An unsuccessful weaving experiment

On Monday, I had this great idea for weaving some fabric for a bag using some handspun singles yarn that I had in very nice colors. In fact, I thought it was such a wonderful idea that it would be worthwhile to warp a dummy warp so I could tie on several of these warps in different color combinations. By the way, I never sample but still this was only an 11" wide warp. I used unmercerized 8/2 cotton for the dummy warp and when singles yarn is tied to it, even yarn that has been in balls for over 2 years, it does wild and crazy twisting antics. I didn't see it doing all this around the heddles as I was winding the warp and so was surprised when some of the cotton ends were breaking. What a mess! By late Wednesday, I had a small, odd shaped rectangle of a not very nice fabric to show for 3 days work but at least the mess is done, gone and out of my sight. I will probably see what fulling will do to the fabric when I feel like torturing myself again. But I learned that for my bags, I'm going to stick with inkle woven bands sewn together. That makes the nicest fabric and it makes me happy to look at them, so why try other things when something is already so nice?

The website is coming along VERY nicely and my kids tell me that their goal for its launch is April 1! I was given some assignments of describing the various items and got all that done this week. It's hard for me to write a lot about my work beyond the how-tos so this took me a long time to do.

I've gotten back to spinning. Since we moved here last June, I had done very little spinning and missed it so the last couple of weeks, I carded up some wool and tried to get back into the habit of spinning in the odd moments. The kitchen and living room are open so I have the wheel right in the middle and I can monitor the stove or watch tv while spinning. It is surprising how much I get done in these little snatches of time. I'm working on some fine 2 ply for inkle bags. I can do small amounts of fiber in a wide variety of colors and fibers for these so it is endlessly amusing. Much better than when I used to spin pounds of the same thing at a time.