Over, under, through

It's been almost a month since I updated, but that doesn't mean nothing has been happening.  I've got the loom up and running, and am working my way through the various permutations I laid out.  It's just going reasonably well, which doesn't make for dramatic blog posts.

At the moment, I'm working with the worsted warp, in 5-6 inch chunks.  So far, I have

• White worsted/same weft: tabby
• White worsted/same weft: twill
• White worsted/woolen weft: tabby
• White worsted/woolen weft: twill

Which is basically one complete unit to process.

The next likely phase will be to do the same with grey worsted weft in tabby and twill, and find another woolen weft of about the right size.  Right now, I'm using some pre-wound quills I inherited from my grandmother.  I'm not sure what they're made of, but since they have to be from before 2000, I'm reasonably comfortable they're not superwash.  After that, I'm tempted to be done with this warp because I'm not convinced that I want to do all the processing on this piece, because the records indicate that part of the point of using worsted yarn was not needing to do nearly as much finishing.  And besides, I've run out of white worsted. So I may do one more full set in grey weft, so I can have one that's just basically washed and another that's fulled and brushed and everything, to contrast.  But there are a lot more interesting possibilities later, when I get to singles and woolen/worsted effects. Plus, then I can use the extra warp ends for selvedges for the more tender warps to come.

Speaking of said tender warps, I have found a whole big skein of a fairly fine medium brown woolen singles, to I think that's likely to become fodder for future experiments, and I'm also working on the spinning side of things.  Thus far, due to holidays and things, I've mostly just cleared some art batt backlog, but yesterday I did start attempting some fine drop spinning and wound of a bunch of very fine stuff from some unknown time ago, which I think that once I size it, I may be brave enough to warp with.  It's going to be a shock, because it is teeny and I haven't woven with my handspun before, but it held together well as I wound it onto the niddy noddy, so I'm cautiously optimistic.  But I may need to review some weaving technique books beforehand, to build up my confidence.

The other thing is that I need to start doing more S-spinning, because I think almost all of my handspun is Z and one of the goals is to play with S/Z effects.  I still think this will be fun, or at least educational.  Hopefully that survives contact with the enem... er, finer warps.  But so far, so good.