I Finished It!!

Wednesday I spent some time at my LYS, during that time I was able to knit all the points on the shawl but the last two.  Friday night after see my student's Miniature Golf hole at the Salt Lake Arts Center, I came home and finished the last two. 
I was not able to graft the end together until Saturday after going to the Farmer's Market (great peas, lettuce, pesto and eating a fruit pie).  First of all I needed good light and fresh eyes to do the work.  I think that I did a pretty good job, the faggot area of the border is messed up but the rest is passable and I will not be distracted by it when I wear it.

I laid it out on the dining table to look at it in full.

And did an "artsy" shot of it in the front yard.  I had taken it out into the sunlight to see if I could get the metallic and the beads to show up better, but it didn't work.

I stretched it out on the livingroom run and then sat there keeping the cat away.  I decided that I could not sit there for 24 hours and in our dry climate it does dry faster, but I put a low fan in the room to speed up the drying.  Besides I was excited to see it unpinned.  The yardstick is there for a size comparison.

When it was dry, I put it back on the dining table for a comparison.  It is beautiful and out of the Zephyr yarn (50% silk/50% merino wool) it feels wonderful.  The beads provide enough weight to have it hang well.

The tartan weaving is coming along well, almost done with the first scarf and soon to start the second. 

The studio space is becoming usable again (after stacking stuff in there during the black hole period in March) and the cat deciding the hand woven rug was a litter box (more on that later, I am still not finished with that-but at least the room is habitable now). That has been a couple of weeks of cleaning and putting away **STUFF**.

I have been moving on another craft front and have been doing some spinning with a beautiful roving that had belonged to another spinner.  It is 60% cashmere/30% silk/10% merino wool.  I spun up a sample and I think it could work well for a simple shawl someday.

Spinning is a combination of two parts, stretching the fibers out smooth (drafting), then twisting the fibers together (spinning).   For this roving, and for many that I purchase, I like to pre-draft to loosen up the fibers.  Here you can see the roving on the right as it came from the skein and after it has been pre-drafted on the left.  Now the roving is airy and the fibers will slip past each other easily as I spin.  I will do more drafting as I spin the yarn.

I have been spinning it on my Schacht matchless wheel, it is my favorite and has adapted to the fine spinning by using the faster whorl (converts each turn of the fly wheel to more turns of the spindle, thinner yarn needs more twist).   The quarter is for comparison for the size of the single yarn.  I will ply two of these together for the yarn to be ready for knitting.

I have seven skeins of 28 grams each of this roving, so I think I will have plenty of yarn for the shawl.  I like the honeycomb pattern shawl that I saw in Piecework.