300 degrees (approximately)

Not quite a complete 360 but here is the one end of the studio, almost ready for the Big Project.  Just wish I were confident this cold would be gone by Tuesday.  Two weeks or 14 days - and I'm on day 11...

view as you enter the door

moving to the left - the library

passage to the other end of the studio with the warp winding station

other side of the passage and the newly cleared shelves waiting for more yarn

back to the doorway just out of view to the left

While I would love to have such a clean studio to work in, reality is that I doubt this will last much beyond next Friday!  The clutter we removed from this end of the studio is just gone to live somewhere else, not dealt with in any final solution kind of way.  Much of the bins stored here are to do with bobbin lace and I'm not ready to get rid of any of that - yet.  And so they will likely simply return and get stacked up in the corner again.  Not to mention the loom that usually lives in front of the dresser in the last photo.  Currently on loan to a friend, it will likely come back at some point - unless I decide to sell it.

It's a 24 shaft Margaret (Woolhouse) lever loom and I bought it as a 'retirement' loom.  Well, I'm not ready to 'retire' yet and it's been getting very little use for the past few years.  I feel bad because it's a quite nice loom.  I've woven everything from 40/2 cotton to rayon chenille on it.

But the cleaning up has served several purposes.  There is now room enough (I hope) for the crew to move and do what they need to do.  It is visually a lot more pleasing - less clutter to confuse the eye.  Years of dust bunnies have been vanquished.

After helping to clear out two other weaver's studios last year, I can't help but feel as though I have at least made a start at dealing with some of my own mess.

There is a great deal more to do, but at least I've had the pleasure of having a tidy space, even if only for a few days.

Currently ready Still Midnight by Denise Mina

Round Tuits and Re-organization

I have been procrastinating about getting the rubble removed from the part of the studio that needed to be cleaned up.  However, this morning a friend with a 'round tuit' arrived to help!

Between the three of us (she brought another pair of arms and legs to help physically remove the boxes) cleared away the piles of boxes and bins on the floor in front of these shelves, then cleared all the rubble off the shelves as well.

And then she vacuumed!  I removed myself during this part of the process as my allergy to dust kicked in.

Even better, she will come back tomorrow to tidy the rayon chenille on the rack against the far wall, and help to put yarn, currently in bags and boxes onto the shelves so that I can actually see what I have and get to it.

The store room is once again a mess after she cleaned it up last summer, so we may even take a little time to straighten that out, although it isn't necessary for the Big Project.

Trouble with re-organizing is that before it can get better, it has to get a lot worse.

I even managed to throw stuff away.  Not nearly enough, but at least some.  I will work on serious clean up after the Big Project is completed.  (Not saying when, just...after!)

All Squared Away

Here are the square cloths draped over the back of my sofa. The two on the outsides have the linen/rayon boucle for weft, the next two inside those on each side use the same ivory for weft as the majority of the warp, and the one in the middle is the cotton slub for weft.





The photo below is a bit of a close up.




The next step is to hem them, and then send photos to the client and see what he thinks. I have a woven sample of the one that is my personal favourite and which will let him see/feel the cloth. Whether it will meet his needs or not I won't know until I hear back. But in the meantime, I'm quite pleased with these.

The two that were woven in the block design are seconds and have already been sent to their new home. I may not pay my studio assistants very well, but they do get perks. (Or that should be 'perq' I suppose - short for perquisite.)

In the meantime the first student has come and chosen her yarn for the weekend and wound her warp. A lady after my own heart, she didn't even take off her coat before diving into the bucket of yarn! :D

And I started beaming a 40 yard warp for throws. I have an enormous amount of a high quality acrylic yarn that I have been knitting with, but knitting is way too slow to use up the quantities that I have so I'll do some throws. Nothing fancy, just a straight twill draw for structure and hems rather than fringes because I'm using up a bunch of black and dark blue 2/16 cotton for warp (using it doubled) at 20 epi. Such fine yarn would make a rather thready fringe so I'll use up some black 2/8 cotton doubled (to more closely match the thickness of the acrylic) for hems.

Karena cut apart and serged the tea towels from the aqua warp, and my wet finishing pile is now huge so I am going to try to work on getting the towels processed. That way the pile will be transferred to the love seat in the living room (tv watching job) rather than a pile threatening to topple over in the studio.

And like Janet in the Maritimes - enough already with the snow! It was a glorious day yesterday - brilliant sun, mild (for us) temps, and this morning we awoke to a snow storm. Sigh.

A Little Help From My Friends

This is a picture of Karena beaming an 11 yard warp by herself using a warping valet.

The warp runs under the breast beam, then over a rod hung from the ceiling.

This warp is two 2/8 cotton ends which will be threaded together through the heddles for place mats. The weft will be a textured rayon/cotton blend. It may have a little linen in it, but I don't remember for sure.

The warp is 14 inches in the reed, and I find one jug of water works just fine for up to about a 15" wide warp chain. If I have more width than that, I wind two warp chains and use a jug for each chain filled to the same level so that they weigh the same.

For warp packing, I use bamboo blinds with the hardware removed. They are just under 2 yards long and because they are flexible it's not so critical to get them inserted as precisely as with corrugated paper. I find it more efficient than having to stop and insert sticks because I can wind 2 yards or so (depending on the fibre) before having to stop to insert another blind.

Karena used to be my almost full time studio assistant, but now she's a full time mom and comes for 3 hours a week to help me with various things. She's much better than I am at organization, so she gets to do things like re-organize my yarn and inventory as well as dress looms and other stuff that fits into her weekly 3 hours.