Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Warped


String along
Originally uploaded by littlekidd
We trekked down to Boulder, Colorado last week for a lovely visit with Jim's family.

Since we lived in Denver for 10 years, we also made arrangements to see countless old, great friends. It was a VERY busy week. We hiked, we ate, we took Zack climbing and to the drum store and spent a lot of time driving around to meet people.

We also spent a ton of time doing "mandatory retail therapy." Because we live in the sticks, we take advantage of rare opportunities to stock up at places like Coscto and Target and Nodrstrom and REI when we go to The Big City.

So, having spent an entire week enduring fun but tightly-scheduled schlepping, I was faced with the prospect of Not Enough Time Left.

I had had about an hour of personal discretionary time the entire week... and it did not fall during Regular Business Hours. Suddenly we were on our last day and, other than one emergency needle stop, I had not spent ANY quality time in any of the local yarn shops.

Grandma and Grandpa graciously agreed to shepherd Zack through an afternoon of fun, and I high-tailed it down to Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins..

I had been in this wonderful store once before looking for yarn. I admit, I didn't find it the friendliest place at the time. But I went back because all the way down from Jackson I'd been hatching a plot in my mind to explore spinning and weaving, and I knew they had the goods.

Well, I now understand that, for the folks at SS&S, knitting is wonderful fun. But spinning and weaving are their passions. The store is co- owned by one of the spinning world's Great Ones... Maggie Casey. My timid inquiry about which drop spindle might be right for a beginner led to a terrific 15 minute private primer from Maggie on how to draft and spin.

After that, Maggie hooked me in with one of her weaving folks, who hooked me up with this groovy loom. In a cool 45 minutes I had dropped a wad of cash at this place. No wonder they were so happy.

Now, since I have more yarn than I can possibly knit in a lifetime, I think this weaving thing is going to work out just fine. I confess I haven't had time to play with the drop spindle again yet, but I warped a skein of Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn and I'm going to use a skein of my own hand-dyed for the weft. (The red in the picture is just a dishtowel I put under the loom clamps so they wouldn't mar the table.) Pictures of progress forthcoming.