Fiber Monday -- The good and the bad

J. was gone all weekend to New Hampshire where his brother lives. He (J.) and his sisters went to surprise him for his 50th birthday. It sounds as though they all had a fantastic time together. I'm glad he was able to do this. In the meantime, I was here holding down the fort. You'll also notice that there were no blog posts the days J. was gone. This was not a coincidence. Without a dishwasher, cleaning up after dinner just takes a long time these days. All the children really have been doing voluntary dish duty during the day, but still, by the end of dinner, there is a pile of dishes. By the time I'd done the dishes and taken care of children and animals there wasn't a lot of energy left. For everyone who wonders 'how I do it all' [whatever 'it' is], I can tell you that it is because J. does a lot of household work so that I can do things like sit down to write or read or knit or whatever. His efforts are not unappreciated. 

But on to fiber because I do have a few things to show. 

First, I finished weaving the long warp on my loom the other day. These are dishtowels and while they are washed, I still need to hem them.

I am always astounded at how different a warp can look depending on what color was used for the weft. These towels do have all the same warp in the same color. (The warp are the long threads which run up and down. Weft is what goes side to side.)

But now my loom is empty, so I spent some time yesterday planning my next project. This will be the first thing I've woven on my loom where I didn't use someone else's draft (pattern). We'll see how it goes. I'm halfway down measuring the warp.

Here is a better photo of the color pattern. Since we are quickly approaching the gift giving season, there are going to be times where I cannot yet tell you about a project. This is one of them. 

On to other projects such as all the wool I dyed and was dithering about how to prepare it for spinning. I have finally made a decision. I'm going to comb it despite all the leftover fiber. I briefly thought about then carding all the short bits, but realized I really, really dislike how it was to card and couldn't imaging doing that with what I would have to get through. And then I had a brainstorm which will use up the short bits and won't involve any carding. I'm going to make wool dryer balls with the rest. I tried it out with what I had after combing all of this.

Here is my first attempt. It is needle felted together and still needs to go through the wash. It's about tennis ball sized.

It also took up a lot of wool. I think I'll only be able to get about two from each color. It also didn't take that much time. Certainly less time than the carding would have taken. I'm pretty pleased with this solution. 

It sort of makes up for the project I am not entirely pleased with.

I think I'm going to have to call these the franken-socks. The top and the heel are fine. I like how they turned out. Adding in the red? I'm really not liking it. J. is fine with them, so I'll finish the second and he'll wear them and I'll call it a learning experiment. What did I learn? First, I really need to weigh as well as measure my sock yarn when I spin it to double check I have enough. If I had enough of the brown, it would have looked significantly better. Second, I really, really, really dislike the sock pattern I'm using. There were so many key parts that I felt weren't written well and I struggled to figure out how to do important steps. I've made socks before so I did have a sense of what was supposed to be happening, but these... blech. This pattern was from the book Custom Fit Socks. I really like the book because of the explanations about how to measure you foot and use those measurements to make sock patterns fit well. I think after this pair I will take what I've learned about measurements and transfer that to a sock pattern that I like better. It's going to be unpleasant knitting the second sock, though. And the third thing I learned, always measure before starting the toe section. This sock is a wee bit short for J.'s foot. It will work and I think the yarn will stretch a bit, but it could use another half inch or so. I know I should measure at this point, but I was so trusting in the measurements from the book that I didn't bother. Now I know that even if I think I know it will be okay, I should just check anyway.