Tour de Fleece, day 9... etc...

In the spinning department today was exclusively spindled. But the wheel did come into play to ply. I finished spinning the batt of pretty purples of unknown content. It was a gift... Thank you very much Seaport Yarns. Tour de Fleece is intended to challenge us and this batt was at times challenging. As I mentioned before, the fibers had to be cajoled: stretched into roving that could be spun. And it was worth it: never a dull moment and the results are most pleasing:

The coin is a nickel. This 2 ply would knit up or weave quite well. I'm thinking of a cowl. Something that doesn't require a lot of yardage as this is a one-of-a-kind-don't-know-where-I'd-get-more-batts-like-this yarn!!

The 'hand' of this yarn is an exquisite marriage of wooliness and softness, if you can imagine such a thing. It has that deeply satisfying sense of woolen without being at all 'scratchy'--not that I mind scratchy: I love wool.

In the etc. department, I sleyed (the term for threading yarns through the loom's reed) the reed for my new plaid project this afternoon. This is my first time using a warping board, a process that I enjoyed very much. The porrey-cross is ingenious. It makes me wonder and ponder about it's invention. Who? When? It's certainly a gift, that's certain. Life is full of these little (or not) gifts if we but take time to notice them.

It looks a bit of a mess at the moment, a noodling caboodle of yarn:

"What's that Christmas chimney paper under the loom?", you ask? It is inserted over the woven cloth as it winds onto the cloth beam so that the knots which tied the warp to the beam don't distort the cloth as it is wound on. Another ingenious invention. I'm discovering that weaving is abundant with these simple, but beautiful, gifts.