Weekend Wrap Up

New goal for 2015 - every weekend I'm going to post a week's end report from the Wool House.  If I don't post a week's end report...well, I'm just going to.  I have a great work space and I'm always disappointed by how much I don't utilize it.  That's just ridiculous.  

Look for lots of boring pictures of spinning, knitting, weaving, felting, painting...and in turn, there should be all sorts of projects getting finished, felted sheep being made, wool wreaths, some painted floor cloths...  The possibilities are endless...if I just apply myself!

So, to start of this week's report, I actually did some spinning on Roc Day.  This is Hershey's lamb fleece.  Remember when he was still Hershey chocolate brown?  When he slept on my lap so he didn't have to grow up and go be a breeding ram at a big farm without laps to sleep on and lots of cookies?  This is the fleece that sat on my lap :-).

I started spinning to see what the yarn felt like it wanted to be.  The result seemed completely reasonable so I pulled off a bit to make my sample card.  I make a sample card so that I can try to spin a consistent yarn from beginning to end, even if it takes me several weeks to get through that big bag of roving.

Here I have my sample card with a single ply, a double ply and a short sample skein to wash and test knit to make sure I really am happy with the yarn.

All yarn is is fiber with some twist.  Simple as that.  Seriously, it really is that simple at its basic form...but there are books and books of "more to it than that" ;-).  I'm not going to even try to say more.  I think it's neat to see it change from one form to the other, just through my hands and a spinning wheel.

What I can show you is how I use my sample card to try and match my spinning from start to finish. Ideally the yarn I spin each day should match up to the single I have stored on my sample card, from the thickness to the amount of twist per inch.  I lay the freshly spun yarn up next to the original samples.  So far, so good.

I'm also working on a weaving project.  This is a test sample for a scarf from the May/June issue of Handwoven.  It's a 6 harness pattern of "American Snowflakes".  I substituted one of the yarns the pattern called for so here I'm making sure I've got the correct sett for the warp (white - up and down) yarn and that I'm weaving the correct picks per inch (light gray - back and forth) as well.  It's not a very large sample, but that was the extra yarn I had available.  I think it's telling me what I need to know.

The weaving sheep don't fit on the Baby Mac as well as they do on the Big Mac, but they're keeping a good eye on my threading and weaving pattern just the same ;-).

Tilly and Kate came and went throughout the week, depending on the weather.  On warmer days they found lots to keep them busy outside.

On cold days, they stayed inside with me.

The sun came out for about 4 minutes one afternoon.

And I "finished" a hat...that needs its own blog post.  As with most of my projects, "I learned a lot". At least I ended up with a warm hat for these last few days.  I've appreciated that for sure!

So, that's a wrap up from the week.  I'm happy that I have something to report.  Hopefully as the year goes on, I'll have more and more.  If you'd like to join along and report in with a weekly wrap up yourself, please do so!  Just leave a comment below and if you have a blog or website, share that as well and we can all encourage each other :-D.