Weekly Wrap-Up

It is another beautiful day in the neighborhood. Set up the soap booth at the local farmers' market today and was astounded by the wind. It was really quite impressive. Picked up a little swiss chard for dinner tonight... the ones in my garden are really not growing fast enough.

Knitting progress is still slim. Washcloths are due soon and I had fewer than I thought, so there has been a lot of work on those. The lace stole is still in limbo and there is no lace mojo on the horizon. Even my socks have been stalled since I switched knitting bags. Fortunately it is too warm now for socks and I have plenty in the sock drawer already in case we have an early spring blizzard. I did stop by Knit N Stitch for an quick visit this afternoon and was reminded how much I love yarn and the people who work with it. We even got to burn someone’s yarn! The burn test is one way to determine the fiber of a yarn – wool turns to ash, acrylic melts, et cetera.

Saturday is the GLASG meeting so I will be there with fiber, a smile and some soap. It is always nice to visit with spinners, and I anticipate I can get a lot of progress made on the box of brown Romney roving. It seems that the more I spin, the less the level of wool in the box goes down! The black Romney fleece is nearly all scoured and dried now, so I can work on that soon. It will be fun to break out the drum carder! I think after that I will be ready for some white or anything with color. The theme of the meeting is trying out different kinds of wheels and spindles, so I will pack a couple interesting ones and maybe one will find a new home.

Denise and I started the weaving class in Covina this week. The facility is amazing – they have been in that room since the ‘70s and that class has been running since ’37. They must have 50 floor looms and a couple dozen table looms, plus a dyeing room, a small spinning area, a triangle loom and bunches and bunches of free / donation yarn for projects. I don't know what I was expecting, but that was not it. The folks are all very nice and it turns out most of us recognize each other from various fiber events - sometimes it is good to be known as "the soap lady"!

I am planning on learning the doublewide – doubleweave technique, where one weaves a cloth that you can unfold it when it comes off the loom and is twice as wide as it seemed. Double weave can also be used to make cloth that is a tube, has pockets, has a front and a back that are entirely different or to make two pieces of cloth at the same time (one sits above the other). It is all very clever.

I am also fascinated by the idea of woven lace (huck, atwater-bronson, etc) and might make some curtains later in the semester. I have to get Martha’s blanket done at some point in my life. She would prefer if it were soon! I am still such a new weaver that I am not sure what all the weaving ‘options’ are. So many things in our environment are made from woven fabric but how often do we stop and evaluate them? Do I want to make curtains? Rugs? Upholstery fabric? Towels? Yardage for clothing? That is why I want to be in a class – not just for instruction and guidance but also for inspiration and variation.

I brought the guinea pig to gardening day at Martha's this week and he was well admired. They commented how well the red pig looked in the green grass against the purple flowers; maybe we should make a calendar!