The week flew by...

It has been another busy few days. I did a program on Angl0-Scandinavian textiles at the Cambridge Weaver's and Spinner's Guild. They are a warm and friendly group of people who made me feel very welcome. They meet at a wonderful historical site, Westfield Heritage Village.

The garden is nearly planted. The blast of super warm weather the past few days has slowed things down a bit. The woad beds, 2 of them this year, are planted. The leeks on the other hand still need to be transplanted and I can't plant the beans until the wood edging gets put in the last 2 raised beds. That is a pie/work issue though, since my digger works for pie and I've slacked off on the pie making. Seems I'm the only one in the family that thinks you can actually have too much pie.

Yesterday hubby finished making a new tablet weaving loom for me. It's very pretty and made of Ash, so it's strong but light enough for me to move around without any problem. It just pegs and slots together, so it comes apart for transportation. The original is about 2 metres long. This one is a tad shorter than that for practical reasons, meaning my weaving areas at home won't accommodate a 2 metre long loom!

Now to make some proper weaving cards. I was offered the loan of some rawhide ones, but I'm hesitating on that. My dog is very fond of rawhide. Most of the time he is a perfect angel and doesn't get into things he shouldn't, but once in a while.... well, he got on the counter and ate 1/2 my son's birthday cake yesterday. At least it was before it was iced so I had time to make another. So should he get it in his mind to eat the rawhide tablets, I'd rather they were my own and not borrowed ones!

I've got a ton of seam finishing to do - a new linen gown in an amazing shade of green which is exactly the colour I got from weld with iron, a new linen cap and wimple. The cap and wimple will be dyed later this month when we do some linen dyeing experiments at Earendel Farm.

I've spun up some blue rovings left from last fall's indigotin dyeing frenzy. I tried to make this fat and spun woolen as opposed to worsted as I've been doing by default. I got the woolen part, but the fat - not so much. This skein is one bobbin and measured 339 yards when plied! It's soft and yummy though, so I'm not complaining.

I'm spinning up the madder extract dyed wool. I'm combing it so I can spin a very fine, worsted yarn. It's very pretty, albeit still quite red. Yesterday I went outside with my combs to do some wool prep. Unfortunately the wind picked up and several little balls of combed rovings got caught in a breeze and have disappeared. Some squirrel is going to have a lovely lining for his or her nest!