Hard work & creativity

I promised I’d take photos of KM & TA’s wraps outside in the natural light when they were done. Yesterday was overcast – the perfect day for photos.

Here’s TA’s.

I took a picture of KM’s while I was drying it, but forgot to get one after it was dry & pressed.

I used my trusty old folding drying rack, and was amazed at how quickly the wrap dried.

This is how I’d suggest KM dry it when she gets it home, too.

Here’s a closer shot.

Unfortunately this doesn’t give you any idea how soft & supple this wrap is. TA’s wrap, with a cotolin weft, weighs 230 grams/meter. KM’s wrap, with a 20/2 silk weft, weighs 188 grams/meter – 20% lighter. When folded up as I usually do for shipping, KM’s needed 4 folds to be as thick as TA’s was in 3 folds. Neither of those measures really does what a picture would have, and even the best photo can’t compare to actually feeling it. KM should have it in her hands by Monday so she can do just that.

While I’m waiting for one of my next moms to confirm her weft color so I can order the yarn for four wraps, I’ve been doing other creative things.

After all the colors you’ve seen on my warping mill, this undyed silk can look pretty boring. But it won’t be once it’s woven up in my modified gebrochene pattern. This is a 30/2 silk, 7,500 yards per pound. I bought it in skeins so had to wind it into balls in order to measure my warp. Not bad with a swift and a ball winder.

Then I got to the warping mill, and that’s where the problems started. The twist in the yarn caused little knots to want to form as it was coming out of the center of the ball. Then I had things come out funky requiring me to spend a few hours, literally, winding balls by hand as I painstakingly worked through the tangles. Trust me, if it wasn’t silk, I sure wouldn’t have taken the time.

Then the one skein wasn’t quite enough. I needed to wind another. Did I really have the patience to go through all that again? I did not. But I had a brainstorm. I moved my bobbin winder near the swift, used a modifier my handyman made for me, and wound that skein onto four cardboard tubes (the ones that all the cotton for the baby wraps come on). It worked like a charm…both the winding of the cones and the time at the warping mill working with them. YAY!

I also used a little more ‘creativity’ in a rather odd fashion. My Fiber Arts Guild has had several new members in the last few months, and none of us have name tags of any type, making it hard for some of us (including me) to remember names and get to know people. So we were challenged at the May meeting to make name tag and bring it to the June meeting. That’s tomorrow.

I had the final idea about how to do it last night, and implemented it today.

I’m so glad my name isn’t Anastasia! Even my ‘real’ name – Margaret – would have been way too long to do this way.

Did you notice that I got my last name in there, too – at least phonetically. Can you see the stem and leaves on that red cherry?

I sewed those buttons on a used pocket folder I had in the house. Folded into three, it’ll stand on the table in front of me. I just wrote my name on the back with a sharpie so people who are sitting near me can see my name, too. Sewing through the part where the pocket was — two layers of the heavy stock – was not fun or easy. I was glad when I got it done. I’m betting I get some chuckles tomorrow.