8 posts tagged “redleaf”
Setting up the loom to weave this took all day on Saturday. Several hours in the morning for measuring the warp threads, several more hours for threading alternate warp threads through the holes on the heddle at a crafting date with Sadie, B and G in the afternoon, and another hour or so in the evening tying on the warp. It wasn't until Sunday that I finally got to start weaving, and it almost feels like an anticlimax after spending so much time in planning and preparation :-)
The fabric looks puckered because I'm deliberately making each row of weft slightly longer than the width of the warp, so that when it's finished and washed the extra length of the weft will, I hope, even out and partly cover the warp, making weft-dominant fabric.
I am now declaring the spinning for the red leaf wrap to be completed!
That's the red leaf singles for the weft on the left, and the two-ply merino for the warp on the right, finished just now. My next task is warping the loom, so I can take my weaving to a crafting date tomorrow :-)
And I've been making decent progress on the red cardigan too:
Notice that the arm holding the camera is clad in a finished sleeve, the other sleeve reaches the elbow, and the body is considerably longer than in the last photo I posted.
I estimate that it took me about 10 hours to spin the first 100g, so it should be possible to finish up, especially since R is away for part of this week, so I won't have to choose between spinning and hanging out with him!
So now I have a decision, I can get on with spinning the rest of it!
I've spent today spinning and then weaving a sample for the red leaf wrap. This is 12.5dpi, with the warp very fine two-ply burgundy merino worsted, and the weft red leaf woolen singles at about 5m/g. The sample is just long enough to go round my wrist, so that's where I'm wearing it, and very pretty it is too.
Next up, spinning some of the burgundy at about 5m/g woolen to ply with the rest of the red leaf sample yarn and then weave at 7.5dpi with that in both warp and weft.
(Note for non-spinners: worsted-spun yarn is denser, smoother and stronger; woolen-spun yarn is loftier, warmer and softer.)
Since writing the last entry, I have spun this:
That's batch five of the red leaf fibre, and the last one for the time being. I'm now at about 1,000m, so I'm going to stop spinning the red leaf and start spinning some of this:
... I've also spun batches two and three of the red leaf fibre (wildly varying weights because I changed my mind about how fine I wanted it to be after batch one, but never mind), and begun Henry for large-male-friend-R: I've completed the cast on plus two rows! Since each row is approximately five million and six stitches, this is quite a lot of work. I know I've only just started the push-me-pull-you socks, but I thought I could do with a larger-needle project as well, to save my hands. No photos yet, for either the spinning or the knitting (in Henry's case, because all that's visible at the moment is the waste-yarn cast on, which is Lorna's Laces rainbow (my go-to waste yarn for most purposes, since I've got a fair amount of it left hanging around), so a picture wouldn't be very informative anyway).
I've also started spinning the red leaf fibre my parents gave me for my birthday. I took some photos of this a week or so ago, but the colours were off so I'd been holding off posting about it until I'd taken some better photos, which I now have!
