productive weekend

I got some plying done. Almost all the superwash merino is plied! Woo Hoo.. just a tiny bit left to go. I was a bit distracted by the loom, so it is waiting. The plied wool looks awesome though. It was fun to spin but by the end I was getting a bit of angst about the next project. 225 grams of wool is enough for knitting socks or something, but not enough to weave with. Of course, I may be running out of fibre anyway, at least enough for large projects - and in amounts worth dyeing with. Not quite panic time yet though..

On Sunday, I got started on warping the loom. The thread is 2/10 cotton - about 4000-4200 yards /lb. I'm going for a twill, so using a sett of 30. The width of the project requires 555 threads, plus a few extra are needed to make the pattern repeat complete. I figured it would take me several days to wind off the warp. Although it is only 5 yards long, it is still a huge number of threads.
Well, I got on a roll. The cone fit perfectly on my Lazy Kate. The winding on went perfectly. I was able to put up 100 threads at a time - I could have done more but figured 100 was a good length of time for phone and tea/bathroom breaks. I got the whole warp wound off and the reed threaded. Threading the reed went quickly. I had forgotten to load my mp3 player with Sine Mitchel podcast on weaving which, if I'd remembered, would have been a good thing to listen to while threading. Not bad for only a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon and evening.

Now that I have my pattern and all the math done to figure out how many heddles per shaft, I can get them threaded and I'll be good to go. That however, will take much longer. Still, I rather like dressing the loom so all is good. It is all playing with fibre.. mmmmm