Weaving odds & ends

I won’t say that I’m catching up with my things-to-weave list, but I’m plugging away at it. I have sold about half of the baby blankets on the PURPLE warp.

but have enough left to put some on the website and maybe resurrect my etsy listings too. I have a new baby blanket warp on the loom ready to thread. Not everyone wants a purple blanket for a baby gift and that’s all I have right now!

Here’s a full-size blanket that I finally finished for a customer using her yarn.

This is a blanket for another customer who sent me her Jacob wool.

And here’s a funky bag. I’m experimenting with felting up some odds and ends of wool fabric to create bags. I think they’ll get better as I perfect it.

I have taught a couple of weaving classes in the last few weeks as well. Here are the participants and their scarves:

It’s sure nice now that I have room in my shop to have 5 people weaving at once!

Finally weaving

I have started to work on the projects that are backed up from BBA (before broken arm). This is a Jacob wool blanket for a local Jacob breeder. The wool was spun at Yolo Wool Mill. It’s very open right now at 4 epi but I have notes from the last blanket I did using this yarn  and the blanket came out great. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. But now I’ll have to wait a week (at least). I’m leaving in the morning for Michigan and Vermont! I’ll take photos!

Handspun & handwoven Christmas present

I flew to Texas Christmas night to see my daughter, Katie. I spent the previous 2 days working on her Christmas present, after finally finishing all the weaving orders that I needed to get out before Christmas. Katie used to join our spinning nights and was a participant in Sheep-to-Shawl competitions. This is back  when she was in junior high and she’s a junior in college now. When she cleaned out her closet the last time she was home Katie gave me a box of her handspun yarn that she was never going to use. This included singles, 2-ply, slubby “beginner” yarn, thin yarn, thick yarn, and everything from Angora bunny to Navajo churro, all in a variety of colors.  I decided to weave her a blanket using her yarn. I wish I had a good photo of the pile of yarn before I started. I used about 20 different yarns, winding them in random order.

Randomly threaded warp using Katie's handspun yarn.

I wove the blanket using one of my mill-spun singles Jacob yarn in a dark gray.

Weaving the blanket

Close-up of finished blanket

Finished blanket

I don’t have a photo of Katie with her blanket. I need to get her to send one. The blanket turned out better than I could have hoped for. It is soft and has a wonderful hand.  This has inspired me to weave more like this!