Fibery Things

I finished knitting the Lotus Blossom shawl last night. This is my second shawl using this pattern. It won't be the last. :-) It is now blocking on my quilt. The thing I like about doing this is that the quilt serves as a grid so I can easily see that the midline is slightly off. . . better go adjust that. Plus, it looks pretty. (Yes, I made the quilt, a few years ago when colorwash became very popular.) Anyway, this process makes me acutely grateful that the kitties don't have opposable thumbs. If they did, there would be no stopping them from wreaking havoc with this (or any other) project. As it is, they hop up to make slight adjustments wherever they see fit.


On the weaving front, I am ready to move on to another project, an independent one this time. It'll be M's & O's this time, and I just wound warp for a narrow sample. Couldn't decide on color choices, so thought I'd do two pattern repeats using different colors next to each other & see which I like better. Or maybe both together. Can't tell yet. Anyway, here is the warp wound on the warping board. (This is just a sample & will be about 5" wide.)




The other weaving project which is in progress is a multi-yarn warp which I had hoped would be a ruana. I started this project on a rigid heddle loom. Big mistake. The various yarns I used (some commercial, some hand-dyed, some hand-spun with sheep wool, mohair, & dog) all had varying amounts of stretch in them. This made getting a clean shed (space between the alternating yarns, where the shuttle goes through with the weft) impossible. I decided the best option would be to put it on my Baby Wolf. The countermarche already had a project on it. The first time I wound the warp onto the Wolf, the kids helped. We didn't get an even tension & still had a mess. So a couple of nights ago, Doug & I sorted it out, ran the warp through a raddle & through lease sticks which we left in place, & wound on again. I don't know how much of the warp I lost along the way, but I'll see if there's still enough for the ruana I was hoping for. Wish me luck!