Double The Fun

Day 209: I had a little problem a while back when I tried to close the cedar chest. It was so full of wool and handspun that I had to sit on the lid and then weight it with a couple of boxes to keep it down. A phrase I use often when I'm down to the last of something came to mind, and I said aloud, "Why am I archiving this?" and thus the seeds of several new projects were sown. First of all, I pulled out a couple of bags of bamboo fiber and set to spinning it into fingering weight yarn. Next, I grabbed three differently coloured bags of wool top and my blending board for spinning a heathered worsted weight. You'd have thought the diminution might have put a dent in the stockpile, but it merely gave it room to expand. I was going to have to take desperate measures in order to reduce the bulk. But what? The brainstorm hit a few nights ago: weave a wool throw using 8/2 cotton warp and the "double-width" technique on my table loom. I checked my inventory (I record fiber, yards and weight, and calculate yards per ounce on a spreadsheet) and found that I had more than enough "cinnamon twist" for a lap robe. This one is likely destined to be a donation to my favourite environmental group's annual auction, but there's another huge bag of grey Gotland wool waiting in the wings.