more on the "production weaving" project, plus misc

Ah, the joy.

I’m going home for Xmas this year, and my parents are already bitterly bickering with each other (they’ve been divorced for 17 years now, but clearly never quite got over it).  Each of them, of course, blames the other.  I’m tempted to spank both of them and send them to bed without any dinner.  But I suppose they’ve both been under stress lately.

Meanwhile, I have successfully dyed the black silk for my warp – I mean, it’s black and I think it actually came out even (no white spots)!  I dyed it at 4% DOS (depth of shade – i.e. 4 grams of dye for every 100g yarn), which used up all my black Sabraset dye. So now I need to order more.  I have also measured out my warping board and dang if it doesn’t measure *exactly* 14 yards.  (My warp is 14 yards, 2.5″ long – 14 is a reasonable equivalent.)

I have also wound the kid mohair into balls and will convert them to skeins tonight.  Same with the cashmere…I am hoping to dye all the skeins of yarn tonight.  I’d also like to start winding my warp tonight, but that’s probably a lost cause…there’s only so much I can get done at once!  Still, you never know.

The Fuzz is much more cheerful now that the ingrown claws are out, and brushing him is definitely making progress on the mats.  Between the two of us, Mike and I have removed enough excess cat hair to make a third cat (!).  I may have to clip out some of the worse mats, but he looks much better-groomed now.

I have been playing around with WeaveDesign, a freeware program that graphs out your drawdowns for you, and am having fun!  I am starting to work out the relationship between treadling, threading, and tieups – nothing organized right now, just noticing that certain combinations produce straight lines, certain combinations produce wavy lines, and still others produce squares. It’s hard to tear me away from the program – it’s so much fun to fiddle around with the patterns!

So far I have created two patterns that I plan to weave into my scarves.  Combined with three book-patterns for the same threading, that gives me enough to weave all five scarves in different patterns. That will be really, really cool.  (I’m not sure all the patterns will show up under the kid-mohair fuzz, but hey.)

I’m looking forward to a series of quick-and-easy projects, after the last one.  The fine silk piece is gorgeous, but it took a lot of concentration to do.