Monday

No weaving, spinning, or knitting was accomplished last night, because I spent all evening looking for that confounded ball of mohair, which was not to be found. I may have given it to my sister. Since I'm not a mohair fan anyway, not finding it does not break my heart. ;-)

In my search, I found two left-over partial cones of Forsell Velvateen, a cotton/acrylic blend. I knit a Big Snuggly for FIL out of it a few years ago on the knitting machine, and it had a very nice hand. It is not stretchy at all, so it should make a good warp yarn. I had been wondering what I was going to do this, and I'm using up stash, so it's good all around. :-D I was surprised to see how little 100% wool I have in my stash - I might have to do some stash-clearing soon.

I checked wraps per inch on the Velveteen, and although it looks like I will need to use the 10-dent heddle instead of the 12-dent used in the book, I believe I can substitute this yarn (this is really a very very basic 'pattern' - I was more concerned about the yarn being sturdy enough to be used for warp). This is another plain weave pattern, so it should go pretty easily (and possibly quickly as well). On this piece I'm going to work towards getting the right number of picks per inch and even edges.

I'm going to have my weaving girlfriend check my numbers before attempting to dress the loom, which probably won't be until next week. I need to finish the fringe on the placemats and work on my other projects a bit this week first. As soon as I finish tying & trimming the placemats I'll have a post a picture of the finished mats.

Hmm... now that I think of it, I've got some knitting machine yarn in another box that might work on the loom too....