Bobbin Lace Sample

 I'm slowly working on bobbin lace samples.  This one has plain weave diamonds with a torchon lace ground.  As you can see from the irregularities in the sample, I haven't got the technique right yet! 

The sample pattern and instructions are from Jo Edkin's Lace Website.

This is here just so I remember....  We moved some art from the back porch to the basement while we do some remodeling.  It looks good together!  The clay pieces were all done in art class in school by the kids.  The two square pieces are interchangeable collages of my handwoven fabrics.

COE Handspinning--Silk Noil

I am forging onward with my efforts to complete the COE in Handspinning.  This week's fiber is silk noil.  My goal is to spin a one ounce skein of singles that is "extra fine" or greater than 50 wraps per inch.  I've tested the fiber already.  Now it's time to prepare the fibers, spin the fibers, spin the fibers, spin the fibers ...  You get the idea. 

The silk noil is short--about 1-2" long.  It is very soft and spins up slightly fuzzy.  I'm using my cotton cards and doing a single pass of the silk noil on the carders, then rolling it off on a thin dowel to make a silk noil puni.  It took 20-30 minutes to make ten punis today.

I'll be spinning the singles on my Bosworth book charka. I have no idea how long it will take me to finish this project!  One ounce of fiber isn't a ton (literally), but when it is being spun very fine like this it can take a while.  My test puni (just like one of the ones in the photo) took about 30 minutes to spin.  I wonder how many punis it will take to fill a spindle from the charka.  (FYI, and just so I remember, I am starting with 36 grams of silk noil.  The finished skeins are to be 1 ounce or 28.35 grams.  The extra is for the wraps per inch card--every skein needs one--and in case I run into waste in the carding process.  So far, the waste has been minimal.)