Vaccinations, various projects

I finished winding the warp for project #2 today, and sleyed the reed. I’m going to put off threading the loom until tomorrow night, when I’ll have more time and be fresher. Hope I can get it done in one sitting! I’ll definitely need a couple hours of uninterrupted time to thread it successfully.

I also got a pound of cashmere yarn from the UK! It’s pure white, which is surprising for the shop I got it from – they work primarily with mill ends, and those are rarely white for obvious reasons. I liked it enough that I ordered a second pound of it – that’s all they had left. It’s a 2/14 cashmere that measures about 22 wraps per inch.

Which, of course, gets me into the next problem. I don’t know what spacing to use with it. With the Jaggerspun Zephyr (the stuff I used for the previous project), the spacing was specified in the pattern; with my current project, the seller included a suggested sett for the yarn. This yarn is mostly sold to machine knitters, so there are no instructions for weaving.

I guess I’ll have to weave samples and see how they come out…someone suggested warping with silk (which is much stronger than cashmere) and then using the cashmere as weft. I’ve never tried that either! So many things to sample and play around with.

But first, I think I’ll try a couple more easy projects, just to get the hang of warping and weaving.

Meanwhile, I have gotten the first set of vaccinations for my Ghanaian travels. It’s a good thing my insurance covers them (after the deductible) because the first set cost $436! Admittedly, I’m getting a VERY full set of vaccinations, including some very optional ones like rabies and Hep B, but it’s still pretty daunting.

I think the full list is: rabies (series of three shots), Hepatitis A booster, Hepatitis B (three shots), polio booster, meningococcal, yellow fever, typhoid, and, um, stuff. I’m pretty sure I forgot one or two. Plus a prescription for antimalarial medications, and another for an antibiotic in case I get traveler’s diarrhea.

Quite the kitchen sink.

(You don’t actually NEED all those vaccinations to go to Africa, by the way–the only one that’s legally required to get into Ghana is yellow fever. But since my insurance is paying for all of it, I decided to go the paranoid route and get vaccinated for everything I could possibly get vaccinated for. The shots are mostly good for 5+ years, so it will make subsequent travel a lot easier.)

Finally, I’ve been teaching B. how to knit (he’s been picking it up with astonishing speed), and he’s decided to make a “Dr. Who” scarf as his first project. I think that will be fun! We’ve ordered 3 lbs of sportweight Kona Superwash yarn (from Henry’s Attic) in white, and we’ll dye it in the appropriate colors for him to knit. That sounds like great fun to me–I can reproduce most colors reasonably well with my palette of dye samples, and it’ll be fun experimenting with the rest. Best of all, we get to do a fiber arts project together! 🙂