Mmmm Maple Syrup

What a fiasco the first syrup boil was!   I thought that my sweetie was only cooking up 5 gallons of sap.  Instead he did 10 gallons.  He was out there boiling all day Monday and I finished it up yesterday.   I didn't have enough jars sterilized, so one pint went into the fridge for immediate use.   We ended up with about 2 litres from the effort though.  It's light amber and a bit watery, more like a high grade syrup.   It has a good flavour though.  That being said, we prefer the darker syrups which are supposed to come a bit later in the season.   Still, I'm having waffles for lunch ;)

The handspun BFL sett samples are off the loom and wet finished.   They need a good hard press.   While I wouldn't want to spin enough for sett samples every time, it was pretty interesting to see the differences in the fabric which was made for each sett.  With the twill, there was one I'd use for a blanket or shawl and another which I'd use if I wanted to make an item of clothing.   Good information to know.

I'm winding a warp now for a set of rugs, just for some fast, fun weaving.  I'm spinning more of the BFL, but a trip to Fibre Garden last weekend netted me a whole pound of cotton sliver to play with.

The Japanese Indigo is growing nicely.  I have 2 pots and some soil to transplant these into at some point.   I should probably do it sooner rather than later, but I'm concerned that Kevin will try to eat the seedlings.  He's taken to chewing up a pot of cat grass, which is fine because that is for him.  However, there are teeth marks on both Christmas cacti, the snake plant and an aloe vera plant.   I'm not sure that these little seedlings could stand the wrath or curiosity of Kevin yet.

Samples and spinning

The purple superwash Merino is plied and skeined.   I didn't do a yardage count, but there is definitely not enough to weave a sett sample with.    It's a nice yarn though.  I've no idea what to do with this yarn.  Maybe I can spin up a bunch of leftover roving and make something stripey ;)

I've started weaving the sett samples for the design class homework.  I did the sampler gamp first, because I thought that it would be the more monotonous exercise of all the homework.   It was.  These weave off fairly quickly, despite having to cut them off and rethread for each sample.   It dawned on me after I'd cut the second sample off the loom, that for a couple of the twill samples, I could have run the tabby sample off right afterwards and cut some of the rethreading time.   I put enough warp on to do all the samples (fingers crossed).  These twills were at a sett of 8 epi, 9 epi, and 11 epi, using the 2 ply wool from the no longer in business, custom rug factory.    The 11 epi is pretty firm.   I have woven blankets at 9 epi and they work out nicely.  At 8 epi, the weave structure is a little loose.  It is amazing what a difference 1 thread per inch made.  They still need to be wet finished and mounted in some way.

I found a pound of Blue Faced Leicester mill ends.  It was sitting on one of my weaving tool totes, which was hiding in a corner, behind the stash of firewood.   I think it is superwash with a bit of nylon in it.  It spins like a dream.   I plan on spinning the whole pound to the same grist and hopefully I'll have enough to weave something more than a scarf.

More Spinning

For some reason I had this great idea, to switch up my spinning and spin up this green ramie.  A couple of problems with that though - 1st, there is half a pound of it, which is a lot of roving to go through.  2nd- it's been bitterly cold out and that means our old cottage is much cooler inside.  I like to spin ramie wet, which means a little pot of water to dip my fingers into every few minutes.  It makes a lovely, smooth, glossy thread, but means in this weather, my fingers get chapped. 3rd - it is not my favourite fibre to spin.

So I've taken it off the wheel.  I'll wind this bit of spun thead onto a bobbin and set it aside for the spring or summer, when wet spinning will be easier on me.

I switched back to spinning cotton.  This is white Pima cotton, so a bit longer staple than the coloured sliver.  I'm surprised that this stuff hasn't spun itself  already, because it really is the easiest cotton I've spun to date.  I am sure that it just glides through my fingers, drafting itself into lovely yarn.   Even with being distracted at times, it just seems to want to spin nicely.

The last pair of Christmas mittens for the kids.   I still want to make or remake a pair for me.  I've tried on every pair of girl sized mittens I've made and they are all too big on me.  I believe that I am pretty much over making mittens for the season though.

As an aside, I've been itching to toss something in a dye pot, but have been holding back.  The new sink was supposed to be installed 2 weekends ago.  The sink cabinet needed some specific modifying because the sink is from Ikea, which meant a bunch of other small adjustments.  Then the weekend weather was icky, so we didn't get the wood for finishing the framing around the kitchen window, which needs to be done before the sink cupboard gets installed.   So, I've been hesitant to dye up the laundry tub, in case all my nice, new wash basins, need to be used for dishes. :(

Our guild offers a beginner weaving class, which is an introduction to not only weaving, but colour manipulation.  We use pre-warped 4 harness looms to make tea-towels.   This is our last class' pretty towels.   The next class is at the end of January.  This spring we'll be doing a follow up class, which will include winding a warp, and dressing a loom.   This class seems to attract fun and interesting people, who all make cool towels.