Today has been one of “those days.”  For example, I just found out that the form to email me on the Contact page was going to the wrong address (I’ve fixed it now) and that there are about 290 emails and queries waiting for a response.  Argh!

So if you used that form and didn’t get a response, I’m terribly sorry.  It’s one of those hard-to-detect “hands up everyone who’s not here” kind of website bugs.  I am able to wander through the back-log, they were all saved on the server, thankfully.  But all of a sudden getting 290 emails…this may take a while to work through.

So today, not my fave.  Let’s travel back in time to last Thursday.  That was great.

This past Thursday was the Seattle Weaver’s Guild September meeting.  We have two hour-long presentations each meeting, one before lunch and one after.  This week the speaker was Dr. Barbara Setsu Pickett, a professor of fiberarts at the University of Oregon.

Dr. Pickett has spent the past twenty years researching and weaving velvet.  She’s traveled all over the world, studying with master velvet weavers from a host of traditions, and then come home to build the custom gear needed to build velvet in her studio.

If you’re not familiar with velvet weaving. It’s a technique that uses two warps, one that forms the ground cloth, and another that’s pulled up between the ground-cloth picks to form pile loops.  You insert wires or channels into these pile loops and continue to weave until you have several rows of pile.  And then, like a magician performing a trick where you pull the tablecloth and leave the dishes standing, you slice open the tops of the first row of pile loops and–if all has been set up correctly–the cut pile warp does not pull out.

There are macro-velvets that you can weave with just two warp beams; this produces an edge-to-edge velvet.

And then there are figured velvets (places of velvet and voids) where each pile has to be wound on its own little warp beam.

The loom set up to weave this involves hundreds of individually weighted bobbins.  It looks like a thousand trained spiders on roller skates are following your loom.  It’s simply mind-boggling, and should never be attempted by anyone with a cat, small children, or random breezes in their studio.

During the first hour-long presentation, Dr Pickett showed pictures of velvet weavers from all over the world, and displayed actual fabric samples of the different velvet traditions.  The basic problems of how to handle the differential take-up in the pile warp, how to tension things, and how to cut without destroying everything were solved in different locales in a variety of intriguing and mind-boggling ways.

During the second half-hour, Dr. Pickett explained how to set up something like this in for your own loom.  She made it sound, if not easy, at least possible.

And I’m finding myself terribly, terribly tempted.

Anyone know where I can buy 400 sewing-machine bobbins, wholesale?

And as a parting happy thing from Thursday, here is Lynn who took my “Woven Shibori on the Rigid-Heddle Loom” class at Weaving Works.  The only down side to this class is that we spend one day weaving the fabric, another tying and dyeing, and then the students take home what look like large black snakes of fabric to wait for them to dry and then cut open to reveal the pattern within…and I usually don’t get to see the finished results!  So kudos  to Lynn for her lovely scarf, and a big thank-you for bringing it back to show me how it turned out.  It and your lovely smile made my day.

Tonight I headed out to The Fiber Gallery to take a “Photographing Your Fiber” class with Franklin Habit: cartoonist, blogger, knit designer, professional photographer, general all-around talented person, etc.

It was a basic photography class with an emphasis on how to shoot flattering portraits of fiber stuff, both on and off people.  I came armed with a list of questions:

1) How do you shoot something that sparkles so the sparkles actually show up?

I once spent six hours on a snowy day trying my darnest to get the sparkles on Kate’s Subdued Glitz Picnic Cloth to show up.  I never could get the photos to quite match what I saw.  I actually have a theory now that the human brain is so in love with sparkly things that it magnifies them, and so what you see when you look at a sparkly thing, is not reality.  I think it’s like the moon illusion.

2) How do you pose fabric (essentially a long rectangle) in a way that makes it interesting and engaging??

3) How do you light an iridescent fabric for best effect?

Franklin gave me some ideas to try for all of these, things like playing with fill lights, depth of field, and star filters (which, he assures me, can be used in a non-cheesy way.)

The class was good, the instructor charming, the yarn store tempting.  I’d not been in The Fiber Gallerybefore and kept being distracted by pretty yarns all over the place.  (I’m now seriously contemplating joining their first-ever store-sponsored knit-a-long.)

At the end of class, one of the students asked if she could take a picture of Franklin in his Utilikilt (the product of a cool clothing company, based in Seattle).  And it turned into an impromptu photoshoot where Franklin, who’d just ordered a class full of students to take pictures early and often to hone their skills, suddenly had every camera in the room pointed at him.  He laughed off the paparazzi moment.

At the top of this post is the photo of him that I snapped at the beginning of the class.  After class a couple of us joked about how ironic it would be to blog about a photography class, and then post a less-than-perfect photo of the teacher.  So I want to repeat that I snapped this at the beginning of class, before all the learning happened, using the less-than-ideal camera on my cell phone.

Because…the one SNAFU I had with the class was that I’d dutifully brought my SLR, and things to photograph, but had cunningly left the memory card from my camera at home.  (Ironically, I’d brought extra batteries.  I’d left the house feeling chuffed about that.) Franklin saved my bacon for the hands-on portion of the class by letting me borrow his CF card.

After class I deleted every picture I’d taken during the hands-on exercises before I returned the card.  It drove home the point with digital photography there’s no reason not to play and take a lot of test shots: pixels are free.

So while I didn’t come away with any fabulous shots of the samples I’d taken, I came away with knowledge, and directions for further exploration.

A good class.

Afterwards, I bought a copy of Franklin’s excellent book of cartoons and humorous essays, “It Itches.”, and got in line to get my copy autographed.

When I told him how to spell my first name, he said, “You know, there’s a podcaster with that name.”  I agreed that was true.  I must have had a glint in my eye because then he said, “Are you Syne Mitchell?”  I confessed that I was and he laughed and wrote a nice note when he autographed the book.

A surreal moment: Franklin Habit has listened to WeaveCast?  Really?

It was all I could do not to look around for a hidden camera.

Wednesday was a big day for me, with the announcement about WeaveZine’s Evolution and all.  I’ve been doing a lot of post-announcement communication since then, answering questions, and talking to some very cool people about projects.  Two days in, and I’ve got a full slate of awesomeness to work on.  Life is good.

On the other hand, in Kai’s first week of school, all the kidlets brought in all the germs they’d collected over the summer and passed them around, and now we’re all sick.  Not gut-churning sick, just pooky, wanna stare at TV and drink tea sick.

