It's been a grand day

It's been a grand day even though it's been raining pitchforks and shovels as my friend JoAnn would say. After getting orders boxed up and to the post office, yes people are still shopping for gifts, I edited many photos of a total of 8 scarves so they could be listed in my etsy shop.

An ice-dyed, stenciled dragonfly scarf is one of the new scarves listed.......

.....and an ice dyed, starfish and sand dollar scarf........other scarves listed but not pictured here are hand-dyed, stenciled and handwoven/discharge dyed.

Oh yes, I did go out wearing these leggings and no, I'm not 20 years old. Of course the only place I went was to the post office wearing a knee length coat over them. They're kind of fun for wearing around the house but a little out there for me.

And this was what I've been looking at all afternoon while knitting and listening to an audio book - perfect activity for a chilly rainy day. I'm really thinking I need to do this more often, usually I'm so driven.........it's time to relax a bit.......

A bit of this and that......

Today I got the fringe twisted on the recently woven handspun yarn shawl. For some reason I can't get a good representation of the colors - it's much prettier than my photo looks.....and so yummy feeling.

I moved on to stenciling on two ice dyed silk scarves. Very simple, understated. A dragonfly on each end.

A sand dollar and starfish on each end of this scarf. I used Shiva Paintstiks, which I love, but they need a week to cure, then the paint gets set further by ironing. This looks much prettier in person.

The AVL is now ready to tie on the front beam - more gingko scarves to come. When I thread the heddles on the 40 harnesses I let the loom raise the next shaft so there's never an error in threading..........but when I reached harness 39 & 40 it refused to raise them. I was hoping there wasn't a major issue.....as there are too many of those in life this month......I shut it all down and restarted it, worked just fine for the rest of the heddle threading job....phew.

And a big failure this morning. I silkscreened three black chenille scarves with discharge paste. Two with gingkos, one with abstract designs. After the discharge paste dried I got the iron out to steam  the silkscreening which will pull the dye out. Nothing happened, nada, absolutely nothing. Sometimes depending on how a fiber is dyed it may not be effective but this is the same Silk City chenille I've used before so I know it works. Then I started wondering if there's a shelf life to discharge paste - I've had this gallon for a long time, and I'm down to the last cup. I did have a newer container, although not terribly new but it's never been opened so I got a little bundle of the chenille yarn to give it a try. It discharged. So, at some point I'll be re-silkscreening those scarves with the new container of discharge paste. So, yes, it has a shelf life. When I get in the mood to tackle this again I'll post photos.