Marching along

I’ve been busy this month, but it’s been a month of organizing, and thinking about administrative type things. I’m designing a new business card, trying to set up an Etsy store which is taking more time and brain power than I expected, and doing a bit of weaving.

I wove this shawl…twice! I found the draft in an old handwoven magazine ( May/ June 2014 designed by Luhring, Brent& Belson) and pretty much replicated it…which I often do, and then I go on to riff one on my own. Which is what I’m weaving now…a variation based loosely on that draft. My daughter suggested I weave something the color of Sea glass. And I have a bunch of linen in my stash…so here is my warp..

Three different linens…two are 2/20 linen sett at 24 ends per inch, and one light blue 2/10 linen sett at 12 ends per inch. My striping is changed also, as is the ratio of twill to lace. When I was putting the ends thru the reed I realized it was a bit too wide, so at the last minute I decided to remove about an inch and a half of threads and just let them hang..

I’m trying to use more of my stash this year so I looked thru my collection of 2/20 silk and needed some more colors. Luckily I had a cone of white silk so I dyed three hanks ( 800 yards, 400 yards, and 350 yards). And I like how they came out..alpine blue, Sapphire blue and a medium plum. You don’t want my directions for dyeing yarn because it’s very organic in technique. I use acid dyes from Dharma and my big electric turkey roaster. I started out with alpine blue in the kettle…dyed the largest hank, which used up a lot of the dye in the water, but there was still some left…then I added Sapphire blue dye and dyed the next largest hank, then when that was cooked, I added to the bath water some plum dye to do the last hank. So technically the plum has a bit of alpine blue in it, and sapphire blue in it but I have no idea how much. I’m usually pretty happy with how my colors turn out, I just can’t replicate them.