SpinnySpinny

This morning I just sat down and finished sleying the nasty acrylic warp. It really didn’t take all that long, but I really didn’t want to do it. It’s been a while since I’ve had a weaving project I hated this much before I even get started. I think it will be better with the closer sett and will I end up with some functional fabric. I could just cut it all off and put on those holiday gift dish towels I’ve been meaning to get to but I don’t hate it that much quite yet. This is the hard part, once I get to the point I can actually weave it will go quickly.

It doesn’t help at all that I really don’t know what I want to do with this when I’m done. The entire thing was practice in warping back to front (which I’m not likely to do again unless I have to.) I have this vague idea that it will be a small blanket of some kind but if I’m not wanting to finish warping it I’m surely going to find some reason to put off seaming three panels together to finish a blanket. There are so many other things that sound more interesting, like making the new work clothes I need or washing the dishes. Yes, washing the dishes is more interesting than re-sleying a warp I don’t like. If it’s still ugly when I start weaving, off to the trash can it goes and I’ll start measuring some nice friendly 8/2 cotton.

I’ve been thinking about textiles, how about that? I started to re-sley the acrylic baby yarn on the loom because I wasn’t happy with the fabric I was getting at 12 ends per inch. That’s what I measured from the relaxed yarn, but as weft it insists on packing in way more than I want (like almost twice the number of weft picks as warp ends.) I’m going to change it to 16 and see if I like it any better then. If it’s going to come out like cardboard then at least cardboard in both warp and weft directions is a more useful fabric. It’s annoying to do however, one of those things that makes housework suddenly very interesting.

In the spinning department, I’ve been re-organizing the studio so I can bring the bicycle over finally. Yes, bicycle. A friend has an exercise bike with disembodied Ashford parts bolted to it that she would really, really like gone from her basement. It’s rumored to work, and if I can get it going well enough I’ll use it. Finally I could combine fiber and exercise at the same time. (A Woolee Winder is going to be high on the list for next equipment purchase. Spin for hours, never having to stop to change hooks!)

Note: I’ll be doing an OS upgrade and some filesystem housekeeping for the webserver soon, so you may find the site off-line for a few hours sometime in the next week or so.

Back online, on a new server. New operating system even, as the most reasonably available machine was an old PowerMac G4. There is still some tweaking to do (SpinnySpinny is the only site up at the moment) but things are moving along.

In case some people need reminding, let me help: Do your backups, kids. They’re good for you.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled textile content.

Well, wasn’t that exciting.

After a successful server move this weekend, one of the drives failed. And so did the spare. So now we are running off the system disk, which was already nearly full. SpinnySpinny is back up, but tomorrow it looks like I’m going to Fry’s. Expect some downtime while we get the replacement up and running.

I’ve been busy sewing this week. I feel like I shouldn’t unduly bother you with such things, this being a blog about making textiles. But that’s what has been going on, and it was sorely needed. I have four new pairs of pants, two dresses and a funny jacket from weird shiny fabric somebody dumped on me several years ago. Plus you can no longer see straight down the hallway and into the kitchen now that there is a proper curtain for the front door window. I’ve also hidden piles of random junk behind curtains for the built-in cabinet in the studio, made of batik fabric a friend gave me.