A little behind

So. It’s the first week of February and time to see where I am against the list from last month. Here’s what I said I’d do back in December:

• Make and update the pattern for my “Test Vest”
• Come up with a design for a primarily wool fabric for my vest. Planned structure is twill, but I can vary yarn diameters, etc, to make it more interesting.
• Weave a selvedge rug for the studio (and possibly another for elsewhere)

Going in reverse order, the selvedge rug is done. I can’t make another until I order more selvedges but I do want to make another one. Now that we’ve lived with it in the house for the past few weeks, we both really like the feel of it under our feet. And, the floors in the studio are absolutely bare, so it needs doing. Second item was to figure out the fabric for my vest. I’d had my mind wrapped around twill – and I think I’ll still give that one a go (Either Urquhart or an 8-shaft herringbone) but I am now also quite intrigued by the Honeycomb variant that I found in the Feb ’57 Shuttle Craft.

There’s a great discussion about how to vary two colors in the weft against a single color in the warp – and I should be able to pull that off with what I have. I’ll be using 2/28 wool (Mill Ends from WEBS), and I’ve four colors in all, so I should be able to make something work from that. I’ve also a cone of 2/34, all white, and LOTS! so that I can wind off and dye something if it really comes down to it. So, two structures for sampling – the Honeycomb variant and the Twill. Done. Last was to make and alter the vest. Absolutely no progress on that front and that’s a bit of a worry since I need to plan fabric and make sure I’ve enough yarn. At a minimum, I’ve all the pieces drawn so I can get a quick estimate of how long for the two fronts. Realistically, that’s a 10 minute job, so I’m not too fussed about that either. If I can get the vest sewn this month, I’ll feel better about the whole thing. Now, the other side of this is what’d I’d originally planned to do this month. That list looks like this:

• Sample setts as well as finishing methods for the vest fabric. Try at least *two* different warps.
• Dye yarn and sample for a krokbragd rug for the studio

The first one is fine. That’s two warps of 2 yards each. Neither has complex threading and they’re both straight-forward to weave. I think I’ll shoot for two different setts for each one and resleying takes no time at all since I’ll have multiple ends per dent. The only hitch might be the number of threads per dent and whether or not I end up with reed marks in the finished fabrics. But hey – that’s what sampling is for, right? Second is the Krokbragd. This is quite likely to fall off into March. I’ve got a lot on this month and this is purely a “fun” project. I’ve some knitting I want to finish, accounting and taxes, yadda, yadda. I give this a 50/50 chance of getting anywhere. More realistic is another round of dishtowels on the Gilmore. So Lynn – how’d you do?