Handwoven Shawl Day 10

Well, I finished my Handwoven Somemore Australian Bond Shawl today. I washed it and hung it outside to dry. I think I made it a little too long and probably could have made it a little wider. Oh well, I didn't really have a pattern to go by, other then the pattern that I wove into the shawl.

I wove on this shawl today for 3 hours and 18 minutes before I finished weaving and started taking it off the loom. Whenever, I weave another shawl, I will know how wide to make it and how long too. I still have some yarn left over from the 5th skein. I need to rewind that yarn and then figure out, just how much yarn I did use in this shawl. I will have to post that tomorrow though when I will take another picture of the shawl. The different shades of the fleece really give this shawl a nice shadow pattern IMO.

Handwoven Shawl Day 8

Yeah, I fixed loose weft thread, and got busy weaving and playing catch up. I wove for 3 hours and 16 minutes today and I'm now half way through skein #4.

The shawl is really moving along quite well and my front roller has quite bit of the shawl wrapped around it.
The remaining warp that is still on the back beam is slowly being moved off the roller as I weave. I don't know yet if I'll have to wind up yet another skein for this shawl. I do have the skein for it if needed, I just haven't figured out the yardage and grams yet.

Handwoven Shawl Day 6

Yes, I know its Sunday and I really shouldn't be weaving today, but I just had to come upstairs do a little weaving. I started out winding up skein #4 into a center pull ball and then weaving with the remaining yarn from skein #3. Once I had skein #3 all used up, I began winding yarn onto my shuttle from skein #4 and started weaving again. All in all I spent 1 hour 16 minutes weaving today.

Handwoven Shawl Day 5

It was another hot one today and I had all the windows open in my spinning/weaving room and my ceiling fan going as well. That helped to keep me cool during the 2 hours and 3 minutes, I spent weaving on my shawl today and even then I didn't quite finish using up skein #3. You can see in the picture I still have a little bit on my shuttle. I have skein #4 laying out to be wound into a skein tomorrow. I have the treadle pattern pretty much memorized now, but still forget sometimes as to which row I just finished. So I have the treadle pattern written down on a piece of paper and taped to my loom. I always try to end the treadle pattern at the end of a pattern repeat. This helps so that when I come back to my weaving after taking a break or the next day, I know where to start weaving.

First Bobbin filled

Yesterday I was really close to filling up my first bobbin, but had to stop and wait until more

wool was dry. This morning I took the wool, I had washed yesterday and carded it up into a batt that weighted 1 5/8 oz. Wednesday's batt was 3/4 oz and yesterday's batt weighted 1 3/8 oz. So the total oz I've washed and carded since Wednesday totals 2 3/4 oz so far.

Before I started spinning though on Wednesday I weight my first bobbin when it was empty and it weighted 2 oz. Today after I finished filling up the first bobbin I weighted it again just to see how much it weighted when full and it weighted 4 5/8 oz. So if I deduct 2 oz from this for the empty bobbin I have 2 5/8 oz spun up of singles.

I still had more wool to spin up, after I finished filling up the first bobbin, so I put on another empty bobbin and started spinning again. When I finally finished spinning all the wool I carded this morning I had filled my second bobbin about 1/2 of the way full.

I washed some more wool this afternoon, so tomorrow I'll be carding and spinning again. I might even finish filling up the second bobbin tomorrow and start plying my yarn.

This morning I brought out Somemore' bag of fleece and washed up 18 locks of fleece. They are now in the drying stage. Then I took the 16 locks that I washed yesterday and wanted to see what they weighted before carding. They weighted 5/8 ounces before carding, but after I carded all 16 locks, the batt weighted 3/4 ounces.

This is what the locks looked like after I carded them into a batt. Then I just couldn't resist sitting at my spinning wheel and spinning up this batt.

This is what the first batt looks like all spun up. You can see just how thin my yarn was spun, by looking at the penny.

New wool and sock yarn coming

Saturday August 15th I was looking on the internet for some more wool (like I seriously need more wool), to spin up into yarn. I found 1 lb of White Falkland wool and 1 lb of English Garden Merino. So I ordered that and it should be arriving soon. Now I just need to finish spinning up my Majestic Sky Merino.

Tuesday August 18th (after spending some time at Starbucks with the Yuma Yarnies (knitting group), I came home and ordered 1 skein of Black Lang Jawoll Cotton 04 Yarn (to knit up the matching sock for my brother, as one of the skeins I bought didn't match), 2 skeins of Alchemy Juniper Champagne, and 2 skeins of Lang Jawoll Solid 43. This yarn is for the SKA Sockdown in September. I'm hoping to knit up 2 pairs of new socks.

I'm looking forward to this wool and sock yarn to arrive. Then when its time to spin up the wool I'll have more then enough to spin up. I'll also have more sock yarn ready to be knit into socks come September. Can't Wait!!!!

Ginny