Which is my way of explaining that is to going to be one of those “collection of random musings” blog posts.

First of all, I’d like to say that although the lamp from last post was an example of LED mis-use, I’m not anti-LED at all.  In fact, quite the opposite.  And at the grocery store I found the best, highest, use of LEDs ever.

Blinking toothbrushes.  The concept is brilliant: you bang them on the counter and they blink for a full minute, acting as an uber-cool timer to keep your kid brushing.  It turns it from a “mom says I have to keep brushing” fight into a “Wow, the toothbrush is still blinking, gotta keep brushing!  Look at my uvula glow!” experience.  Brilliant in so many ways.  (And yes, in case you’re wondering. One of the toothbrushes ended up being mine.)

I’ve started warping up my second handspun-singles project.  This time I’m using singles that I spun on my Jenkins Turkish Delight spindle.  This thing has been my near-constant companion since I bought it at the first Sock Summit.  It’s that cool.

So far, I have to say spindle-spun singles have it all over wheel spun.  They’re much tighter, and having to be strong enough to support the weight of the spindle, they’ve been “gravity tested” to a minimum strength.

The turkish spindle creates center-pull balls (aka: yarn turtles) that you can use immediately, without having to unwind them off the spindle first.  (If you’ve not used a turkish spindle before, they actually come apart like a magic trick and you can slip the ball right off.  I’m convinced the turkish is the ultimate geek’s spindle, it’s so clever.)

So here’s the begining of winding the warp.  Ignore the fact that the ball of yarn looks like a hideous snarl, it actually spooled off flawlessly.

The yarn for this has an interesting story.  It’s all spun from free samples I recieved at GGFI.  GGFI is a fiber-palooza and you get handed lots of wee samples of gorgeous and soft fibers to spin in tiny cellophone baggies.  I didn’t want to end up with wee samples fossilized in my stash, to be uncovered a decade later and puzzled over, so I set about spinning them while I was at GGFI, with the intention to weave a “GGFI” scarf when I got home.  (The scarf is intended as a present for a special and deserving person, but I’m not telling who…though you might know her.)  I finished the last sample up in the airport, and here it is, my GGFI-freebie warp!  What’s cool is that I had exactly enough for a scarf, a 2-1/2 yard  warp, about ten inches wide.

This yarn is thin, so I’ll be setting it at 24 epi, using two 12-dent heddles.

Below is one of the reasons that a rigid heddle loom is excellent for handspun: the direct-peg method of warping.  These singles have a lot of energy and twist.  If I tried to warp them on a board and then move them to a loom, it’d be a crazy-making tangle nightmare.  But see how the direct-peg method keeps all the threads under tension and untangled as you measure the warp, nifty huh?

(Though, really, you could direct-peg warp on a more traditional loom as well.  I keep meaning to try it on my Baby Wolf.)

When I take the warp off the peg I insert my wrist into the loop that went over the peg, and below is an illustration of why.  See how much energy is in the singles?  If I dropped that, the warp would be done.  Over.  Compost.  Keeping my wrist in, I can always re-tension the warp and get it back to straight and untangled.

I’ve currently got the slots and holes in the first 12-dent heddle threaded, tomorrow I’ll work at putting the second heddle on.  (Then I’ll take a picture of how to tension a broken warp thread, but really, it’s nothing special.  It consists of grabbing something heavy, wrapping the thread around it, putting the heavy thing on a table and pushing it away until the tension’s right.)

Other randomness…today was the manditory weekly “cheat day” of my diet.  Kai and I decided to celebrate with s’mores.  Here’s my secret weapon of s’more-ness.

And here is just about the damn most perfect s’more ever.

I ate it and it was perfect and lovely and…I had an epiphany.  When you eat something that perfect, it’s enough.  To have a second s’more would have made me more full, but it wouldn’t have given as much pleasure as the first.  So…I stopped at one.  On my cheat day, when I could have had as many as I wanted.  But I only wanted one.  I think that was the lesson I was supposed to learn.

Wonder if that works with yarn-buying, too?

Here’s the cloth woven of handspun singles off the loom.

Weaving it was not too hard.  I had about 3-4 broken warp threads throughout the whole three yards, which I attribute to several factors:

1. Not enough twist.  I spun this yarn on my spinning wheel with a Woolee Winder attachment.  While I dearly love how the WW automates the process of winding on, it does tend to pull in the fiber, so when I spin with it, the yarn on the bobbin has less twist than if I’d spun it without the WW, or spun it on a drop spindle.  In fact, that’s my next project in this exploration, to try weaving with spindle-spun yarn.  Yarn spun on a spindle tends to be less forgiving.  If you don’t put enough twist in, the spindle hits the floor.

1. Hairy yarn.  The laceweight was a bit on the hairy side, and the coarser Shetland fibers reached out of the yarn and grabbed their neighbors, increasing friction to the point where it damaged the neighboring yarns.  I think I’d fix this by using smoother singles or sizing the warp before putting it on the loom.

1. Weighting broken warp threads does not work with singles.  You know how you normally repair a broken warp thread, by cutting a replacement and then weighting it off the back of the loom?  You know what happens when you do this with an energized single?  That’s right, the yarn untwists over time and “plop!” that weighted replacement thread is on the ground.  I’m proud to say that I only had to do this twice before I figured it out and started tensioning my replacement threads with friction instead of gravity.

1. Trying too hard not to break warp threads.  This one surprised me.  When I was weaving slowing and oh-so-carefully so as to put the least amount of strain on the warp, I broke threads left and right.  When I cranked up the tension and started weaving with my normal fast rhythm, going so fast that I even forgot the sizing crutch of adding hair spray, I stopped breaking warp threads.  Weird, huh?  I attribute this to one of two things, either weaving with rhythm and speed distributes the strain more evenly than weaving slowly and carefully or…yarn smells fear.

What went right with the cloth?

It wasn’t as hard to weave as I’d thought.  After I got into the swing of things and stopped breaking warp threads it was just another weaving project.

I love, love, love the granola goodness of this cloth.  Weaving with handspun gives a life to the fabric that you just can’t get with commercially milled yarns.  The subtle irregularities make it textured and inviting.  I loosened the tension to get an inkling of the handle it might have after washing and it was soft and textured, the fabric equivalent of oatmeal cookies warm and fresh from the oven.

