Through The Yarny Curtain

An Inkle Weaving Experiment

One of the FAQs inkle weaving newbies always have is how to figure out how wide their finished band will be. The advice given generally is that it varies from one yarn to another and one weaver to another. You’ve got to keep records to see what works for you.

I recently saw another person ask this question and this time I got inspired. If different weavers used the same yarn and the same draft, much variation would there be between the width of the finished bands? So I designed an experiment to try to figure that out. I’m looking for volunteers to participate!

Project Home Organization, Week 2

Click here to see the first post in this series.

So, I didn’t finish every task on my list, but I made excellent progress! Workspace in the garage was my limiting factor this week. We put the tub in its box in the garage, so until that was installed, we had limited space for working on other projects.

A view of the garage, with all the works in progress. We set up saw horses for the bookshelf in the front. The cardboard under the saw horses is the box from the tub! The main workbench is behind that, with two bookshelves leaning against it waiting their turn for paint. The loom pieces are not visible, but are laid out on that workbench. The small workbench to the right is usually the home of small tools, including a vise and belt sander. We moved those tools to the wire shelves on the left so I could put another bookcase on the small workbench.

This is a test… And a confession

Yesterday, Chris moved all my website database to the new host. I figured I would write a new post to make sure everything is working properly. Good thing I did — turns out my theme broke when we moved to the new host, so I had to install a new one. I have more work to do on visuals — the logo I was using was too big for this theme, so I cropped it. I’d rather make a new logo to fit properly, once I decide if I’m sticking with this new theme.

Behind the Scenes

Those of you who know me, or have read this blog for a while, know that the last few years have been challenging. I have spent much of my time helping other people, friends and family alike, through one crisis after another. In November, one long-expected shoe dropped when my husband was laid off. In January, another long-expected shoe dropped when his mother passed away. At the same time, the other people I’d been helping came through their crises.

This confluence of events meant that for the first time in many years, I have been home regularly. Since returning from my mother-in-law’s funeral, I’ve only traveled once. For the first time in at least 8 years, I have no obligations to anyone who is currently in a crisis situation. This means I can make plans based only on my own schedule, needs, and abilities. It feels strange to me. So much has changed in my life over these years and I’ve felt like I was reacting to rather than shaping our circumstances. I need to relearn how to be proactive about evaluating what I need and want, to make sure I’m saying yes and no to the right things.

Breed Specific Spinning

For several years, I have been accumulating a stash of breed-specific spinning fibers. In looking back at my blog, I believe the first time I mentioned breed-specific spinning was in January 2015. I wanted to do some breed-specific spinning to build my working knowledge of wool. I started spinning to understand yarn. In order to understand spinning, I need to understand fiber.

When I started buying breed-specific fibers, I was buying prepared fibers. However, I realized that some fibers are not available prepared, which led me to purchase multiple raw fleeces and scour them myself, as I’ve written about in January 2018 and February 2018.

While I have continued to accumulate breed-specific fibers, I have not spun them. I have, however, taken several classes at PlyAway and SAFF to help me in this process. This includes classes in long draw, how to process fleece after it is scoured, and one of Beth Smith’s breed study classes.

This year, I’m going to be start spinning some of my breed-specific stash. My friend Stacy will be joining me in this endeavor. We haven’t worked out all the details of this yet, but we will both be blogging about our experiences with the same breed. Sometimes we will be working from the same fleece or sample and sometimes we will be working from what we happen to have in our stashes. If I process the fleece from raw, notes on the processing will be included in the blog post, along with notes on the spinning and finished yarn.

This blog post will serve as an index to all the other posts in this series. I will go back and look through my prior posts to see if any are still relevant and if they are, I will link them here. When we write posts about a new spin that is part of this study, I will also link to it here. I will link back to this post from all the future posts on this topics so you can get back here easily, but you might also want to bookmark this post for your reference if you want to follow along.

The SassyBee Fiber I’m spinning is 100% Polworth, so Polworth may be the first fiber on our docket. Stacy is checking her stash to see if she has any. Since we haven’t worked out parameters, I can’t give you a specific timeline for when we will be publishing our first breed-specific post, but I know it will be this year 🙂 Stay tuned!