Pips’ Left Paw

Many seasons of The Great British Sewing Bee are now streaming on the Roku Channel. My partner introduced me to the show many years ago, and it's very cozy and nice. So much skill and creativity from the contestants.

They’d stop yelling after the first few washes of the store-bought. (Though towels haven’t gone so steeply downhill as clothes omg)

I’d love another non-car non-hilly way to get downtown from St Johns (and/or Swan Island).

Then go for the Cheeto gambit: chopsticks. You can have it all!

Blackberry is notoriously fugitive as a dye. Go nuts.

That is a really lovely shape. Have you made it before? Does it pour nicely?

Four orange pirns resting on the web of a weaving-in-progress. The loom structure is not visible. The web has four stripes of weft colors each about two inches long. The stripes are dark blue, bright blue, yellowy-green, and a green so pale it is almost white. The pirns (an end-delivery counterpart of a bobbin) are each wound with very small amounts of thread. One has 40/2 unbleached linen, and the others have different shades of 20/2 blue mercerized cottons.

Auditioning wefts on the table loom. Warp is two tones of green 10/2 mercerized cotton.

#weaving #handweaving

Maybe post some photos? You might get some helpful ideas and rule out some other things?

The color is so -alive- in these skeins. Well done!

Back in the stage 13, a full cop removed from the small wooden spindle and resting beside it as a center-pull ball. The spindle has maybe a dozen wraps of very fine wine-colored silk thread on it - just enough to define the wrapping pattern. A small bag with the multicolored silk braids rests in the background.

First time I thought about stopping today. The cop is magenta with faint shading towards purple on the outer wrapping layers. The spindle rests on a medium-blue pants leg with a bright green camping chair in the background giving very strobn color contrast.

Second attempt to stop. The spindle rests on a gray side table. The cop is significantly bigger with a several-millimeter wide swath of lilac/purple wrapping on the outside layers.

Third attempt to quit for the day. The spindle sits on the same gray table. The cop has an even wider purple band on the first layer of the cop and a second layer has been started. The braid and the little wrist-distaff cloth bag are in the shade in the foreground.

This spindle has been idle since Stage 13 but I’ve taken it out now for the final, 21st stage of #TourdeFleece. I’ve tried to put it back down three times this afternoon … my library book has been neglected long enough.

#handspinning

A close view of black and gray double coated wool yarn forming at the orifice of a spinning wheel.

Found another four ounces of that Navajo Churro, so tackling that for Stage 20 of #TourdeFleece. It’s good we’re nearing the end of the TdF as I am getting itchy to put down the #handspinning and branch back out to #weaving and #handmadebooks and #greenwoodworking.

Long draw is the same as with wool but it is definitely an adjustment to be on the floor stabilizing the charkha with a foot or leg.

A book charkha spinning wheel from India. The “book” opens to have a large hand-cranked wheel that accelerates a smaller drive wheel that turns a metal wire spindle. Cotton yarn, not very evenly spun, is being wound on to the spindle. Another full spindle is stored inside the charkha box. It is very hard to take a picture of this process without it featuring mostly the foot that holds the box onto the ground to keep it from moving around.

Something different for stage 19 of #TourdeFleece: the Vegetable Lamb, aka cotton. On a book charkha. #handspinning

A cross-arm spindle with a blue-green cop of yarn and about a foot long strip of combed top.

Stage 18 of #TourdeFleece featured some during-the-workday #handspinning on yet another wooden cross-arm spindle from the spindle-flock. A bit of miscellaneous merino.

In the foreground, a walnut wood Woolee Windee flyer and a bobbin about two-thirds full of fine yarn. The outer layer of yarn is black but there are some under layers of teal and russet peeking through. In the background, a tabby cat with white paws is asleep on a footstool. Her white chin is aimed up at the ceiling but the back half of her body is curled up

#TourdeFleece stage 17 and both the BFL braid and the feline supervisor are both completely finished. #handspinning

Dooooo iiiitttttttt.

An orange handwoven lap towel in the foreground ahead of a Lendrum upright spinning wheel. On top of the towel rests a small amount of combed wool top - a coil of about 6 loops (about the size to wrap around a hand, not coincidentally) in black, teal, chestnut, and a mossy green.

Stage 16 of #TourdeFleece: one Midsomar Murders episode spent at the wheel and this is all that is left of the (first) BFL moody braid. #handspinning

What.
The.
Fuck.
Josh.

A Lendrum spinning wheel with a woolee winder flyer and a bobbin of fine yarn. The visible layer of yarn is a dark mossy green. The left hand of a white person (me!) is holding the yarn under tension. The fineness of the yarn is visible as it contrasts with the blond wood of the spinning wheel’s treadles.

#TourdeFleece stage 15 continuing the moody BFL.

#handspinning

A zoomed in view of a bobbin and flyer. The yarn is fine and smooth, with dark cool jewel tones - black, dark teal, deep mossy green.

Stage 14 of #TourdeFleece: taking a break from natural colored wools for weaving for a frivolous luscious moody braid of BFL. #handspinning

A Dreaming Robots electric cone winder on a wooden board. The machine is operating, winding white wool onto a black plastic cone.

Winding off all that Targhee singles yarn. I love the Dreaming Robots cone winder so much.

#TourdeFleece #handspinning

The texture in the colored-cotton sections is really appealing.

A cross-arm spindle on a wooden floor. Near it, a multicolored braid of silk fiber in a tiny cloth bag, and a bottom view of the cop that was just removed from the spindle (by taking the spindle apart)

Stage 13: took a silk cop off this spindle and started a new one.

#TourdeFleece #handspinning

Finished off the last of the white Targhee #handspinning and took some twist out of one bobbin of the Navajo Churro singles and earlier some drop-spindling near my keyboard for this stage 12 of #TourdeFleece but I didn’t take pictures of any of it. Alas! Kept the streak alive, tho.

A close view of the mother-of-all and flyer on a Lendrum upright spinning wheel. The front maiden (the upright in the foreground) had been coming loose from the Mother Of All (the horizontal part) and tilting forward. This was mechanically awkward for the rotation of the flyer. Glued, clamped, rested, and all better now.

The wheel is back in action after repair and so #TourdeFleece stage 11 is in progress with more of the undyed Targhee wool.

#handspinning

The lace and your choice of yarn really harmonize. It looks beautiful.

Yeah, separate products but they are all made as a rayon process, none of them are made from the fiber as it is extracted from the plant in traditional bast processes.

The commercial nettle is rayon-from-nettle (as with a whole mess of other spinning fiber marketed as its originating cellulose source like pineapple and rose and …) It is so slippery!

The warp and back beams of a small table loom. A homemade raffle (with nails as dividers) is lashed to the back beam and it is guiding the beaming of a two-toned warp. The warp is dark green and medium green 10/2 cotton. It is under tension and runs through lease sticks with a raddle cross a few inches away from the raddle.

Rest day for #TourDeFleece so I am warping the table loom for some sample #handweaving.