My husband covets this cloth.  One of my hopes for this fabric was that the muted colors would appeal to a male sensibility.  It worked!  Eric has already made noises about some of the things I could make for him out of this.  He says blanket, I’m thinking hat.

Here I’ve cut a whack of sample fabric off the end to test-drive wet finishing three different ways as Daryl Lancaster describes in The Weaver Sews: What to Weave, Part 2.

I’m still hoping that this fabric crumples up and does interesting things in the wash.

Here are the thrums from the project.  There’s a 1-inch grid beneath the pile.  As you can see, the waste is minimal.  And here I wasn’t even trying to minimize loom waste.  If I had, I would have lashed on or used Nadine Sanders’ shoestring warping method.

I’ve got a cunning plan for these, which will be the topic of a future post.

Next warp, I’ll try weaving with spindle spun yarn and see how that fabric compares to this.

As a last thought.  Today while I was looking in the lighting department of Fred Meyers for a replacement bulb, I found this:

I haven’t yet figured out whether this is (a) proof that there are actually places where LEDs should not go, (b) the taxidermied corpse of a muppet, or (c) rather cool.  What do you think?

My current weaving adventure is weaving fine handspun singles on a rigid heddle loom.

I’ve long advocated the rigid heddle loom for handspun because the plastic heddle is gentle on the threads and you have less loom waste than a floor or table loom.  (With the right warping techniques, I can get loom waste on my RH down to about six inches.)

While I was down at GGFI, a couple of folks asked if I taught a class in weaving with handspun on the RH loom.  And I haven’t thus far, but it sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

So I decided to start playing around and weaving samples.  And being the type of person I am, started at the deep end of the pool: lace-weight singles.  You know, that yarn that some folks will tell you “Cannot ever be used for warp.  No way.  Your loom would explode.”

The yarn was spun from lovely 80% shetland/20% alpaca roving that was donated by Franna of EverRanch Farmfor use in the spinning demos at the Seattle Green Festival.  I had some left over after the event, and it was so lovely to spin that I couldn’t stop myself, and ended up with a pile of gorgeous singles in a variety of natural colorways.

Note: I enjoy buying from local shepherds, it supports cottage industry and local economies, is greener for the earth because products don’t have to be shipped far, and can bring you specialty products you can’t find elsewhere.  But I’ll confess, the real reason: you get to know the names of the fiber animals involved. I have a sentimental warm fuzzy from knowing that this fabric is being woven in the Espresso-Asa-Suzie-Jasper-Blaze colorway.  Having owned sheep, I can imagine these shetlands and alpacas muching away on their cud, growing fiber for me.

I spun the  yarn fine, about 32 wraps per inch, ‘Z’ twist, semi-worsted, with lots of twist.

(Question: when I’m figuring out wpi, I’m always confused about how much tension to put on the yarn when wrapping, how much to squish the wraps on the ruler.  Any advice from the experienced spinners here?)

So far, the weaving is going fairly well.  It’s a bit of a hairy yarn, and I probably should have sized it before warping, but I’ve tamed the frizz with a bit of hair spray (Note: let the hair spray DRY before you start weaving again.)

The yarn is sett at 12 ends per inch, so I’m weaving a fairly gauzy cloth.  Which given the hairness of the yarn, is a blessing.  I’m hoping it will do fun and crinkly things off the loom.

Or my loom could explode.  I’ve never woven with fine handspun singles before, you never know…

(I’m still planning to share my new vision for WeaveZine on September 15th, I just couldn’t wait until then to share this bit of adventure with you.)

Kai and Eric just walked out the door, to go to school and work.  It’s my first day of fall, that moment when a work-at-home mom is finally alone in the house, with time to think and reflect and get things done.  It’s a sense of relief, tinged with a bit of regret.  Like the scent of new fallen leaves or the feel of mist on your skin.

This summer I’ve done a lot of things (there’s a list below) but always in the back of my mind was a thought about WeaveZine, and ways to make it better, more rewarding for both readers and contributors, and how to create a business that’s in line with my talents and values.

I’m going to talk about what I’ve come up with on September 15th, but before that, I’d like to pay homage to summer.  Because this has been one wild and crazy one, with ups and downs aplenty.

What I did over summer vacation:

Taught at John C Campbell

It was a week-long class with fabulous students.  This was the first time I’d had a class where over half the people were intermediate to advanced rigid-heddle weavers, so to keep them challenged I changed the curriculum on the fly and added extra optional material.  It was a great group of people to hang out with, and I really enjoyed getting to know these eleven wonderful women (and Pam, the resident weaver.)

Moved everything I own

As part of a major home improvement project—which was extremely bloggable, but which my husband asked me not to blog about—I packed up and moved every single thing I own.  Which led me to realize that I (a) own a lot of books and fiber and (b) have some awesome in-town friends.  This project was supposed to be over in a month or so, but continues to drag on in a Sisyphian manner.  The upside (besides the massive stash rotation) is that I now have a much improved weaving studio, with space for all my looms and a sewing area, and a spinning area.  There’s also room for a real-live desk, recording gear, photography equipment, and a professional-grade color laser printer (more about that later.)

Taught at Weaving Works

I feel fortunate to have a local weaving store, that I can run to and buy heddles if I’m running short for a project.  I’m even more fortunate in that they let me teach there from time-to-time.  This time around it was a class on how to weave woven shibori on a rigid-heddle loom.  It was the first time that I’ve taught this class and had a majority of the students choose the optional suggestion to “warp with bright colors instead of the traditional white” and some of the scarves were so lovely that it was all I could do not to run away with them.  One especially memorable one was eye-tearing red on the loom.  After dyeing it looked like hot lava, with peeks of red between organic rivulets of black.

Taught at The Golden Gate Fiber Institute (GGFI)

I have to confess, when Morgaine of Carolina Homespun called me up and asked me to teach at GGFI, my first thought was, “What is that?”  GGFI is a small, unpretentious event held at a YMCA campground near San Francisco.  And although the skies were dreary (in August) and I spent most of the time freezing my butt off (in August) it was one of the best events I’ve ever attended.  Morgaine and Judith MacKenzie, the directors, have the goal of creating a welcoming fiber community, and they pulled it off beautifully.  For a week, I lived the life of a wandering fiber nomad with a tribe of wonderful, funny, inspiring women.  That alone would have made it worth the trip.  Add in instructors like Abby Franquemont, Sarah Anderson, Velma Root, Cat Bordhi, Judith MacKenzie, Sharon Costello, and (I’m almost embarrassed to say it) me, and it was fiber heaven.  My only regret is that I couldn’t clone myself and take all the classes as well.

