Bag Be Gone

Well, actually bag be unpacked, AND put away. Geesh, took almost a week. Now, house wise it's on to the heap o laundry, but unless something of interest crawls out of the pile, it's hardly blog worthy, even for me! ;-)

What is blog worthy is the progress I'm making on my Dad's sweater.

Did I make my end of January goal? No, but considering how busy I was only having one more sleeve to knit up and finish work to do, not bad. Likely I will ship it out by the end of February and if New England, cooperates he might get a wear or two before packing it away.

The new Louet Hollandia is proving to be as wonderful and easy as the the Delta although minor differences do exist. One is the raddle, it does not have a built in one but came with a lovely home made one which fits on the arms going from the castle to the back beam. These arms fold up allowing you to fold the back beam up to the castle just like Hey Baby. You can just see the raddle resting on those arms right behind the castle

While nice, it isn't my favorite position for the raddle. I like it on the castle, so I took it and clamped it there like I do on the Murphy loom and proceeded to start a getting-to-know-you warp. These will be simple cotton towels with a rosepath design border. With 14 treadles I can go to town with some of the fancier border patterns but I have chosen one using only 10 treadles at present.

If I feel ambitious, I might do one that requires 13 treadles. I'll decide once she's threaded and sleyed. For those who are interested in looking at the possible selections they are out of "A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns from the Friends of Handwoven" edited by Carol Strickler, pages 30-33 and I am looking at patterns 135 and 138. Warp is 8/4 cotton, ( Maysville rug warp) sett at 12 epi. Weft will be the same. I have a fair amount of this stuff and since I am switching over to perle cotton for the prayer flags, I figured I would give it a try. The towels off the loom will be 18"x24". They are patterned after a runner that Sue at Life Looms Large wove at Christmas time. Hers is rep weave but the color blocks were my inspiration.

The breast beam unbolts instead of lifting off two metal splines, which is a tiny bit more trouble, but I can easily get a chair in as close as I want for threading, just put the legs between the numerous treadles.

On the Delta I have to use a rolling chair as the foot rest is set too high to place a regular chair in there with it's stretchers/wood dowel thingies that keep it stable. A rolling chair allows the base to slide under the foot rest at least until it hits the chair seat pillar.

Another blanket is in the planning stages for the Delta, and also fine cotton pillow cases for the next Hollandia warp. Both will be plain weave but no doubt challenging in the number of warp ends. The blanket again around 930 and probably close to that for pillow cases in 20/2 cotton. I would love to do fine linen pillowcases someday, for myself and for gifts. While many people love silk, I find the crispness of linen delightful.

In farm news, no additional cat sightings, but our cats have been terribly overfed by Gene. I swear they look like fat little ticks, not lean, hungry hunters of mice. The horses had their hooves trimmed Tuesday. Imp shot up in what is close to his last growth spurt. All of a sudden he's lengthened and lost that short backed colt look and seems to have gained an inch in height. He'll be 4 this spring and a baby no more. Let's hope it's a short adolescence!