A Quiet Day at the Mill

Today has been really quiet at Farfield Mill, in contrast to Thursday when lots of friends visited.  Both types of day are equally nice - it's great to spend time talking about our work but it's also good to have peacefully time to consider where the work is going.
 

Knitted and woven samples before and after felting.

Those of you who know my work will know that living through the making is very important to me, I need to feel that I have touched every fibre of a piece.  To that end I have spent the past two weeks creating the cloth for my samples.  I have knitted and woven fine merino wool and then felted the resulting cloth.  I am now ready to work onto and into it and will be developing the samples further this week.

The 10 metre warp wound onto
 the backbeam of my loom. 

In the last few days I have begun to warp up my loom with a new 10 metre warp ready to weave the cloth for the site specific work for Farfield Mill.  I have just finished winding the 320 ends of warp onto the back beam which has taken some time because each 50/60 end section has to be pulled, straightened, finger combed, tied onto the front beam and then wound onto the back beam about 10cm at a time.  I wish I could wind the warp onto the backbeam of my loom as easily as the large warping mill on the ground floor of Farfield Mill!

 

The large warping mill
for the power loom at Farfield Mill
that winds the warp onto the giant
backbeam (right).

Stella