Spent a week with my Granny Mann

I am the crazy crafty one in my family.  The one who has an insatiable curiosity, who wants to learn how to do or make everything by hand.  The one who thinks spending a day to reweave an old frame chair is better than buying a new one from Walmart (and more fun besides).  My mom sews a bit, my sister paints, Eric does a bit of polymer clay, but I’m the only omnivorous crafter who’s made it the sole and center of her life.  Except for my Granny Mann, who is a crafter like me.  And while you’d think that would have made us fast friends for life, familial circumstances have always kept us apart.  I am the daughter of the wrong father, and as such was never really welcome in her household.  (It actually goes further than that: I am the daughter of the wrong father, as is my mom, as is Granny Mann herself.  Long story, southern family, some scandals involved.)  But Granny Mann recently had two heart attacks and the doctors have no idea why she is even still alive, so the whole family (from whichever father) has been pulling together to visit her in week-long shifts, take care of her, and spend time with her while we could.

Enter the blessing of senile dementia.  We had the best week!  It was the week I’d always wanted to have with her.  My Granny Mann has always had the verve and energy of about ten people, and while I expected to find a lady on death’s door, she was up and doing and it was all I could do to keep her from going outside in 96-degree weather to trim the box wood hedges in front of her house.  And when the lawn crew came, she puckishly eyed their 10-foot long gasoline-powered hedge trimmers and mused, “I’ve got to get me one of those, then I could trim the big hedge myself.”  And I know from being on the other side of that tone of voice—she was not kidding!  We baked, she taught me cross-stitch, we finished up sewing projects that she’d wanted to get to for five years, we watched the birds together, and ate a plethora of healthy meals.  What made it possible, I believe, was that the whole time, she had no clear idea of who I was.  She knew I was family, and that I loved her (and she loved me) but kept trying to figure out around the edges who I was.  That week I was: her daughter, a family friend, her granddaughter (of the daughter of the right father this time), a paid helper, and (because I kept talking about Eric and my son) “Syne Ericson.”  Instead of making me sad, it was a gift.  I had to wait 40 years, and she had to forget who I was, but I finally had the visit with my granny—the lady most like me in the family—that I always wanted.

Visited nearly all the rest of my family, too

This was a big summer for family.  Eric’s sister and niece stayed with us for four days, my Dad and his girlfriend came for a few days (and let Kai and I have turns flying my Dad’s little Cessna 170 airplane—think VW bug with wings—twas fun!), Eric’s parents came for a visit, as did my friend from Poland, Jolanta (mother of the young weaving enthusiast Lucas), my mother came for several days to watch Kai and give Eric and I that rare blessed thing for parents “the overnight away trip.”  Then we visited Eric’s parents in Montana.  Lest you think this sort of thing goes on all the time, that I just happen to have a large local extended family, the nearest visitor came from 1500 miles away, and the farthest from 5000 miles away, meaning this summer approximately 37,500 person-miles were traveled (one-way!) in order to accomplish this unprecedented “summer of visitors.”  It was wonderful, wild, and non-stop: one day I literally dropped off one set of visitors at one airport—and before I returned home—went to the other airport to pick up the next set.

Spent Kai’s first summer vacation with him

This past year Kai completed first grade, a feat that earned him three months off.  And for the first time in his short life, he could appreciate the freedom and possibilities of that time.  Three months of wandering in the woods, of trying new things, of building stuff, of staying up late, of spending time with your parents, and the rest of your family, too.  And I wanted to be able to share that with him, to get into adventures with him while he was still young enough to want me there.  One of the highlights of the summer was teaching him to ride a bike.  Riding a bike is an act of faith: in yourself, in the bike, in physics itself.  We started off with me holding onto his seat and running alongside him, keeping him upright.  He wasn’t getting it.  Then, among all the frustration of trying and failing and falling, I turned to him and said, “You like going fast, right?  Well Mama can’t run any faster than we’re going now.  If you want to go faster, you’re going to have to learn how to do this on your own.”  He gave me a serious look, then without saying another word, he pushed off and started pedaling like mad.  I stayed where I was, holding my breath as he rode solo for the first time, when he was 150 feet away (and still going) I pumped my fists in the air and whooped.  It was a poignant moment for me as a mother.    I was proud, and jubilant, and…it was one more way in which my child no longer needed me.  It’s a funny thing, parenting, your goal is to teach your children how to live without you…and you hope you make enough memories in the process.

Published Laverne Waddington’s Book: Andean Pebble Weave

I took a hiatus from publishing WeaveZine and WeaveCast this summer—for all the reasons listed above—but one new point of business started up, and is continuing today.  I worked with Laverne to publish her book: Andean Pebble Weave.  Figuring out how to publish and distribute a book was more work than I imagined: I had to integrate a robust and secure shopping cart on the site, learn about SSL certificates, learn how to deliver eBooks automatically from a website, how to accept both credit card and Paypal payments, and then…how to publish a high-quality, print-on-demand, paper edition! This involved more research and planning, testing equipment, inks, and papers, learning about ISBNs and barcodes, etc.

It was a big effort, especially with everything else going on this summer, but it was rewarding to work with Laverne to help bring to market a niche specialty book, one that big main-stream publishers, with their economies of scale, couldn’t afford to publish.  And to do it in a way that honors the author’s vision and pays them what they’re worth; it felt good.  Really good.

Lost 45 pounds

You might think “well of course, she did, with all that running around.”  But seriously, this took effort.  It was a summer-long project that required me to think about food and my relationship to it at every meal.  I joined a program with scheduled weigh-ins and packaged foods, and all that; something I’d mocked before.  Here’s why: because I didn’t have any success just “trying to eat healthy.”  For the past decade I’d watched the scale slowly creep up.  I’d watched people I loved, relatives and family friends lose mobility because they were carrying too much weight.  Seeing active, vital people needing to lean on a shopping cart to walk around a grocery store saddened me.  I didn’t want that to be my fate when I was in my 60s.  As a 40-year-old woman, getting healthy didn’t seem to be something I could put off any longer.

