Snail Spirals

Well, finally! Actual progress on the huck lace stoles, after being stalled with a sleyed reed for far too long. While Shaun watched the football game today, I threaded the loom.....



beamed the 7 1/2 yard warp.....



tied onto the cloth beam and spaced the header....



and wove one repeat of the lace pattern.



Apparently, this took about six hours. I say "apparently" because while I started at 3:30 pm and finished at 9:30 pm, and that is in fact six hours, I have no recollection of that amount of time passing. It felt like two hours, tops. Singleminded? Yes, I am. Luckily, Shaun took care of feeding Emma and himself, and put her to bed. (I wonder if she brushed her teeth?) I emerged from the loom room ravenous, happy, and slightly dazed. That's very fine yarn!

The pattern is another that I "unvented." I was playing around with the huck lace structure on the computer (using WinWeave), learning how all the pieces fit together, and decided to see if I could create a structure that combined two different size huck diamonds on a background of plainweave. It worked! I'm sure this isn't the first time this draft has been woven, but it's so satisfying to understand the structure well enough to be able to create it from scratch. I'm also pleased that my warp calculations were correct, and the design is centered.

The yarn is Jaggerspun Superfine Merino (18/2), set at 19 ends per inch and 19 picks per inch (though I need to work on keeping this even!). As I mentioned before, this project will have many "firsts" for me, newbie weaver that I am. First time weaving with fine yarn , first time weaving huck, first time weaving a large piece, first time sleying more than one end per dent in the reed, first time fixing a sleying error (oops), etc. Overall, though, I think I'm doing well. The warp wound on nice and tight (a little scary to pull hard on that fine yarn!), and the tension seems even so far. The part I'm having the hardest time with so far is keeping the beat gentle. It's so fun to give the beater a "thwack" rather than a "push," and all I need is to snuggle the new pick up next to the one before. No beating!