Category: skeins
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Everything Old
is new again… Some of you may know that I began this textile journey by spinning and dyeing. Then I got sucked into the warped side and simply didn’t have the time or energy to spin and set that aside. Except a few years ago, spinning wheels kept showing up in my life. Unfortunately they…
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It’s All Relative
I’m so used to beaming ‘long’ warps (10+ yards) that these relatively short warps (5.6 meters) seem to zip onto the beam in no time at all. Since I’ve worked a lot with variegated yarns I decided to submit an article to Handwoven about how I use them. The challenge, of course, is that they…
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Unwinding
This is a squirrel cage swift. I find that it works much better than the more common umbrella swifts that are available. The skein behaves better in this orientation, so even when I’m using an umbrella swift, I will mount it with the axle horizontal rather than vertical as seen in every ad for them…
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Dye Day
20 skeins of Bamboo Rain and 40 fifty gram skeins of 2/20 silk I bought this drying rack a couple of weeks ago, knowing I needed to do a lot of dyeing. Having gotten fed up with the two dinky racks I had and which were falling apart, it seemed time to buy something else.…
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Equipment Failure
I admit it – I expect my equipment to perform under what some would label ‘adverse conditions’. So it was with the warping valet at the AVL last night. Now the bar mounted in the ceiling was not originally intended to support a lot of weight. It was originally intended to get repair ends up…
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Queen of Procrastination
Apologies again if this photo isn’t in focus. While I’m doing well with other tasks, the computer is still a bit of a blur – although it’s getting better. :} So, it’s confession time. I’ve been avoiding the AVL and the two shuttle DPW – and the shuttle boxes that started misbehaving for some unknown…
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Seeing Red – Again
I seem to be having a red-fest. 🙂 In the past week I’ve woven a couple of red shawl warps on the AVL, a red shawl on the Fanny, a red chenille scarf warp today and am just now dressing the Fanny again with a black and red warp. 😉 Red – the colour of…
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Skeins
As part of my preparations for the workshop in Grand Forks, I was coning off some skeins and was reminded that I had planned to discuss working with skeins at some point. Today seemed like a good day. My preferred tool for working with skeins is a squirrel cage swift. Unfortunately they aren’t very common,…