After eleven weeks of effort, I’ve reached my goal weight.  As a side benefit, my allergies (which a couple of years ago had been nearly crippling in the summer) are almost gone, and the aches and pains in my knees and joints cleared up.  My allergist tells me that sugar creates inflammation in the body, and that by cutting it out of my diet she’s not surprised that my allergy symptoms cleared up.  (Gee, wish she’d told me that two years ago, but I digress…)

I haven’t noticed an uptick in my energy levels (though I have fewer blah days) but my friend Jenni swears that she notices a big difference, that I’m all bouncy and stuff.  She kinda rolled her eyes when she said this, which makes me believe her.

Because of the communal dining at GGFI, people could see I was eating differently and asked questions.  One question that seems most relevant to me as I move into the maintenance phase of the diet is: “Do you think you’ll be able to keep the weight off?”

I don’t know.  I hope so.  This is something I’ve never done before.  It’s a new adventure and a bit weird.  I keep looking in the mirror and wondering who the skinny woman looking back is.  With the angular planes of my face emerging, I look a bit more Scottish, more like my Granny Mann, actually.

It’s been a summer of many changes: joy mixed with sadness.  If I had to sum it up in one word: poignant.

I’m looking forward to fall.  It’s my favorite season; I love the crisp hint of promise in the air.  My brain clicks over faster when the temperature falls; perhaps it’s the habit of decades of school and college; perhaps it goes deeper, the cycle of nature and the rush to harvest and prepare for winter.  Fall feels like a call to action: summer is over, and now to work!

Taking a hiatus from the site was useful; it’s given me perspective and a renewed sense of purpose about what I want to accomplish in the weaving world, and how to do that in a way that’s in line with my talents and values.

More to follow…September 15th

I must be channeling my inner Victorian lady.  A couple of weeks ago I was geeking out over getting an impromptu tatting lesson from Loren at the Golden Gate Fiber Institute.  This week, I was delighted to learn how to make lavender wands.  If I start sewing corsets and knitting silk stockings…well, you have been warned.

Kai’s school is starting school late this year, a fact I didn’t take into account when I signed up for the lavender-wand class at Weaving Works.  With no childcare in sight, I pondered how to deal with the situation when it hit me: Kai likes making stuff, he’s a reasonable kid, would he want to take the class with me?  He said, “Yeah.” (No doubt channeling his future teenage self.) And I called the store to see if that’d be possible.  The teacher graciously allowed Kai into her class and we were off!

This is the first time I’ve taken a class where Kai and I were students together.  And it was so much fun!  Kai wove a bit slower than the folks who had decades more experience using their fingers, but also brought an innovative spirit that some of us old fogies lacked (see his “ultimate bamboo-enhanced” lavender wand below.)

Here’s how much fun it was (lavender wand bunny ears provided by my camera-shy son.)

One of the wands that the instructor, Marcy Johnson, brought was a 2×2 twill that she dismissed as “too much trouble to bother with.”  She sells her wands, and I can see how that would be the case, but the weaver in me geeked out on it and wanted to give it a go at home.  There were lavender stems left over after the class, which students were free to take, so Kai and I each grabbed enough to make one additional homework wand each.

And retired to the patio with supplies (wand-making is messy, so a good outside summer project, Tully’s coffee optional.)

We tried some unusual flat yarns instead of traditional ribbon to see how that would effect the wands.

I found that the stretchy nylon yarn took longer to weave (because small) but produced a good, tight wand at the end, because you could reef on the yarn and get it snug.  The rough texture also held knots well.

The glittery wand is my 2×2 twill and I was thrilled at how it turned out.  I continued the twill pattern down the shaft of the stems, creating a solid, non-fraying handle.

For his at-home wand, Kai chose a bright, multi-hued, colorway.  We used matches to seal the ends of the nylon, and Kai had so much fun that he melted off a good portion of the ribbon off the end of his wand.  But then—and here’s what I love about this kid—he didn’t freak out, or call the piece ruined.  He kept working on it.  (There’s a lesson for all artists there.)

While I was inside cleaning up the kitchen.  I saw him cut down a piece of bamboo from the garden, peel parts of it off, and grind it on a stone.  When I came out to check on him, he’d created: the ultimate lavender-wand weapon.

Features include an ergonomic bamboo handle, lavender-enhanced cudgel, sharp pointy bamboo end, and best of all, when you vanquish your enemies, they’ll smell good.

It is quite the ingenious and well-made thing.  Stinky vampires of the world: beware.

When the Spinning and Weaving Association (SWA) asked whether I’d help run a SWA booth at the Seattle Green Festival, I had no idea what I was in for.  I’d never been to a Green Festival.  The concept, an event highlighting environmentally conscious businesses and causes, seemed interesting, my schedule was clear, and bribed by the prospect of a free box lunch, parking validation, and the chance to hang out with Cindy Howard-Gibbon (of Foxglove Fiberarts) I said, “Sure, why not?”

Later they told me that in 2009, the festival drew 30,000 attendees.  Yikes!

Irene Schmoller (Cotton Clouds), Liz Gipson (Schacht Handspindle Inc.) and Melissa Ludden Hankens (SWA Associate Director) sent us a booth banner, free CD spindles and pocket looms to hand out.  I brought woven samples, warped a loom, and contacted a local wool co-op for fiber samples and bookmarks to hand out, because supporting local shepherds is important to me and I wanted to have them represented.  (Several folks actually ran up and asked where to buy raw wool locally, so having that info at hand was great.)

Since Cindy is the Ashford wholesale rep in the US, we were able to get a 4-shaft table/treadle loom to use for the demo, as well as a rigid-heddle loom and a spinning wheel.

I think our booth was the most photogenic one there, as Green Festival volunteers kept sliding over with pro camera gear and taking candid shots…and they didn’t seem to be doing that at the other booths.  Our booth was generally packed with people, especially kids, trying out spinning and weaving.  I found out later that the keynote speech was on how to get young people involved with the environmental movement, and we were certainly drawing in the kids.

People seemed to like the fact that we weren’t there to sell them anything.  Rather, we were there just to give them a taste of spinning and weaving.  Most of the surrounding booths were trying to market something, and I think our approach “Hey, want to give weaving a try?” seemed fresh and resonated with them.  The ones who got excited about weaving after playing for a bit on the loom, we gave a flyer with pointer to local weaving shops and teachers, and pointed to web resources.

The demo was long hours, and had a lot of repetition (I can now walk people through a 2/2 twill in my sleep) but what made it worth the money SWA spent for the booth, and the two days Cindy and I devoted to the festival, was the people.

