When life gives you stick shuttles, make lease sticks...or the start of the 100 warps project.

I recently bought a house, and last week I had my first house guests, two friends who are both fantastic textile makers, and weavers. They helped me set up my Wool room, so now Bertha has a forever home, looking out at a garden I planted with high hopes of attracting bees and birds and butterflies. It is not much now, but hopefully will fill in. The window you see is the window to my wool room and when I am weaving I look right over the back of the Buddha's head and have already seen cardinals , robins, and monarchs.

I was showing my handspun cotton stash to my friends and talking over various drafts to use and we got sidetracked and eventually I doodled a draft in a notebook, and decided to try it out in wool as I need to spin up more cotton to make a warp for more than two towels or so. They helped me pick out some yarn from my stash and we set to warping. I have no lease sticks, so we made due to with some stick shuttles, thrums, and painter's tape. It worked!

I literally did a happy dance as I saw the cloth start to grow. This is literally clothing have dreamed of making. It was all handspun, leftover Manx Laughton from gnomespun I made into a sweater, some brown wool, and a yarn from the gnomespun spinning fiber club from a few years ago. The weft is a brown Shetland. 

Once I saw the fabric develop and talked with my friends abou the value of practice, I decided to make 100 warps of this draft. I like how it looks, there is plenty of scope for exploration if I get bored, and the repetition will make sure I have warping down pat. I am just about halfway done with warp number two.