Sunday, November 16, 2008

It's Almost Spinning Itself....

I'm in the midst of a bit of angst and tedium. Angst: OHS Level 1 project 2 is to first of all mount up all our dye work from the summer school week - and I'm sorting the dye-class box but still only have vague ideas about a good way to mount. Part 2 of project 2 is a dye gradation exercise - 11 steps from "undyed" to "full strength" at 0.1 increments. Not in itself a daunting task for me, I can do it all in one pot with a handfull of baggies. BUT - our instructor said that while she wasn't grading our spinning, she expected our dyeing to be on our own handspun. The Tedium, thus: Monique is engaged with a half-pound pile of plain old white Corriedale, which is a basic and sturdy wool, good for practice, but not particularly thrilling or motivating to spin for me just now.

So, of course, having developed some sort of attention-deficit problem due to extreme creative multitasking, I got into other things to take the edge off. I've declared this to be my Rhinebeck project:



It is the over 200 grams of Ocean fibre (seawool) dyed by the uber-colour-savvy Dianne of Creatively Dyed, and which you met a couple of posts back It is being spun on one of my family of 5 Bosworth spindles, this one the 39 gram Purpleheart I special-ordered, and picked up at Rhinebeck. Hence, the Rhinebeck project.

While I'm here, a quick pre-reminder: I'll be selling my handpaints at the last 2008 Stitch and Kitsch show in another month, on December 13th. If I do any more dyeing before then it will be very little. A few samples are up in the Etsy shop (see the right panel) and there are actually lots more, I just don't want to pay to list them yet if I'll be trucking them all out to a show. They'll go up after the 13th, though, and can ship for Christmas if ordered quickly.