The green festival brought out a hugely diverse crowd.  I met people from at least a dozen countries, of all ages.  I taught both a deaf woman and a blind woman to weave (thank goodness I sign a bit and have sightless friends.) A group of exhibitors from India working on fostering rural industry stopped by and we chatted and bonded over weaving.  I admired her khadi-cloth shirt and she gave us a coloring page of Indian textile arts to hand out.  Weaving seems to draw people together across all boundaries.  I think because, like cooking, it’s such an old and primal craft, something all cultures share in one form or another.

There were the shy kids, and the brave kids. (A note to demoers, Waldorf-educated children will jump on your loom and weave off a whack of warp before you can blink.  No craft intimidates them, so put on lots and lots of warp.  I put on 7 yards, and it barely lasted through two days.)

My favorite were the folks who, when asked if they wanted to weave, answered in tones enthusiastic, timid, or desperately reverent, “Oh yes.  I’ve wanted to learn how to weave my entire life.”  These people were the reason I was there.  They made giving up a weekend to teach weaving to the public worth it.

The most touching encounter I had was with a 50-something Hispanic woman.  While I was walking her through the twill, I slipped into Spanish “uno y dos, dos y tres, etc.”   She was delighted, and we chatted a bit in both Spanish and English (her English was much better than my Spanish, but I did my best.)  She told me that her mother had been an South American indian (I didn’t write down the tribal name, but it sounded like it started with a ‘Q’) and that her mother had woven on a backstrap loom.  This woman, now living in highly urban Seattle, wanted to weave on the demo loom because it made her feel a connection to her mother.  She teared up while telling me this, and taught me how to say ‘Thank You’ in her mother’s native tongue.

The cutest weaver was a young woman in a black, white, and red floral dress who looked liked a toffed-to-the-nines housewife from the 1950s.  Her hair was coiffed in a flip, and she was even wearing red pumps with roses on the toe.  She stood out like a shiny buckle on an Ethiope’s Birkenstock among the standard Seattle-hippy-geek couture.  When I asked if she’d like to give weaving a try she squealed and bounced on her heels, “Yes!”

I was proud of the guys at the Green Festival.  Usually, when I give a demo, guys will be drawn to the mechanics of the loom.  They can’t help themselves, all those shafts and heddles creating patterns are mesmerizing.  But usually, at most demos, those guys that are drawn to the loom are too image-conscious (*cough* chicken) to try something in public that they may not succeed at right away.  (U.S. culture, unfortunately, makes guys pay a high price for their dignity.)  But not so with the Green Festival crowd, a whopping 80-90% of guys I invited to try weaving dove right in and wove plain weave and twill.  Which was great, because there’s a lot of untapped weaving talent in our fiber brothers.

The second day many African Americans stopped by the booth, which heartened me, since people of color often seem underrepresented to me at fiber festivals and guilds.  It wasn’t until the end of the day, when a gorgeous man with dreads down to his waist came over and said, “I was admiring your top,” that I realized I’d been wearing my Pacific Northwest Kente top all day.  Was the fact I was wearing Kente-inspired cloth a factor?  I don’t know, only one man mentioned it, but I like to imagine so.

The attractiveness of the demo to kids was both a joy and somewhat worrisome.  A joy because of children’s fearless enthusiasm for learning something new, and it’s great to train up the next generation of weavers.  (Hey, I’m going to need someone to leave my looms to one day.)  But worrisome because we noticed that some parents started drifting away, leaving their kids with us unattended.  This was exacerbated by a “free massage” booth across the way.  (A note to demoers, the cure for this was simple, a gentle “I’m so sorry, but we’re not licensed to provide childcare” to any parent who glanced at the massage booth and began the “Why don’t you stay here while I…” sidle.)

The kids by and large were wonderful to work with, attentive and eager, and open to instruction.  The one exception was a boy who seemed determined to hurt himself or the gear.  After begging for a spinning demo he tried to insert his hand into the spokes.  When discouraged from that, and asked to step back and not touch the wheel, he immediately grabbed the hooks of the moving flyer.  Thank goodness they were the “safety” hooks of a modern Ashford wheel and not the open hooks of my old Traditional, which would have flayed the flesh from his fingers.  We moved on to a less kinetic subject, where I showed him fiber samples and discouraged him from ripping open the silk cocoons to see the bugs inside.  He and his harried mom left not long after that.  I tried to cut him some slack; for all I knew he’d had one too many free honey-stick samples.

One kid seemed to have overbearing parents.  Her mom and the guy I assumed was her dad were taking numerous pictures as she tried out weaving, and the guy leaned in with a video camera on a monopod, getting closeups of her hands as she worked the loom.  She seemed really excited about weaving, however, so I teased her about “the paparazzi” and got on with the demo, giving her the usual spiel.  Her mom told me that the girl, Adora, was like a “little grandma” interested in all the old arts like knitting and crocheting and had always wanted to try out spinning and weaving.  I thought that was heart-warming and forgave her parents their wacky over-documentation of her childhood, and then…the girl pulls out a pro microphone and asks if she can interview me for a spot her show is doing on the Green Festival.  Oh and by the way, her show is going out on SchoolTube, a video site for students and teachers all over the world.  Things start to click into place and I notice that “dad” has higher-end camera gear than you’d expect from even the most video-happy parent.  I also notice the kid is wearing a “Speaker” badge.  Her mother, as she watches gears click into place in my head, leans over and with quiet pride says, “Adora was the keynote speaker.”

If you want to see how I answer questions when I’m flustered, unprepared, and have had my voice run ragged by two days of non-stop talking, check out the YouTube video below.

I did fairly well, thanks to my previous video experience with Kate (But Adora, I wish I had half of your on-camera poise.)  I did a nice plug for SWA, but completely forgot to mention WeaveZine.  *sigh*  I have the marketing instincts of a cross-eyed wombat.

If anyone wants to take over as the WeaveZine marketing director, just let me know, I’ll pay you the same salary I get (a bit of a joke there, so far all the income the site generates has been rolled back into production costs and gear, I’ve not yet gotten a paycheck from either WeaveCast or WeaveZine.)

But anyway, I was pleased to be interviewed and have an opportunity to get spinning and weaving out to a large audience of school kids.  It was a delightful surprise bonus for SWA, and wouldn’t have happened if the organization hadn’t taken a chance on having a booth at a non-weaving event.

