Of course I hit the ground running when I arrived home last Tuesday. I took care of the most pressing things, still haven’t worked through all of my emails from the month I was gone, but be patient, I’ll get to you if you are still waiting for a response from me.
Meanwhile, in a desperate attempt to finish something and get it into the closet, though it is now too warm to wear, I tweaked and added a zipper to this lovely sweater I finished up while I was in Washington State. The yarn was a discontinued color from Elsebeth Lavold, Silky Wool, that I picked up last summer on sale at Sievers Fiber School. I love top down sweaters because I can knit until I run out of yarn! The pattern was from Baby Cocktails, a sweater called Vodka Lemonade [1]. My version is considerably longer in both length and sleeves. And I zipped it up.
[2]
Thursday I dove into the project for the weekend. I had volunteered to demo all day yesterday at Peters Valley [3]‘s annual open house, which is always a great event, opening workshop season for the Valley. But I needed something to demo with. If you were following my blog last year, you know I was one of the key players in restoring the looms donated to Peters Valley from a local University, they now have 11 sturdy workhorses, 8-12 shaft Macomber looms, and since I’ll be teaching a yardage class there at the end of May, it made sense to dry run the yardage class, on one of the Macomber looms, since I don’t work on them regularly. My own looms are Tools of the Trade. Also workhorses. They really don’t make looms now like they did in the 1970’s! They are solid, and heavy and you can abuse the crap out of them and they outperform anything made today. (Not that I abuse my looms…)
So I looked through my extensive stash, groaned a little because it is pretty extensive, I don’t remember how that happened, and pulled a 1000 yard skein of Rayon RickRack yarn hand dyed from Interlacements [4] I had won from a show. I added things from the shelf that coordinated and complimented it, and did a series of yarn wraps. I ended up with 20 ends in a repeat.
[5]
I loaded up a warping paddle with all 20 ends and zipped through a 6 yard warp, winding it in three bundles.
Saturday I headed out to Peters Valley, and spent the day visiting and schmoozing, and setting up a loom. Mostly it went smoothly until the end while I was beaming, one of the cranky odd flat steel heddles had an odd bend that kept cutting into the fine cotton flake yarn. Once we figured that out, a spinner from my weaving guild had stopped by and offered to help, all was well and by 6pm, I had sleyed, threaded and beamed 520 ends, 6 yards long. I did a quick test that all was OK and left.
Sunday my husband and I headed back out to Peters Valley, and I got there in enough time to sample a few wefts. There wasn’t time to cut off the sample and wash it, so I made an educated guess how the Shetland wool weft I chose would full when the yardage would wash and away I went.
[6]
This is what the room looked like at 11:45am.
[7]
This is what the room looked like at noon once the public started coming in and it stayed steady till about 5pm.
[8] 
[9] 
[10]
I paced myself, knowing I had to make the 6 yard warp last until 5pm. At 5:05, I finished the last couple of picks of weft, and cut off the fabric. I talked the whole time I wove, and had a wonderful and productive afternoon but boy am I paying for it today. Note to self. Do not sit and weave for five hours straight when you haven’t done it in awhile. I have back muscles that are screaming at me for the abuse. Must weave more often to keep those muscles in shape. So in just three days I designed and wound a warp, dressed a loom, and wove off net five yards, washed it and voila!
[11]
[12]
Fortunately the class I’m teaching in weaving yardage is actually five days, so I don’t have to punish anyone by making them sit for five hours straight! The studio is beautiful to work in, I love teaching at the Valley, and there is plenty of yarn to play with! I can’t wait to figure out what to make from my yardage. For more information on the class, click here [13].
Stay tuned…