I’m in the process of changing my web furniture around so you may ‘trip’ over some things at the moment! Hopefully it will all look better soon.

There has been a great dye workshop at the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers which has inspired me to revisit my dyebooks. I use fibre reactive dyes with both cellulose and protein fibres and I went through a period of trying to control my dye colours. The compilation of this dye book actually taught me about each of the dye colours I use and how much will produce the various depths of shading. Each little skein of 2/20 mercerized cotton weighed one gram. By applying different amounts of dye solution I was able to record the results. For the pale colours I had to use a syringe to measure accurately enough.

After doing all of this dyeing I now find I have a better ‘feel’ for the dye colours rather than getting down to exactness.

The raddle is such a valuable weaving tool.

It helps to organise the warp so it can be wound on evenly. This colourful warp slid through pretty well and I find that narrow warps are much easier to beam by myself than wider ones.

I’d really like to have another person help me each time I warp but that just doesn’t happen. Firstly who has that much patience except the weaver herself. I have to order the other around because I’m in charge of the warp and who takes kindly to that. Secondly another human just isn’t always around when you need them. In the loneliness of warping I dream of helpers. I keep thinking of ingenious new ideas to streamline the operation for next time. Adding a piece of wood here and there or tieing this or that into another position. But somehow each warp seems to have different challenges and it seems like a new adventure every time.

Bonnie takes raddling a step further and uses it as a design tool.

Serendipitously, Cally has also written about raddling recently – it must be the time of year. She has actually trained her husband as a warping helper. What an inspiration.