fiber that I got from my 4 Oz Challenge prize in 2010, in the colorway "Happy Dance". It ended up like this:

212 yds/4 oz, 10-14 wpi. I spun this using a point-of-contract draw (i.e. using the twist to pull fibers out from the drafting zone). I ended up with something very squooshy and soft and lovely. After I spun this up I got a bit concerned that it wouldn't hold up to being warp, so I did a little research on how to spin strong warp yarns, which I applied to Boo's scarf yarn.

Boo chose HY Merino in "Overfond".

256 yds/4 oz, 8-10 wpi. I spun this worsted (inchworm drafting), with lots of twist, and I'm much more confident in its ability to hold up to weaving strain.

At that point, I was so hopped up on the spinning-for-weaving idea that I jumped into 100 grams of wool/silk blend that I got in a trip down to Guilford to George Weil.

95 yds/100 grams. Very smooth and dense and gorgeously shiny. I can't wait to weave this up! But I need to do some stash diving to find the right weft yarn for it. Hmmm...

I've also been working on the River Run Pullover again, now that I've got a firm, final, finish-or-be-damned! deadline on it (aka Himself's birthday). I spent yesterday on the couch, recovering from my wicked plague, and working one repeat of the sleeve.

Ooof. I'm not sure it will ever be done!

Down the rabbit hole

Otherwise known as the slippery slope. Or perhaps that road paved with good intentions.

Wait a minute - let me back up. Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a fantastic winter holiday season. We took the family to Prague for a few days (gorgeous! new mitten inspiration!), and I celebrated New Year's by  being sick for the fourth time in about 6 weeks. Yee haw! But it's been a fun couple of weeks since the last you heard from. But back to my new obsession...

Every year, Himself asks me what I want for Christmas (or my birthday) - my answer is typically a shrug and "I don't need anything" (damn Puritan heritage tells through every time...). And this year was no different, except that after a couple of days, the same thing kept popping in to my head: a rigid heddle loom. Partly this is motivated by a burning desire to get rid of the massive amount of yarn that I have lying around, and the other motivation is the recent inheritance by Himself and my brother-in-law of a very large, heirloom floor loom that belonged to their great grandfather. So...I did some research, sent Himself an email with the appropriate webpage linked, and a suspicious package arrived and appeared under the tree.

Well, come Christmas morning, I opened it up, got all the bits and bobs sorted out, grabbed some yarn and off I went.

Details:
Loom - 25 inch Schacht Flip rigid heddle loom
Yarn - leftover Cascade 220 for the warp (light blue) and some of my first handspun Corriedale (~87 yds) for the warp.

I just warped with as much yarn as I had, aiming for about a 36 inch long warp. Then I wove for a while until I ran out of warp.

Things I have learned: whoa. Whole new vocabulary to learn. I remember this from when I started spinning as well, but it takes a while to get up to speed. I've watched a lot of You Tube videos this time around, which has been really helpful. The warping bit was pretty straightforward, but the weaving is not quite so easy. My selvedges suck big time, but I've been assured by a number of handspun weaving experts that they'll get better with time.

I ended up with this wee scarf-like thingie, that has been washed and is now lying abandoned in a corner. Because the new toy is now warped with 8 feet worth of purple sock yarn that I am busily weaving into a longer scarf-like thingie. There's nothing quite so satisfying as dispensing with 400+ yds of yarn in an afternoon's worth of play time!