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It's 2021! We Made It!

Welcome to 2021!  Apparently, 2020 will go down in the history books as the most insane year ever.  From the start of the Pandemic, social unrest, murder hornets, and politics...I mean...did I leave anything out?!  

     I have taken a personal vow not to watch any news, focus in my home and at my job only.  I've been doing this for a few months now and can't believe how relaxed I feel compared to when I was glued to the internet every day waiting for the next story or breaking news.  I'm getting a lot more done in the weaving department and my online sales hit an all time high in 2020.  There are many colorways that I'll have to recreate because they sold out so quickly!

     I have about 15 or 20 draft posts saved from projects that I was working on.  I'm half tempted to just scratch them but will probably use them as filler content.  I'm not sure how I want to proceed with my blog....do I just blog and say what I'm working on and how it's going or do I make a separate blog post for each project start to finish?!  It's important for me to have pictures in there.....I'll have to take a lot of pictures.  So, I guess I'll share what is on the loom right now and that's how this post will go.  Am I overthinking this?!  Yes....of course I am!

     You can always tell when I’m at the end of my color selection because pink is in the run!  This is a very popular pattern and I had a ton of pink and purple to play with.  I really like the way it weaves up and I had a 10 yard run woven in a day...personal record actually.  I really like the window affect and think I will play with this again in greens, blues, and tan….kind of like at the beach. 

     Since I have the treadles all tied up to this pattern and I’m waiting for the next shipment of unmercerized cotton, I figured that I would go ahead and use up some of this silk noil with the same pattern.  This will be a wide scarf and I may use some silk noil in white for the weft to go with this natural tan….we’ll see what the warp tells me it wants once it’s on the loom.  

     With the Christmas tree up in the middle of the living room, I was unable to weave on the Glimakra and I didn’t have a project on the Megado.  Where I set up my warping board is the exact same place I put my tree up.  Both looms were bare and there was not much I could do about it other than to be patient.  So…..I spun some yarn.  I haven’t done that in a while and have more fiber than I care to admit that I have.  This first one is a batt that I bought from a seller on Etsy.  Basically you purchase a surprise batt and she sends you whatever in the mail.  I couldn’t seem to capture the sparkles in this one but I love it and am contemplating making something out of it to keep :)  I plied it with a deep purple nylon thread and got a lot of amazing poofy texture out of it! 

     This yellow and blue skein was created from Pennbrook Fibers and I found her on Instagram.  I think I like EVERYTHING she makes!  She had these sparkly yellow, blue, and white rolags that I just had to have so I bought them.  Given the delay in being overseas and the pandemic, they took quite a while to get here and I lost the urge to spin by the time that they finally arrived.  I pulled the rolags out, single spun them, wound them into a ball, and plied it onto itself adding some teasworth locks in the same yellow for some texture! 

     This last one is some silk I’ve had in my stash from over 10 years ago!  When I pulled out the box it was delivered in and looked at the address, I had to chuckle.  The color is amazing!  I spun up the cultivated silk in glorious reds and oranges and plied it with a cultivated silk in just white.  I might keep this skein too.  :)



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