How do the rest of you get your creativity flowing when you have no juice left? I did a lot, and I do mean a lot, of spinning over the winter. I played with colours, with silks, with blends, mohair, qiviut, camel, linen, all sorts of wools and nothing inspired me, nothing moved me. I joined a knitting group to relearn knitting. The group speak French as their primary language, so that was a doubly challenging. We have a blast and I have to say I’m still a terrible knitter and still not bi-lingual, but I love their company. Perseverance might be the only way through this arid spot.
We have started cleaning the Guild space and prepping for destashing. In the 100 inch loom studio was a very large bag containing rags for weaving catalogne blankets. These are traditional Quebec coverlets to keep sleepers warm during deep winters. They are thick and heavy. They are also quintessential recycle projects since they are made from strips of rags. I was allowed to purchase all the yellow strips. These are made from cotton jersey and I loved the colour.
One of our guild members made the happy/sad decision to accept a job in her home city and left here to move across the country to Vancouver. She generously offered her yarn for sale to Guild members. I love her colours so much that I violated my promise-to-self of no more yarn in the house. If you closely at the picture below you might spot a little loop of thread laying on the yellow spool. That is all that remains of the mushroom cotton. That’s yarn chicken at it’s finest, less than one yard remained on a 500gm bobbin.
All the mushroom, yellow and magenta cotton threads are now measured as a 10 yd warp ready to go on the loom and be woven with the yellow rags.
The final piece of this little “get moving – get weaving” scenario was a bag of warp spacers for a sectional beamed loom. These spacers really were the topper because they allow me to do a really long warp on my loom. I have no excuses anymore. This weekend I just need to put my mind to getting on with it and know I’ll enjoy getting creative again.
