Days 4, 5, 6, and 7

I spent a good chunk of Day Four of the Tour de Fleece spinning a denim coloured superwash merino in preparation for plying into a boucle yarn.

On Day Five I attempted the boucle (on the left in the picture below). Hmm, not really my favourite type of plying, but sure to be fun texture for a weaving some day.

On the right is the remainder of the previous days spinning chain plyed into a 3 ply yarn. Meh. The denim like grey blue colour isn't doing much for me.

Day Six was much more fun. Not that my chosen fibre for spinning was all that nice, it was a very coarse, dirty alpaca. The finished yarn will have to be used for something other than wearables. It is very scratchy, which is unusual for alpaca I think. I've heard that the fibre gets coarser as the animals age.

The fun of that day came in allowing my granddaughters to play at my wheel! My coarse alpaca fibre, plyed with thread, is the two skeins on either end of the next photo. The centre skeins are two the girls did as their very first attempts at plying.

The eight year old's skein is on the centre left. She not only did the hand work to do the plying, she also did her own treadling. She found it difficult to keep the wheel spinning in the correct direction but persevered and was very proud of her little skein.

The six year old sat on my lap and did the hand work for plying her little pink and blue skein while I handled the treadling for her. Both girls also worked hard using my niddy noddy to skein their creations.

I don't normally weight my skeins, but all four of these turned out a little over plyed and needed the blocking.

And today, after a busy day of running about, I spent a relaxing 1/2 hour or more at the wheel with a vibrant pink merino/tencel blend. I love it! After a bit of a pre-draft it spun like a dream.

The Beat Goes On

I think my daughter has inherited my fascination with the fiber arts. She thought she would never knit. But now she does. She thought she would never spin. But now she does that too.

She resisted weaving. As argument she listed all the knitting and spinning she already had on the go and insisted that with a new baby she didn't have time to take up yet another hobby. When we were at Fibrefest a while back I whet her appetite for weaving by suggesting that we "rest our feet" and "kill a little time" by watching a demonstration of the knitter's loom.

Psssh. She was a pushover! After the 30 minute demo I merely had to suggest that the knitter's loom is a lot like my rigid heddle loom and she might want to --- you know, take it for a while and see how she liked weaving. Heh. I believe she whimpered a little, called me a "Beeotch" and said that I was some kind of fibery "pusher" 'er somethin'.

When I heard she was bringing Kaylen over for a visit today I slyly suggested she might want to bring along some of her fingeringweight leftover yarns, the stuff she no longer has a use for. Heh. Next thing she knew we were warping the loom together and she was trying her hand at weaving.



And doing a darn good job too!



I sent her home with the loom and the suggestion that she might want to weave runners for her beautiful new bedroom suite. Betcha we'll be warping up the loom for that project within a couple of weeks. ;-)

Michelle, just give in. Resistance is futile.
Gillian, if you need a weaving companion --- try teaching one.