Progress

It's a month since I made my first post but that's not due to lack of wanting. I won't tell how many interim attempts I've made to post again. So many ideas about what to write. Blogging's a breeze, right? Just type away, throw in some photos, and you're laughing. However, for someone who hasn't had to write much more than half page business letters in a decade or so, writing lengthy concise, coherent posts isn't an easy task. Add to that the infuriating unwillingness of Blogger to play ball with Netscape, which is my preferred browser. Adding text isn't a problem, but when it comes to uploading images, the minute I hit 'Done', Netscape shuts down completely. My html skills are far too rusty to contemplate using that, so IE it is and Mr Gates has another hostage.

Part of the reason for starting my blog was to keep a personal record of my weaving journey, but doing it in chronological order 3 years down the track would be an impossible mission. So, I've decided to just throw things in here as the whim (and memory) takes me.

Since I couldn't bring myself to use my precious handspun for experimentation, my initial weaving efforts were mainly in harsh heavy wool in garish colours, scavenged from the sales table at guild days. As mentioned in my first post, there are very few active weavers in my area, so I was pretty much on my own, except for a large pile of books and lots of bookmarked websites. My primary objective in those days was simply to master basic techniques such as consistent beat, straight selvedges, etc. and there was no particular end purpose to what I wove. The large rectangles were really only fit for burial in the recesses of a cupboard, but before they made it there my colour blind cat decided they were warm and snuggly and to our mutual delight they have become functional items.

For the record, because I feel obliged to maintain the tradition of including the occasional gratuitous pet picture and you will therefore see more of him, said cat's name is Magic. His official name is Black Magic, because (a) he's black, and (b) because I got him from a cat shelter the day New Zealand won the Americas Cup in 1995 in a boat with the same name. He isn't particularly interested in raw fleece, but he goes nuts over freshly washed, so in keeping with tradition, the obligatory pet picture:

I have 4 sheep - Petal, Clint, Sooty and HiHo (he's silver!) - which are shorn twice a year. Their breed is indeterminate (some Romney and Perendale in there somewhere, two pale grey, one chocolate brown and one white), but because they're still young and very healthy their fleece is wonderful quality. Photos of them will no doubt provide relief from the cat photos as my blog progresses.

So every 6 months I acquire another 4 fleeces, each of which weighs about 3 kilos once skirted. I sell or give away a couple, and keep some for myself. As I don't have the time or stamina to wash and card 3 kilos of raw fleece myself I send them away to be done professionally. However, I can't wait to see what each will be like, so wash a small amount by hand and spin it up. I'm not sure who gets more excited about this - myself or the cat. The cloud in the above photo is some first shear lambswool which I'd handwashed and laid out to dry in neat rows of staples. Several minutes of apparently exhausting padding and drooling later it was rearranged into bed shape.

I'm feeling a bit less frustrated by the mechanics of getting this blog to air, and while the formatting still needs a bit of tweaking (the font keeps going feral on me), I'm going to post it and gather my thoughts as to what to post about next; but before I go I should add some weaving content.

Once I got past the heavy, clunky absolute beginner stuff I dived pretty much headlong into fine wool (110/2), weaving a few mainly twill scarves which turned out well enough for other fibre people to buy them. Colour me gobsmacked. I guess we're always our own worst critic, but once I got over the 'shucks, why would you want to buy that, with it's missed/extra picks and a couple of dings in the selvedge?' I realised I'd found my fibre niche and was encouraged to travel further. And so came my shibori phase.

I read a review of Catherine Ellis' Woven Shibori, bought the book and away I went. This is the front and reverse of a 16/2 cotton scarf; tabby background, reversing point twill pattern (the black polyester threads which are later removed).

The end result, and a close up.

If you're into weaving and dyeing, haven't yet tried shibori, and aren't afraid of random or unexpected results, I heartily recommend it. It's F-U-N - and we're all entitled to plenty of that.