Midyear Update

It's been a wild ride these past few months, and I have a lot to share!

I've continued the obsession with all things square. Since January's post, my spouse 3D printed a 4" pin loom for me, and I finished the reclaimed 18" version.

Noro Rikka is the perfect yarn for bias weaving at this density, and I'm thrilled with how it works up. The resulting fabric is going to be a mini throw pillow because, for the record, an 18" loom doesn't really net an 18" pillow cover! (Also the loom is more like 17.5" but who wants to say that all the time?)

 

I had to get a little creative with where to hang the loom so I could stand while working, and it turns out that one of the crossbeams on my Glimakra Standard is just about the right height to hang it.  

In March, we took our annual trip out to Death Valley for some camping and wildflower viewing, and I brought the 4" loom along as a downtime activity. These little squares take about 15 minutes each, so they're not much of a time commitment. 

After the trip, I did some experimenting with the 7" fine sett loom and discovered that it can easily be used for multi-layer weaving by skipping every fourth pin to recreate the gaps in the three-pin setup (like the 4" loom). The sett becomes almost identical to the regular three-pin sett, so this opens up weaving with DK and worsted weight yarns.

I have quite the little collection going.

 [six weeks pass, Tour de Fleece starts, and my therapist asks if I've been writing...😂]

Hello. I cleaned my house to company-ready status last weekend, and now I magically have a brain to write with again. Weird.

Instead of putting the two Noro Rikka panels together and making one pillow without a mate, I dug up some deeply stashed Donegal Yarns Aran Tweed to make solid back panels for two matching pillows. Weaving on this big square is such a meditative practice. If you're at all handy, I highly recommend scrapping a stretched canvas frame and making one of these.

Otherwise, I've been spinning since before the beginning of July. Finishing spins, starting new ones, cooing over quite possibly the softest, squishiest yarn I've ever spun. I think I'll do a roundup post of recent spins after the month is over.

Also in early July, I turned 35. I keep saying that this is my one-third-life crisis year because I bought a little old pickup truck and ordered a brand new spinning wheel for the first time since I started wheel spinning in 2016 on my Woolmakers Bliss, which is now on its second life in Canada, in case you didn't know. 

 

Unless the world implodes or explodes, next month I'll be receiving an Ashford Elizabeth 30. She's a big, beautiful lady, and I am quite excited. They've already sent me the lazy kate and extra bobbins I ordered, and while the bobbins are sitting cold and lonely in their shipping box, I've already put the lazy kate to good use with my vintage Ashford Traditional.

 

Spinning so much lately really has me daydreaming about handspun knitting again, which had really taken a back burner to weaving for a while! Now, I have a couple of small weaving projects in the planning stages, and I'm thinking about what to do with this lovely skein and its deep, dark, in-progress mate that you will just have to wait to see. 

 

I want to talk to y'all once every couple of weeks, okay? It's good to be here, and it's good to have an uncluttered mind, so I'd like to keep it that way. 

 

Drop me a line here in the comments or on Tumblr if you're interested in boosting the activity in my Discord server, because I'm real bad at it! I've largely shunned the other social media options, and I don't care because I don't want your money unless I write a book someday or you need editorial assistance with your book. I should probably make an email account for that, shouldn't I?

 

See you in two weeks, pals!