Two days ago I had a very courteous email from Lillian Whipple who is Moderator of the Complex Weavers Fine Threads Group. She very politely asked when my annual samples would be arriving. The truth is that I have yet to weave them but I have started (see photo above for proof). The samples are going to be from the Fan Reed length. There are 'folds' in some places. When the silk is off the loom, it relaxs and these all disappear. It is very slow weaving and took me 90 minutes to weave one repeat which is about five inches. I need about a yard for samples for the Fine Threads Group so have promised the samples for June 1st which means at least two repeats a day.
Today I spent at Gill Arnold's doing the third day of the Dress Pattern Fitting Course. The result is great! But I still have to transfer the toile to a master block. I have the paper for that and must do it later in the week. However Michael is in Worcester Royal tomorrow for an MRI scan of his whole spine and later in the week we return there to see his consultant and discuss the results from the MRI scan. I don't see a lot of spare time before the weekend.
I dyed the 8/2 Tencel with Procion MX dyes yesterday and have just taken the skeins out of their plastic bags and rinsed them. Well I needed to dye a few yards of linen book binding thread for the latest Coptic book and thought I might as well do the Tencel I want for a Devore project. So I wound three skeins of undyed Tencel 50 gms each and dyed them in four batches. The only green Procion MX I have is Emerald Green which is not what I want. I mixed 5 teaspoonfuls of Emerald Green with one of Rust Brown. The linen has come out bottle green which is fine and the Tencel has come out sage green. Interesting, is it not? It so happens that these colours suit me very well.
An interesting thought occurred to me while dyeing. Handweavers Studio calls the undyed Tencel 'ecru'. To me ecru is pale biege. The dictionary says ecru is unbleached linen or, when applied to other fabrics, the colour of unbleached linen. The point is that the ecru Tencel as supplied is bleached white so ecru is a misnomer.
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