Radio active and all

 The latest in the ongoing saga of my health is summarised by an email from my grandson (father of Libby, my new Great grand daughter). `If there was a good reason to miss a visit - being radioactvve is it!` This is because I spent all yesterday at an Oxford hospital , having a brain scan. After being injected with radioactive stuff. I had to wait 3 hours before the stuff was in the right places for the scan. Nothing like as nasty as an MRI scan. It lasted 45 minutes. So now I am back home and I am going to stay in (it is raining hard) and do some lino cuts. 

But first. I have finished the Echo and Iris course, woven everything off and cleaned up the Schacht. The last bit I wove was a weft of darkblue/grey spacedyed 8/2 tencel. Just to see. Actually I rather like it and if I had tried this at the beginning, I would have done the length of fabric in that. Because I only warped up with a single width of pattern, I wove two lengths with fringes which I am going to sew together to make a runner.

Top Dark blue space dyed weft. Bottom length of fabric.

In tthe meantime, I attended Laura Thomas`s online class for the Complex Weavers. Making mood boards is not my comfort zone but I did it, and did the exercises on colour. Hmph! But, but, I had a great time with yarn wraps. Now the only time I do yarn wraps up to now has been to exstimate the sett, not for colour but I learnt a lot about what works and what does not. Next class is next Saturday. 

And I have finished the calendar artwork and got it to the printer.

And now I am off to work on lino cuts, tidy up the room first and then make a list of jobs to be done.

 

Success!!

I have spent the last week fighting the Schacht about the Echo and Iris course I signed up for. I rechecked the threading and the colour layout, (four colours in succession and repeated ad nauseam) . Still no joy. I wove a single pattern absolute *****. So there I was scratching my head and wondering if I should just abandon the whole project and then I spotted the error!!! My error. I was so taken up with following Daryl Lancaster`s instructions baout front to back warping up that I omitted to put the warp over the back beam. If you think about it, you will see that the tension will go to pot. Well since you can lift the Schacht`s back beam out easily, it was a matter of minutes to correct and get the tension correct. And after that it went very sweetly. My only excuse is that I last set up a warp last November and anyway got confused by this front to back business. One thing I did learn was that that method gives a good warp.

So after al that, I wove four samples, each of one  pattern in four different colours, See the photo below

The weft colours are from top left, clockwise, dark green, dark brown, beige, dark red. I like the dark red best and will leave a length just to show!!

I have spent a lot of time on next year`s calendar. Still more to do and I am not totally convinced by two of the photos. Must get on with though.