Finished placemats; dyed the silks

Another productive day, especially since I interrupted it to go to the gym and also to talk to a recruiter.  I finished weaving the indigo placemats (5 of them!) and will wet-finish them in the washer tonight.  It didn’t even take me that long to weave – I’m guesstimating that it only took me about 3 hours to weave 2.5 yards.  Of course, that’s at about 18 picks  (weft threads) per inch – I used a fairly coarse linen (16/2 linen, 10/2 cotton) to make a nice heavy placemat.  The tiger jacket, which will be fine silk at 45 picks per inch, will be much slower to weave.

And I have finished dyeing the colored silks for the jacket!  (I still need to dye 300g of black, but I won’t need it until much later.  I’ll probably do it tomorrow.)  They are spread out on the sofa for me to admire, all except the orange-red/red ones which are drying in the oven.  (Handy tip: if you ever want to dry yarn quickly, pop it in the oven – far from the heating element – and set the oven to about 140-150 degrees.  Then crack the door open.  In a couple of hours, your yarn will be nice and dry.)  Tomorrow, when they’re all dry, I’ll lay them out in a spectrum and take a photo.

I can say, however, that they are absolutely FABULOUS.  I got the nice gradual color shift I had been looking for – you can scarcely tell the difference between the adjacent skeins in the color transition, but it slowly progresses from yellow through orange to bright red.  I can’t wait for the skeins to dry so I can take a photo/admire my work.  It’s just pretty.

Tomorrow promises to be a busy day, too.  I now need to wind all those skeins of ultra-fine yarn into balls, and start winding the warp.  It’s going to be a real challenge taking the yarn off the balls without making a mess.  A friend sent me a cone winder last week and I hope it arrives tomorrow!  It would be VERY convenient to be able to wind the stuff onto much-more-manageable cones for use and storage.

I’ve decided I want to try getting this jacket done in time to take it to Maryland for Thanksgiving, where I’m going to see my family and go to my 20-year high school reunion (how time flies!).  That gives me from now until next Wednesday to get it finished.  It’ll be really tight, especially if I get a job (I find out tomorrow whether the one place is going to make me an offer).  But I’m going to give it a try.

Whew!  I hope my other days are just as productive.