Which brings me to the moral of my story.  Demoing at weaving events is lovely and wonderful; we can learn from each other and share techniques.  Demoing at knitting events is great, because those people have already proven susceptible to the fiber arts. But demoing at non-fiber events, taking spinning and weaving to the folks who would never otherwise come across these ancient crafts, who might not even realize that they’re still a vibrant artform…that’s where new weavers come from.

I’m a relatively new member of SWA, and I’m not exactly sure what its mission is.  But boy, if it were up to me, I’d encourage SWA, and local weaving and spinning guilds, to take weaving and spinning to the masses.

Weave at your local coffee shop, spin in the park: enduring dozens of curious glances and off-putting remarks (“You could buy that at Walmart!”) is worth it for that one person who stands and watches over your shoulder, eyes aglow, and asks, “Could you show me how?  I’ve always wanted to learn how to weave.”

A couple of people have asked about the 40th blanket project…  It’s still a pile of warp chains at this point.  Why?  Because aliens have taken over my big loom.

This is a project that I put on the loom (mumble-mumble) a year ago, for Lillian Whipple’s fine-thread study group.  It was the first thing I’d designed for my new 16-shaft loom, and my first-ever Taquete design, so I enthusiastically put on 9 yards.

Problem the first: I hadn’t thought through the scale of the project.  My warp is 140/2 silk, warped at 72 ends per inch (4/dent in an 18-dent reed).  That means that even at 8 inches wide, this was 576 threads to measure and warp.

Problem the second: I didn’t consider the implications of Taquete on the weaving.  As a double-faced weave, Taquete takes twice as many weft shots to weave, and it’s a weft-faced weave, so even using a relatively thick weft (60/2 silk) the number of weft shots per inch (ppi) was 114.

9 yards of cloth, at 114 ppi, takes 36,936 weft shots to weave off. (Loom waste never looked so good.)

If you hate warping, might I suggest weaving fine-thread Taquete?  You’ll only have to warp every year or so, and will have a wealth of design opportunities to play with.

As for me, I’m (finally!) nearing the end of the warp.  Slowly, I’m shooting these alien invaders off my loom.  As soon as I’m done, I’ll put the 40th blanket project on the loom.

Note: Details and the weaving draft for this project will be published in an upcoming issue of the Complex Weaver’s Journal.

I had planned to blog about CNCH during CNCH, but as it turned out I was having too much fun meeting folks, teaching classes, editing articles, launching a new website design, adding a shopping cart to the site, and giving a keynote speech…

Well, you get the idea.  I’ve been busier than a bunch of monkeys in a fire-ant patch.

And then of course, I came home to my two favorite guys grinning at me over a week’s worth of laundry and dishes.

So…I’m finally just now getting to relate the wonderful adventure that was CNCH!

The first adventure was the drive down.  I carpooled with Selah Barling, who was going to the conference as well as visiting family in the San Francisco area.  Selah and I had the classic road-trip fun, chattering away, stopping for cool sites, eating at strange and new places.

We saw Mount Shasta

One of the cool things about traveling with fiber-folk is that when you stop and enthuse: “Look! Barbed wire is a two-ply construction with supplemental knots!”  They don’t look at you like you’re crazy.

The view from my hotel room made me realize that I wasn’t in Seattle any longer.

Though Santa Clara did its best to make me feel at home.

The first day I taught a basic rigid-heddle class, where I gave the students organic, hand-dyed 100% merino sock yarn.

(Note: Yes, all the yarn from the Box Full of Promise did get skeined and dyed, largely due to the beneficient Astrid Bear, of Damselfly Yarns, who loaned me her Crazy Monkey skein winder.  After winding 143 skeins of 300 yards each, let me just say that is one nifty tool, and big thanks to Astrid!)

When I’m teaching, I get so absorbed in what the students are doing that I usually forget to take pictures until everyone’s gone home.  But I did manage to catch a couple of new weavers with my camera.

The gal in the pink sweater had never woven before, but said her Swedish grandmother would be proud of her.

I think she’s right, gramma would be proud.

Margaret was my class angel, and a big help, especially during the set-up.  (Little did she know that she’d be helping assemble looms.)

Wandering around in the dealer’s room, I found a few knitters who fessed up to getting bit by the weaving bug.

Soon after I took this picture, I found myself in a conversation with Jasmine (of the Knitmore Girls podcast) enthusing about getting a floor loom.  I grinned; it’s wonderful to see folks discovering the world of handweaving.  (And little do they realize how often one loom leads to two, and so on…)

In the dealers room I was quite restrained.

Eric: Yes, I brought home yarn.  And yes, some of it was even that vintage, gold-electroplated yarn John Marshall was tempting folks with.  But look at it this way…I did not bring home a baby alpaca.  Kinda puts things in perspective, no?

(Because I could have so fit that cria in the car, just saying…)

At the Village Spinning and Weaving booth Sheila O’Hara modeled the dance moves of “The Flocketts” (As seen in her colorful weaving on the back wall.)

Also at the convention center during CNCH was a martial arts tournament, which added a lot of interest and energy to the event.  BTW, martial arts kids?  Very polite.

The second day I taught beyond-the-basics rigid-heddle weaving.  I didn’t take any pictures that day, because I was a wee bitty nervous.  Because <gulp> Peggy Osterkamp was one of the students.  You see, I learned much of what I know about warping from Peggy’s books and video.  Before class began, I took her aside and told her to correct anything if I messed up an explanation, because it was more important for students to get good information than for me to save face.

I looked over at her occasionally, but she didn’t step in.  Not once.  Which made me feel like I’d won the “Not a bad teacher at all” award.  Whoo-hoo!

Laverne Waddington was at the class, and took a couple of pictures which you can see one on her blog.  (It’s also a great post about teaching weaving in general.)

And Franco Rios did a great blog summary of the class.  It was fun getting to meet several “virtual fiber folk” in real life.

That night was the banquet, at which I’d be giving the keynote address.

Nancy Weber and Kathy Alexander, the CNCH 2010 co-chairs, did the announcements and introductions.  (They’re pictured in the background, standing against the wall.)  I’ve never run a conference, and this was my first time getting a glimpse into how much work and coordination was involved.  Wow!  Hats off to both of these ladies.  The event was great, and I hope they’re both relaxing somewhere poolside, beverages in hand.

And then it was my turn.  I feel about public speaking the same way I feel about skydiving: it’s both thrilling and terrifying.

I’d never given a keynote before, and thus solicited advice.  Bonnie Inouye was especially supportive and helpful and I also got great tips from Ruby Leslie, Madelyn van der Hoogt, and Bonnie Tarses.  Then I played around with presentation software and made it my own.

