Emotional Times

I had an interesting thing happen this week.  I was watching the last episodes of "Mad Men" on Netflix.  When the credits started on one of them, the music was "The First Time ever I saw your Face."  It brought back memories of over 40 years ago.  I looked up on YouTube and found Roberta Flack singing it in 1969.  I ended up listening to it several times and having tears run down my face.  It didn't bring back a specific memory, but mostly the feeling of another person that I was years ago.  

Afterwords, I wondered if I was crying for that person that I was, or the person that I am now, or if it just brought a release of the tension that I have been feeling with my DH's health and his status.  (Which is slowly improving, thank goodness.)  

It's amazing how hearing a song from the past can bring that kind of reaction.  It was not unpleasant, just interesting.  I do feel more relaxed about the things we have to face and the slow improvement of his health, so I guess it was a good thing...


I finally managed to get a picture of the "Cupcake" roving that I was spinning.  Just to remind you, I didn't like the color combination.  I usually love her dye colors, but this one came in a club I had joined and I got a variety of new rovings and batts to try.  

This was the original roving

This is a beautiful roving, but too "easter/ice cream" colored for me.  I looked at it for a while and decided to see if I could mellow the colors a bit so I would to like.  I decided to use it as a test, can I really change it enough?

I ran half of the roving through a drum carder to get a soft warm beige color.

First Ply

Then I split the roving on the other half, laid a couple of the split sections together and spun them.  I got some blending and some "candy cane" or "ragg" areas.

Second ply

The two ply yarn considerably softened or mellowed out the colors.  I hope my DD can knit something that she likes.

Finished 2 ply yarn

It was interesting to manipulate the roving to get something completely different from how it was dyed.  Too many times, I just end up with a yarn that adds nothing to the dye job.  Sometimes that works out well and I am happy with it.  But it is important to remember I can make it change to a different yarn.


I have been correcting the knots in the bumberet towels.  Since I was finishing up balls and cones of yarn, there were several knots that fell in bad places.  Also I had one broken end that I had added a completely different color replacement warp, because I did not have the correct color at the studio.

I found a couple of treadling errors in two of the towels.  I must have been distracted while I was weaving, or at least that is my excuse!

I was looking at the towels, and almost decided it was not worth the bother to correct them, it adds a lot of time and energy to the towels.  When I started looking at the problem, I had skipped a shot in most of the errors.  I ended up reweaving four shots in one and 3 shots in the other.  Only one of the corrections needed to have a thread taken out (I had treadled the wrong plain weave shot).  The others were just adding a shot.  and it was an easy shot, over three/under three across the piece.  

Correction in progress

On the right side of the needle, you can see the corrected shot; then on the left side, you can see the error.  Yes, it is subtle, but once it is washed it would have looked awful and I would not have been able to sell or give them away.  Now they are right.

And in the end that is what I feel good about, I made them look good.  I made the problem go away.  It is good that there are a few things that are under my control, and that I can fix!