The current warp is coming down to the end so I’ve been thinking more seriously about the next warp. I know which yarns I want to use, but I still need to cobble together a draft. It must be flexible because my first priority is to use up the linen yarn in the photo, but once that is gone, the rest of the warp will be woven with dyed 2/16 cotton. The warp will be natural 2/16 cotton.
Now, this particular tube of yarn has been kicking around for good long while. It was tucked away, away from the rest of the ‘herd’ so it didn’t get used up when I thought I was seeing the last of it. But it’s a really nice yarn, and rather than give it away, it is going to be used to make some (more!) tea towels.
Yesterday I started winding bobbins for the next warp because the linen needs to steep in the humidor for a while in order to help it become more co-operative. But the tube has been kicked around (and around and around) and the stiff somewhat slippery yarn was not particularly ‘stable’ enough to stand it on end and wind off of it.
But I have a ‘fix’ for that, for both tubes and cones. Some people call them cone ‘bras’ but I don’t like that term much.
The green ‘netting’ at the bottom of the tube is part of a shower scrubby. I bought a bunch on sale so that I could use them for this purpose. At the time I was beaming 100 yard long warps off of (upright) mill cones and some of the yarn was very slippery and had the tendency to succumb to gravity and sluff off the cone. The netting is very flexible and easily accommodated every size of cone (or tube) and made life so much easier. When I stopped production weaving, I kept the scrubbies, just in case. And here we are.
The tube will get unstable as the yarn is taken off the tube, so it is ‘stuck’ onto a large ‘peg’ to hold it upright.
It took about 30 seconds to grab a length of the netting out of the bag where it is stored, cut a length off and slip it onto the base of the tube. Once it was on the peg, I was able to wind a bunch of bobbins in very little time and the bobbins are now in the humidor. They will stay there until I finally finish the current warp, take a couple of ‘light duty’ days, a seminar presentation day, and in between get the web pulled off the loom and the old warp stripped away.
I’m hoping to get the warp planned on one of my ‘light duty’ days and be ready to go when my body is feeling able to tackle the job of dressing the loom.
Tomorrow I get Covid and flu shots, Thursday I have massage and next week I have physio. So three ‘light duty’ days coming up. It may take a little while before I get the loom up and running again.
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