After six months of prep work and planning I stepped on stage…

…and it went well!  People laughed, people clapped.

The talk was about how the Internet is changing hand weaving.  If you weren’t there, I’ve made my slides (and audio clips) available on Blip.tv.  It’s not as exciting without my speech and jumping around, but it’s a taste of the experience.

There was one awkward moment where I inadvertently stepped into a double-entendre (while describing how to woo knitters away to weaving) and in trying to extricate myself, backed into another.  Everyone laughed, I turned red, we got past it.

And yes, I really did end the talk with a skein-dance and weaving karoke.  And yes, the audience (at least the braver souls among us) sang along.

Epic good times.

Afterwards came meeting folks.  (See the grin on my face?  I was really, really happy to have survived the talk.)

Note: The beautiful jacket I’m wearing?  That has a story all its own that I need to blog.  Part of it is my early handweaving (and the WeaveZine background fabric) and it was accomplished with the design and sewing mentorship of Selah.  And yes, we were sewing on snaps at 2am the night before.  Why do you ask?

The next day I taught a three-hour class on how to use web technologies to promote handweaving.  It was a lot of fun for a three-hour lecture.  Great students, with a lot of interesting back-and-forth.  We ajourned to the coffee shop for the last half-hour to access WiFi (and caffiene!) and looked at examples of the things we’d been talking about.

After I was done with all my conference duties I stole away to see the gallery.

I ran into the many-talented Laverne Waddington, author of the first-ever, available-on-WeaveZine, eMonograph: Andean Pebble Weaving.  She also wrote a Backstrap Basics article last summer that’s a wonderful introduction to that style of weaving.

I saw many pretty things:

1) A dress made out of CDs

2) Tien Chui’s amazing handwoven wedding dress. (Pictured with her is the seamstress who worked with her on design and construction.)

3) Wedge weave.  This weave construction blows my mind: it’s not square!

4) Examples of Laverne’s work, which are so intricate and beautiful it’s hard to believe they were woven on such a simple loom.

That evening, I had dinner with Tien, her future husband Mike, and Daryl Lancaster (who is going to be writing a sewing column for WeaveZine, starting next month.  Woot!)

Afterwards, I dragged us all into a sari shop (okay, Mike waited in the car).  All three of us weavers made the same happy gasping sound when we walked in the door.  I think saris are just stunningly lovely.  There was no time to try things on, which just about broke my heart, but I promised myself that one day I would to go up to Vancouver, B.C. and shop the sari district.  I medically need a beautiful sari in my wardrobe.

But the most amazing thing of all?  The “Syne Mitchell: Weaver” action figure.

This was a project inspired by Sage Tyrtle of the QN podcast (which I always think of as “the podcast formerly known as Quirky Nomads”) who claimed that she wanted a “Syne Mitchell action figure that she could pull out of her pocket at critical times and ask “Now what would Syne do?”  (Sage teases me mercilessly on Skype for being capable…)

Ruth Temple, musician, morris dancer, and all-around evil genius mastermind made it real.

Ruth started with a Hitty doll.  Which I had never heard of before, but which has a very cool story, and an accompanying book: Hitty Her First Hundred Years .  The little doll is made of wood and has beautiful brown hair and eyes!

Liner Notes:

• Sage Tyrtle, who does miniature crochet, created the beret.
• Pam Howard, of the John C. Campbell Folk School, knitted the shawl and made the wee shawl pin.
• Tien Chui donated scraps from her wedding dress project for the doll’s dress and coat.
• The belt of the dress is cording that was created for the CNCH badges.
• Ruth Temple carved an adorable rigid-heddle loom from craft sticks.  (It actually weaves!)  She also (at CNCH) created the card-weaving set.
• Laura Fry donated the drop spindle with a really nice fiber on it…qiviut?
• Laverne Waddington gave me a piece of her pickup band weaving that I’m going to put into a backstrap loom for the wee weaver.

I have never before been the recipient of such an inspired, creative, collaborative gift.  It was epic, truly epic.  I LOVE every bit of it, and the doll will have pride of place in my studio.  I’m already planning her wee floor loom.  (And yes, Sage, there will be reprisals…)

You can watch some of my shock and awe on this video, as captured by Nancy Alegria.

CNCH, a rollicking good time!  I’d never met so many Californian weavers before in one place: what fun you all are!

P.S.  The blanket project is still in the works.  There’s a previous project on the big loom that I need to weave off first… at 114 picks per inch.  Oy!

This came in the mail this week.

It’s 47 pounds of organic merino sock yarn, and represents all the yarn  my students will be using in the classes I’m teaching this summer.

Normally my process of preparing for a class involves running around like a crazy person a day or two before the class and buying yarn at my local yarn shop to dye.  Past years have seen me drying yarn in the hotel bathroom with a blowdryer, or using the shoe-dryer attachment of my washing machine.

This year, I decided to get my act together.  (I am forty now, after all.)  So I placed an order with Henry’s Attic, where I have a wholesale account.

The UPS driver didn’t believe it could be yarn, because it was too heavy.

I didn’t think the box seemed big enough to hold a whole season’s worth of yarn.  But like a Tardis, it seems to be bigger on the inside.  (Adorable child added for scale.)

Guess I’d better get busy with the skeining and dyeing, eh?

Yep, it’s time again for gratuitous sheep photos.  The shearer came to shear my sheep last weekend.

The man in blue is Eifion, who comes over from Wales each year to visit family, and in the process wanders around and shears some sheep.  I believe the helper holding the power cord is his American brother-in-law.

Since Eifion worked for years in New Zealand, where flocks are counted in terms of tens of thousands, I think he’s amused by me and my three sheep.

The first time he came out, I wasn’t able to be there, so I left a check pinned to the barn door and a very detailed instruction sheet with information about the sheep including the vet’s phone number, the emergency vet’s number, my cell phone number, etc.  Kinda like you’d leave for a babysitter.

I think he ate out on that story for years.

This is Mousa, my “lead” sheep.  She’s physically the smallest, but also the most hard-headed and smartest.  She’s the biggest pain and yet…I like her best.  (Don’t tell the others.)

She decided that she didn’t mind shearing at all, as long as she wasn’t the one being sheared, and actually walked up to supervise while the others got sheared.

Three bags full of Shetland wool are now awaiting warmer weather to be washed and combed.