Finishing Touches - weaving, yarn, and excitement

Fresh off the loom, this double wide blanket in Ashford's 12-ply Tekapo was a dream to weave at four ends per inch

It's 2 am and there's a pot of Cardamon Coffee steeping on the stove top.  I'm going to have to be careful when I drink it.  I don't want any stains on this white wool blanket I'm working on.  With enough coffee fueled insomnia I have a good chance of finishing the finishing before the day begins.  

It never ceases to amaze me how much time finishing takes.  Making something, be it spinning yarn, weaving cloth, dyeing yarn, or planting the garden is actually the easy part.  In most cases, it takes as long to finish a project as it does to make it.  Sometimes longer.  Linen yarn, for example, is spun at the wheel.  That's the easy part.  It is next measured into skeins, tied, soaked, boiled in many changes of water, re-skeined and blocked while drying.  After which it is inspected again, labeled and stashed away.  

Same too with this blanket.  It took only a few hours to weave, but at least as many to finish.  First we cut it off the loom and inspect for mistakes.  Next repair the mistakes with a darning needle and yarn.  From there, the edges are finished, in this case with a fringe, and after that it is fulled (washed with agitation) to be just right.  Finally, tonight's task: the final inspection where I go over every inch (front and back) to locate any loose threads, flaws, areas that need further fulling, or anything else that can be achieved.  It's a lot of work, but the results are worth it.

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