Artistic Choices

Michael came home on Thursday and I have been getting used to looking after him. We do have carers coming into for the same purpose - I have been surprised by how many of them are interested in looms and weaving!! We have one pair who had a degree in Fine Art and one in Graphic design between them. I find this distressing.  Michael seems to have got a lot stronger over just the last two days. Maybe just happier at home but perhaps the exercise he is getting. He hops into his wheelchair for several hours each day and joins us for meals and well as examining the computers, updating bits of the Linux system and throwing away unwanted emails.

Apart from that I went to the weaving course yesterday (Saturday). It has reached the stage when the beginners have finished their first piece of weaving which was warped up for them and are on to designing their next piece. So lots of colouring squares on gridded paper and calculating lengths and weights. They are all, so far, doing scarves, though they are wildly different, one of subtle coloured silk noil, one of ditto cotton and one spectacular black and red colour and weave stole. The 'improvers' are heads down. Chris Wright has finished the samples for her husband's stole. It will be white goose-eye twill in 30/2 silk with a gold cross at each end. The samples have come out just as she intended and she spent the class winding the warp for the final version. I forgot to take samples of shuttles and my felt tipped pens but we never got round to even stopping for coffee, never mind a chat yesterday.

Dorothy and I are going to dye my Tencel on Monday and I dug out the Tencel I have bought from Just Our Yarns over the last two years.  On the left is the 20/2 yarn I bought. I have 2 skeins of each. The current project involves using the two right hand colours . They will be mostly the lower one ( I will be using all of that colourway) but there will be three one inch stripes of the bright pinks. These are the warp and you can see that the weft is going to be a problem. I need a plain colour which does not detract too much from these wonderful vibrant colours. So I will use a 3 and 1 twill which will make the two sides very different. And Dorothy has some fuschia-pink which we will use  although toned down.

I found the Tencel crate has a lot of lovely yarn in it including these skeins of bamboo and cotton. It has a lovely feel. Why did I buy so little! I don't see that I can use all of them in the same piece of weaving. I must give this some thought.

I have lent my warping wheel to a student and will not get it back for 2 weeks but intend to get on with a number of small jobs. I need to put the buttonholes into my Linton tweed jacket. I need to do some book binding including preparing the contents of a Japanese style book for binding. And a thorough tidy up in the upstairs workshop would be a 'good thing'. But today's job has to be finishing winding the 20/2 Tencel skeins for tomorrow's dyeing.