Boxing Day

A great day for being indoors...  When I first got up it looked quite nice out - then about an hour later the snow/sleet/rain mix started and kept up for an hour or two.  It was nice to be indoors with no need to head outside at all.

 2 more placemats completed.

Yarn painted for the next lot of stripes

Anne painting yarn

The random-ish colours on the placemat are produced through a combination of the length of the 'painted' pattern - which is twice as wide as seen here (the back is a close copy of this side) - and the width of the placemat plus the design (a 'fancy' twill).  The last factor means that even if perfectly aligned for width the 'pattern' would vary from shot to shot as the ratio of weft/warp crosses changes across the 62 shots that make up the pattern.  Hence the choice of painting a random colour effect in the first place and letting the design randomise it further. The dyed yarn will be ready tomorrow morning to wash out the residue dye and I'll be setting up the drum carder for a long session producing batts.

Also Anne is about to embark on some drum carding after finally finishing the huge bag of washed Clun Forest locks. 

Flicked locks

Over quite a few months of flicking sessions there is now nearly 7lbs of flicked locks ready to run through the drum carder where they come out superbly, as the flicking removes almost all the left over VM, and sets up the locks perfectly so that they only need a couple of runs through the drum carder to produce ready to spin 2 oz batts. 

For a break we may go and see 'Lincoln' - one of the movies on our to see list. 

Hopefully the weather has picked up a bit tomorrow.