Surprise Tweed

Well, its been a good week. On Tuesday I got a phone call from someone who had a warp and needed it woven up. "Bring it on....", I said!

The warp had been chained as it was taken from the stakes so we threaded it over rollers suspended from the ceiling above the front and the back of the loom....

and then spread the warp ends evenly across the raddle.

Once the flanges either side of the beam had been adjusted to the correct width so it would wind securely....

Then with one of us hanging onto the chained warp and the other turning the handle of the beam, the warp wound itself onto the beam.

Next job was winding the pirns to go in the shuttles to make the weft shots. We have a six spindle winder, though only five are operational just now. The cone of yarn sits on a spike at the bottom of the frame, the cardboard pirns are on spindles which are rotated by drive bands attached to a cylinder which is turned by a little 0.25hp motor. We needed to wind around three hundred pirns.

I actually missed taking the photo of tying-in the new tweed - it was done while I was out of the loomshed. Anyway, the photo above was taken after about 20 pirns had been woven. You can see the revolving box on the left with the shuttle in the segment, and the reed at the front which carries the warp ends as they come through the heddles.

And finally, the finished tweed, folded, tied and ready to go to the mill.

Job Done!!

Changing the subject, when I got home from my travels last week I found lambing in full swing. The first black lamb has a white mum! Mum is half-hebridean and half-cheviot. Last year she had a white male and this year she has a black female. So the lamb is, by my calculation... 75% Hebridean and 25% Cheviot.

We also have one little lamb on the bottle - a female blackface with no horns at all! Here she is playing with Heather the dog, who has had a haircut since she last featured on the blog.

While I had the camera handy, I caught Heather gazing through the gate at one of the Buff Orpingtons, who are getting huge. They really are the size of a beachball, but its all feathers. Underneath they are pretty scrawny. They are also ne of the few hens that are not laying. If they weren't rare breed birds I'm afraid I would be considering their future very seriously. The other hens are doing sterling work for the cause, and we have the "Eggs for Sale" sign out every day now.