Already in Service

Well, the blanket was done Sunday afternoon, fulled and after pictures on the master bedroom bed, pressed into quick service. Gene has had a wicked cold, started a couple days before D's surgery, so along with a recuperating Dennett, I've had a sniffling, coughing husband.

Gene usually likes to hide out with his cough and cold in the guest room, so the blanket went into immediate use . He's tucked up under that and a comforter sleeping peacefully I'm assuming, from the lack of snuffling noise. While I would have liked to get some better pictures, I am happy and delighted to have woven an item that is needed and useful.

Now to find out how well some of my small changes worked. The folds where better, not a lot of change there and it may be that having the same color warp and weft at those points made it look better.

The selvages came out much better doubled while also using the fishing line. They have a little more body and drape which is what I wanted.

I could still go a little larger in the loom for a wider blanket with more overhang on the king sized bed, but the blanket is perfect and generous on a queen size. The stripes came out better than I imagined. I like they way they appeared as I opened up the 3 layers. I still love weaving blankets and would like to get enough wool to do another 3 or 4 in the triple weave, although I would also like to do a double width coverlet in traditional overshot. I would have to double the length and sew a center seam to get king sized width. A king sized project to be sure.

In other weaving news, the pillow warp has had little progress, seems that a trip to town and the inevitable Monday house clean took up a fair amount of time. One prayer flag is done and another just getting started on this warp. Now, I need to come clean on the Julia warp. It sat and it sat. It got moved, it got dropped, it got dog noses poking in it, it got the cat sleeping ( and kneading) on top of it in its basket and it got handled badly as I closed up Murphy and made room for Julia. It was not a pretty, neat warp when it finally got beamed. In fact, I discovered that I must have been off with the fairies because I put the colors in the wrong order. Yellow starts the sequence, not green. I needed to fix that and wound a new little yellow warp, beamed it right next to the green and didn't thread the yellow portion I had done out of order. That means there is a 28 thread gap, which all in all hasn't affected the warp too much, but it was in pitiful shape to begin with and there are a lot of twisty bits as it comes over the back beam. I think the next run of prayer flags will be all white with the wefts of perle cotton and silk providing the color order. I plan to cut the two finished flags off, reassess and retie. There is a chance I might scrap it at that point and start with a fresh warp. I'll decide then.

Farm news is really weather news and boy have we had some, spring snow, wet and heavy and lots of it. They are calling for over 20 inches above 5500 feet. We've gotten so far this morning about 4 inches and it's predicted to keep piling up during the day. It's miserable stuff. The ground is still mud underneath, none of that beautiful lightness a powder brings and the resulting mud will be prodigious. While we won't see the same amounts at 4100 feet we'll still be seeing some and it will fall half way down the valley to about 3000. A slick ride for anyone who has to go to town that's for sure. It was a slippery squishy ride up with hay his morning, that's for certain.