Four months of crafting updates

[unicornduke]

I thought I did more of these, but the last one was Sept 1st and honestly, Sept and Oct might as well not even have existed for all that I can remember really what happened.

Previous goals:

• finish knitting the sweater because then I can wear it. I really want to wear it - I got to the cuff ribbing, tried the sweater on and realized that I hadn't done decreases on the arms, so I had to rip them back to the elbows.
• spin! - did some spinning! Finished an 8oz skein of yarn of pretty stuff, spun 4 oz of grey merino singles, spun 4 oz wensleydale singles
• weave! - finished weaving the project on the loom! Tied off the warp ends so I hopefully can tie a new warp onto it
• sew! - coat is getting extremely close to done, like I could wear it now. Topstitching and buttons are the only things left
• pull out, clean and finish the great wheel while the weather is nice - lmao no
• process fleece - I finished processing a fleece!
• other - crafting room is partially set up and a Great Sorting is in progress. I went to a fiber festival even though it was inconvenient timing. Put together 25 items to take to the weavers guild show and sale and sold around half of them. I was reunited with my CPW and immediately started spinning on it. I missed it so much.

8 oz of 80/10/10 merino/bamboo/nylon spun up as a two ply yarn. Originally for weaving, I washed it and sold it at the weavers guild sale. 1150 yards. It was really pretty but I didn't think I'd actually do anything with it. The colors in this photo are very bad but I dug through my pictures and couldn't find any good ones.


Fleece! Combed! It is a nice big fleece that I got from J who sheared it for me from one of his sheep. It was a Cotswold/Dorset cross and the crimp was absolutely beautiful. Final weight of prepped fiber was 2lbs 15oz starting from around 4lbs of fleece. I think. I seem to have misplaced the tag or it's fallen down into the bag. that weight might not be super accurate since this was a fleece that I prepped on and off and used it during spinning demonstrations. As soon as I got my CPW out of the shed, I started spinning it and already spun a bobbin. It's so lovely to spin, hand combed fleece is a beautiful thing and I love it so much.



Weaving project. this was 5 yards of green warp with blue weft and it turned out very teal. I did threaded in herringbone so it is vertical and realized why it pops up so much in textiles that I've seen : it is easy treadling and much easier to do than the horizontal herringbone, with less mistakes. Setup takes way more time but I just flew through it. I haven't washed this yet, but I will at some point. I left the warp ends on the loom with some extra, I'm hoping to wind more warp and tie it on as a new technique. i still have a bunch of the yarn left in blue, green and gold, more than expected so I might do a couple more projects with it.



The coat! It looks like a coat!!!! It's kinda wild how that happened. It took me a relative eternity to get all the components assembled but the actual sewing has been progressing rapidly now. I have to top stitch the front edges and the collar and neckline. Then do the buttons and buttonholes and it's done. wild. There is one minor issue I need to fix where something went wrong with my pattern layout on the fabric and there's one small corner of the shoulder that doesn't have any grey on it, just the canvas backing, so I think I need to weave in some bits to make it not visible. The grey cloth is handwoven wool/mohair fabric. I did run into an issue with the back vent in that the included instructions were fully incomprehensible. I had to watch a video from a nice Nigerian women who clearly sewed lined jacket vents all the time and actually showed how the sewing all worked for it even to make sense. Bad instructions, so I have been doing things out of order a bit to actually make it work. I have beef with vogue about this and I will never forgive and I will never forget



January crafting goals

• finish weaving yarn inventory - spreadsheet already set up and entry started
• get loom into crafting room
• spin! and ply the two things I've got languishing
• knit the sweater, maybe try and finish it? I've got two crochet projects that I want to make
• finish the coat?!?!?!
• hang some art on the crafting room walls

Comments

[ranunculus]

Coat looks great!
You really did get a lot done even with the move and all that chaos. When do you sleep??

[unicornduke]

I'm so pleased with the coat! Honestly, I mostly craft before or after dark although I know in October there was some weeks when the only crafting I did was during the zoom hangout. But even 2 hours a week is still progress!