Oct. 5-11... National Spinners and Weavers Week

Next week is National Spinners and Weavers Week... If you live near any yarn, fabric or fiber shops you might look for something special happening. It would be a good time to spin, weave or knit/crochet in public. I'm going to talk to the ladies at the library and see if they are having anything special...

The "sheep to shawl" shawl is finished...as of yesterday afternoon. The warp is 3 ply merino and 2 ply Cotswold...the weft is the 2 ply Cotswold and merino single plied with silk single... ooowww wonderful stuff. It finished at 74" length with an added 4" of fringe x 16" wide. According to the book, any time a person does leno weaving there is a narrowing of the width of the piece... so extra weft should be left... Well... it didn't seem to matter what I did, the leno would pull in. My advise... just plan your width around the width of the pulled in leno weave.

I love the way this turned out. I think I will add some beads and maybe some embroidery on the ends... We'll see...

DH and I are off to Durant to Ozark Mills today to get some more wool. While I have every intention of finishing the flax, it is not my favorite thing to spin. I find that it is almost like trying to spin twigs and occasionally hurts my fingers like I have stickers in them. The Cotswold was something new to me and I really enjoyed it. I think I will try at least one new kind of wool each time we go.

My diet is working extremely slow.... and to top that off... the steroid pack the doctor gave me for my wrist and elbow causes immediate weight gain. Sooo... doing nothing any different on my diet, I had an overnight weight gain of four (4) .. make that 4... pounds! But... lost a pound of it yesterday, so looks like I will have to lose all 4 again.. sigh Oh well... at least they are going...

Found some wonderful tea that I can drink with no sugar. I mean wonderful...

Have a good day....

What's Up?

We are finally feeling better. Went to the grocery store yesterday because the cupboards were getting extremely bare. We have been using Agave Nectar instead of sugar...well... I have. He doesn't use sweetener in his coffee. Anyway.. according to the research I have done, the glycemic index is about 1/2 as high for Agave Nectar than it is for sugar.

I finished spinning the bamboo roving that I got a while back. It was definitely different from the wool. I then spun a bobbin full of wool and plied the two together. Then I over dyed using purple (grape) kool aid to match the bamboo. (As I was in the process of doing this, I pulled off about 20 yards of silk that I had spindle spun into a single and stuck it in the dye pot...by this time most of

the dye had been absorbed by the wool and this lovely robin's egg blue is what I got for the silk!)

Newsletter, Echocardiogram, Silk/Bamboo

There have been many ups and downs with the newsletter during the last year. We handed it over to someone else to do and for one reason or another, it did not get done.... so we are once again doing it. It will be in the mail this afternoon. This is a good thing...really wanted everyone to have theirs before Christmas. Our mailing list is now around 550, but with none sent out in a year, we are expecting quite a few to be returned as undeliverable as people move and don't send in new addresses.

Went for echocardiogram yesterday. It took quite a while, but not nearly as long as I was expecting it to take...lol (Didn't have to see the doctor!) My cardiologist has one of those doctor's offices where you make sure you have enough knitting/crocheting/nalbinding supplies with you to last for several hours.... you will need them. My DH has finally learned to take his own book with him...after he had read all of the magazines in the place at least twice in one visit. Go again next week for chemical stress test.

Made a trip to Durant, OK for some supplies and while there stopped at Ozark Mills. I got some silk roving and some bamboo roving. It's amazing the difference between spinning the silk/bamboo and spinning wool. The white in the pic to the left is the silk. The beautiful fuchsia/purple colorway below is the bamboo.