Happy Birthday Dad!!!

Tour de Fleece, 2018

Today is my father's birthday.  His favorite dessert was lemon merengue pie... Sadly won't have any of that today but it's nice to think of him!

My Tour de Fleece ended with just over 700yd spun and plied, and one big bobbin of wool/silk singles that I haven't done anything with yet...  It's about a pound spun. 

I brought that inkle band with me to the music festival for others to weave on, and as expected, it looks like many hands were on it. It was a great experience to learn to thread the inkle loom and I think I'll weave something else in the near future! The band will go into the Cords To Be Useful On the Loom pile.

Boundweave sampler!

I also took a class from Lou Grantham at SF Fiber in Boundweave. OMG I learned so much from her about warping and weaving, and came away with a tiny sampler; a rug will go faster, as I would be following a pattern, instead of experimenting.  I'll post some of the tricks I learned from Lou as I use them.

In fact, I used her fast reed sleying method today on a rep rug; I slew 720 ends in about 2 hours, holding groups of four in my left hand and pulling them through with the hook in my right. If you tension them in the left hand between the forefinger and thumb, you can use the forefinger to pull over the next thread (or group of threads) and do it without looking at both sides of the reed. This is awesome.  The lease sticks arrived the Monday after the festival; I took my time threading the loom, and now am in the middle of tieing on; will post a photo when the weaving starts.

This mosaic will be a table top next to the BBQ
when it's done.

I started working on the mosaic! First I applied little tiles to the edges of the piece, which was a good thing, since the adhesive started flaking and doing weird shit... Not sure what to do, other than throw it away and get fresh stuff.   So I peeled off all the little tiles and filed the edges of the board flat again. Then I started cutting tile for the top. I'm a little further than this, and having fun!

And my knitting no longer hates me.  I'm still working on the Pebble Beach shawl, and am just past the point with the evil deceptive knitting pattern that was super easy yet I had to keep pulling it out. The next pattern feels more straightforward.