Calm, cool, and collected

Or maybe I’m not what the title of this post says, but at least I’m trying. And the colors I’m working with are reinforcing that.

I started knitting these socks months ago. Although I pretty much always have socks on my needles, this pair took much longer than usual due to my thumb tendonitis. I did absolutely no knitting for about 2 months, and since then have dramatically reduced the amount of time I knit in an evening. Sometimes not at all, sometimes 10-15 minutes, max of about 1/2 hour. So it took me a long time to finish these socks.

They are YUMMY!! I bought this yarn from the Humble Bumble Fibers Co. It is hand dyed, was a pleasure to work with, and is VERY soft and comfy. Hopefully they wear as well as the commercial yarn I usually use.

In my last post I showed you some fiber I dyed in preparation for weaving. Much progress has happened since then.

Here are the skeins dried and shown together with the commercially-dyed cone of turquoise I’ll use with them.

After that I wound them into the appropriate length on my warping mill. Here they are chained and ready for the loom.

Looks pretty different than in the skeins, doesn’t it? And then here it is going on my back beam. Different yet again.

Although I haven’t had as much time as I’d like – or that you’d think I’d have since I’m not going anywhere – to weave, the loom is threaded and I’ve woven about 25″. I’m weaving about 4 yards of fabric to be cut and sewn into an interesting vest. There’s also enough length for a shawl.

All yarn, both warp and weft, is 10/2 cotton. Since I’m planning to cut and sew with this, I wanted to do a simple weave structure. This is just an 8-shaft straight twill. Here’s a closeup so you can see how much the structure shows up in a relatively ‘busy’ color section and a relatively calm color section. (The color is much more accurate in the picture of the whole warp.)

My external commitments (yes, they’re all virtual, but have taken many hours of my time in the past few days) should be ending in the next 36-48 hours, so I’m hoping for more time at the loom. But you know, (wo)man plans and god laughs. So time will tell.

Meantime, stay home, stay creative, stay well, and WASH THOSE HANDS!