Scattered Thoughts

Silly me. I discovered that I never did show the finished Lichen Twist sweater! Took photos ages ago on Debbie Double and put the whole thing right out of my little brain. So here you go:

You can wear it a couple of ways but I like this one best. It does tend to slip up beyond the bust a little as I move around. As a draped front it just seems to want to fall off my shoulders:

I know - everything always wants to fall off my shoulders. Probably due to the lack thereof. Looks kind of dramatic like this however, doesn't it? This little darling is a lot warmer than it looks too. A shawl with sleeves!

Speaking of Lobaria, the new batch of lichen is still drying in the dye studio. I can tell the parts that are still damp because they're still green. I'm looking forward to eventually dyeing something with it to see if the colour comes at all close to my old batch. Did you know that Lobaria is a symbiosis of a fungus, a green algae and a cyanobacteria? Three completely different kingdoms of life! And it takes until they're 25 years old to reproduce sexually? They can also reproduce vegetatively as well. Wow. Complicated little darlings, aren't they?
 
On the loom things are progressing slowly:

I managed to finish placemat number 3, this funky bright yellow singles rayon with cotton fluff rather loosely attached. Just another oddment lurking in the stash. I've started number 4 but I'm not sure whether I have enough of one colour to finish it. I may have to get even more creative! Yikes. I forget how much warp I put on in the first place so who knows how many of these Ugly Ducklings I'll end up with? The weaving is getting a little easier though. My body is finally remembering how to do it. Still very slow.

As for the tea towel exchange, my group of five has chosen a photo as inspiration for our set of towels. Unfortunately I don't have enough of the right colours in my stash of cottons. I can use some of what I have to add interest to the warp but I want to use just one colour for the weft and it's going to take 3 cones of 8/2 cotton to weave them all. Luckily Fibres West is coming up soon so Jane Stafford will happily supply me with what I need from her booth, thus saving me postage. These are sure going to be precious textiles! Hopefully useful too. The deal is we make 5, keep one and distribute the rest to our group along with complete info on the yarns and weave structure we used. I'm planning for 6 in case the first one is wonky. As it well may be!

I'm going to be somewhat quiet on this exchange until it's over in June. Sorry about that but I don't want to spoil any surprises for anyone.