Warping Frame in Action

With the frame all put together and the glue dry, it was time to see how it worked.
Here it is with a few rounds on it. It has ten posts on each side. I wind alternate posts on the way down and the way up. I had a lot of trouble keeping track of where I was so I put arrows on all the down direction posts. I left the up direction ones blank. It worked pretty well.

Here's the frame with about 24 ounces of yarn on it. I have to wind another five on it then I'm going to tie it off and start again. I figured out that I have three 29 ounce skeins to wind to have enough for the sock club. Last year I just did one big 40 oz. skein but it was too big for my ballwinder. I just love how it looks on the frame. I can see the allure of winding a loom warp now. I never got it before.

Warping Frame

I had pretty good luck making the warping frame, though I haven't actually tried it out yet.

I used my handy-dandy Japanese saw to cut up the PVC pipe. I ended up using three ten foot sections of half-inch pipe, four elbows and 24 t-joints. I decided to glue the top and bottom sections because I didn't want them to slip but left the verticals unglued so that I can take it apart for storage. I also didn't glue the small posts that stick out from the top and bottom sections so that I can pull them out to get the skein off the frame or even rearrange them to make skeins of different lengths.

So here's the finished frame. I'm going to give it a try today and see if it actually works! I'll take some pictures of it in action. If people would like a full description of how I made it, let me know and I'll post it.

Wind, wind, wind

It's that time of year again, time to wind the yarn for this year's installment of the Sock Club's self-patterning sock yarn. With some input from Guido, I've been cooking up a better way to wind the yarn. If you remember last year, the system I set up involved about two hours of walking the length of the shop over and over again (with the help of the lovely and talented Katie) in order to make a 50' skein of yarn. Since I have over twice as much yarn to wind this year, I'm in need of a better system. I'm on my way to the hardware store in search of some PVC pipe to make something equivalent to a warping frame. I'll keep you posted on what I come up with!

Happy New Year!

I'm taking a relaxed day today. This is largely due to the help Patience gave me yesterday doing my annual shop inventory. Ah, the joy of counting everything in the shop. Thanks to Patience, it only took about three hours instead of six if I were doing it by myself. Patience, You Rock!
I've also started Eris. I'm working on the collar and it is a lot of fun! It has been a long time since I knit a pattern that I actually had to pay attention to. I mean, I do knit a lot but I don't tend to knit anything that hard. This is challenging and extremely entertaining! I mean, short rows and cables at the same time! Neato!
Anyway, that's the plan today. Hope you all have a fun day planned as well!