Nothing on the Loom yet, BUT..........

I've been doing lots of cutting and pasting, and lots of spinning.  This is 198g of superwash merino.    I'm hoping I still have a bunch of the dark purple colour, with which to make stripey Hallowe'en socks.   I didn't get enough of the lime green, which would have been my first choice to go with the dark purple.   Then I'd have to make myself a black skirt, hat and maybe even a cape to go with the socks - just say'in ;)

The larger skein has 278 yards in it.  I didn't do the calculations for the slightly smaller skein for some reason. 

I'd been doing the good photographer thing, and I had a lovely reflective board to minimize the deep shadow when helper kitty Phil decided to help - I snapped the picture just as the board fell.  I decided not to try for another photo as Phil has been entirely too supervisory and unhelpful the last few days.

 This is some superfine hemp.  The sliver has lots of short bits and chaff in it.  Even the longest staples of this fibre are cut into much shorter lengths than I'd expected.   Hemp is a very tall plant.  It towers over tall men.  I'd anticipated that the fibres would be more flax strick like in length, rather than 3 and 4 inches long.   I should have asked questions before I bought 100 g of this stuff.  It looked so pretty on the display rack.  I found that when I put a bit too much twist into it, the thread snaps.   It holds together without a lot of twist though.   This sample still needs to be wet finished, but I need it for a display tomorrow, so that will have to wait.   I'm leaving the house at stupid early, so the samples will get packed tonight as I don't want to forget anything.

Currently on the loom is some lovely, shiny, blue bamboo.   It's just rayon - nothing special or eco wonderful or anything, but it's pretty and a nice interlude from spinning things like the hemp.  This flies off the fingers effortlessly.  It's pretty and once in a while I like to spin something pretty and interesting.  Most of the time, I don't mind natural colours and fibres, but there are always those ooh shiny moments.

I just spent somewhere between 30 and 40 hours making display backdrop boards for a guild outreach display, maybe even more hours than that.  You know, those science fair/4H club displays.   Because this is a non-selling event, I thought that just have a bunch of spinning and weaving on a table wouldn't draw people in.   This will hopefully do the trick.  In my mind, community outreach stuff should teach, explain, demonstrate or do something in addition to showing off what we do.  Our other outreach display stuff is packed away in someone's barn and not really accessible right now.

 I'm still looking for my show table cloth -  I've no idea where it is as those boxes are still not yet unpacked from - eek, I don't want to think how long, but not quite a decade at anyrate.  We didn't grab the bins of guild items that usually go to shows as not only are we not selling anything, but those of us who are lugging things for set up have smaller cars.   The guild cloths are in those bins.

We have a loom with our Fleece Festival class project on it for demonstrating and for people to try out.  Hopefully we'll fill up the last couple of spots by advertising it here.  I'm bringing my wheel, lots of spinning samples and some weaving bits and pieces.   We're displaying our new banner for the first time, with our sort of ugly new logo as well.   Pop by our booth and say hi if you're at the KW Knitter's Fair this weekend.