Merry Xmas to all!

Merry Christmas!

 I’m writing this from Maryland, where I’m visiting my family (my dad yesterday, my mom today, my brother and his wife tomorrow).  I’ve been having fun knitting on my brushed kid mohair lace scarf (Kidsilk Haze yarn), and later on we’re going to my brother’s open house party.  All in all, it promises to be a good Christmas, and I’m enjoying the quiet time right now.

I did indeed finish the 5-scarf production run, although I was frantically twisting fringe on the plane.  A minor disaster happened on the way over, when I left a beautiful cashmere scarf I’d woven for my brother on the plane, but happily I had brought an extra scarf, so I did some rearrangement of Xmas gifts and everything came out OK.  I’m still miffed about the cashmere scarf, mostly because it was so gorgeously soft and well-woven, but oh well.  Life’s like that sometimes.

I had some interesting experiences with the fabrics after weaving.  For one thing, they all came out different widths.  The cashmere scarf shrank almost 2″ in width when I dyed it after weaving; the kid mohair barely shrank at all when washed.  I had targeted 12″ wide for the scarves and wound up with some at 13″ and the cashmere at 11″.  Good argument for doing samples, where accuracy is needed.

That’s all for now.  Later in the week (as in tomorrow, most likely) we’ll do some marbling on cotton and silk fabrics. My mom’s also given me some recycled silk yarn which I promised to weave into a plainweave fabric for her to make a vest out of – I’ll definitely need more yarn to weave it but I think it’ll be a fun, quick project.  I may weave something else out of a similar-weight yarn so I don’t have to warp the loom twice.  Maybe a shawl or something.