From Sheep to Blanket

This sheep-to-blanket project will not win any speed records, but it does document a family project dear to my heart. About six years ago my son and daughter-in-law lived on a small property in northern California (the real-estate folks listed it as a "ranchette") , and kept a large number of animals, including four dogs, three cats, several geese, and a flock of five black sheep. A photograph of four of these sheep eventually became a small wall hanging I wove on my TC-1. The sheep are some combination of Leicester and Jacob, and the weave structure of the woven image is a weft-backed satin, in cotton yarns.

At shearing time my kids graciously let me keep the collected fleece of this small flock, and I sent the skirted fleece off to a mill in Michigan in a huge cardboard carton. A few months later, I received a humongous package of dark gray roving from the mill. I spun and spun and spun, and am still spinning. There is no end to this roving. So far I've got about five pounds of gorgeous two-ply lustrous dark gray almost black yarn spun up. Here's a look:

Fast forward to last year, when Bruce got his own 8-shaft Louet and started weaving. He doesn't like to design or warp, which is fine with me, as I love those two activities better than weaving (True Confessions, here). So I warped the loom with a mixed group of wools, threaded it to a point twill, and set him loose. He wove miles and miles of this stuff with my handspun almost-black yarn as weft. When we cut the yardage off the loom, I sewed three strips together with baseball stitch, and we now have a lovely blanket which is a real testament to family cooperation.

Just a brief off-topic note: there will be no posts for a few days as I am in travel mode, eventually to wind up in Chico for a workshop at AVL. Check back next week for photos from the class on Photoshop and jacquard, and a look at the new Jacq3G.