Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 13/10/2026I am so glad you’re my councilor. I wrote to the other two to tell them to help. 030
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 11/10/2026Got in a little #weaving time today, so weaving season is officially open (in my house). #handweaving 🧶 1220
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 06/10/2026100% agree. And yet I have the personal thermostat of a lava pool, so cool and crisp flax is my wearable fiber. 110
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Linen takes indigo well but it’s the exception, and I think it is harder to get deep blue from woad than from the other indigo bearing plants. In any case, having clothes that can be aggressively boiled in alkali and that are stronger when wet to endure laundry thrashing is definitely an upside. 010
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Maybe? It’s also pretty hard to dye strong colors on linen (relative to wool or silk) so it also seems like it could have been a co-evolved ‘default’ more than a choice in western costume. 110
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 05/10/2026For sure! I remember seeing that linen armor on a Time Team episode way back when… lots of labor. But everyone’s washable linen undergarments were already a bucket of work to fabricate. 110
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 05/10/2026The flax crop grown last winter/spring was retted in batches over the summer and is now through the first processing stage… mostly so I don’t have a haystack filling up the porch. #handspinning #spinning #fiber #slowfiber #flaxtolinen #fiberflax #flax 🧶 2333
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Oh i hope you get a good show. I grew up back east and I miss it. The PNW has lovely forests but they are not the fiery hardwood spectacle you get. 000
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Oh I have had it for years (well, I grafted the Toika dobby onto a Glimakra standard in 2017-ish) and I love it! I just figured while I was up there oiling I should take some video. Now all I need is for it not to be 80-some degrees in October… 100
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Side view of the next few sheds in the test pattern. You can just see the knots moving up near the dobby head as the shafts go up and down. 130
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 03/10/2026The guts of the Toika dobby loom mechanism as I open and close sheds using the (sole, sewing machine style) treadle. #weaving #handweaving 🧶 1101
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Warp is fully laced on, only needs a little tension-leveling before weaving. Dobby maintenance is done. Now it is too hot up here so I am headed outside. #handweaving #weaving 🧶 060
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Back at the loom, threading and now sleying, for a fine Saturday (and I spose #Caturday) morning with supervision from Pips #handweaving #weaving 🧶 0140
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 02/10/2026This is legacy-preservation project that is close to my heart - acquiring Jim’s equipment and supplies to keep on with his transformative and magical from-first-principles gothic bookbinding workshops. I wish everyone could have spent some time with Jim Croft. #bookbinding #oldways #artistbooksgofund.meDonate to New Old Ways: Continuing the Legacy of Jim Croft, organized by Brien BeidlerNew Old Ways: Continuing the Legacy of Jim Croft Through Land-based Boo… Brien Beidler needs your support for New Old Ways: Continuing the Legacy of Jim Croft 031
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 30/09/2026I hope you post some side-by-sides comparing loom state to finished. I am eager to see them! 200
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Excellent! I am putting my pile of miscellaneous thicker hand spun into a peg loom rug. I might have to spin more to make a tolerable aspect ratio. 011
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 27/09/2026I do like spinning but think I can safely promise never to make 6000 yards of the same yarn. 080
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 27/09/2026First warp for the winter weaving season is going onto the big loom (despite it being very warm and sunny and enticing outside). #handweaving #weaving 🧶 2230
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 18/09/2026For sure! I go that way by car and am already enjoying the slowed pace of the cars, and the bin thing seems fixable. 020
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Have you ridden it on a Friday morning at all? It looks like the neighbors are putting out the bins ok - on the grass or on the car-side curb but the bins are getting dropped in the middle of the bike lane when the collection truck puts them back down. 110
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026It will be easier to see the cross if you put a sheet of white paper or fabric below your lease sticks. 000
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 09/09/2026I’d hope they will also collect some data and keep an eye on the vicinity of the St Johns Bridge which I expect will get extra snarly on the St Johns side in with drivers from WA avoiding the Fremont bridge in the mornings. 020
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 06/09/2026Don’t forget to post it again after you’ve wet finished it. I am eager to see how those sparkles of color wind up. 000
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 05/09/2026I have read about hemp brakes in Kentucky having metal nosings on each of the rails/fins. This one is all wood? 120
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 02/09/2026The paper info was in alt text. The chunky one was handmade - cotton from an old futon and some abaca fiber. The brown one is a rice paper - probably Yasutomo - treated with kakishibu (persimmon) and sun-exposed to darken it. The third is my buddy’s used Japanese calligraphy rice paper sheets. 110
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 02/09/2026It’s lovely! You don’t ever want to spin woolen (or cotton) off the point with it? The knob is cute but it locks you in to using it like a drop spindle with a half-hitch or a hook. 030
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Supported spindles work for paper too, but lightly twisted paper holds itself against gravity just fine. It’s just hard to dial back the take-up (the pull on the forming yarn from differential rotation of the flyer and bobbin) enough to avoid breakage but still have the yarn actually wind on. 010
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 01/09/2026I used a drop spindle but let me make the friendly quibble that spinning on a wheel is still 100% by hand. If the paper strips are soft enough they are too fragile to stand the take up on a treadled wheel. A hand-controlled Great Wheel could work but seems a little over the top for paper ribbons. 110
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 01/09/2026I saw the demo unit at CW Seminars and it seems pretty neat. Slower than my Toika dobby unit, but fitting on a Baby Wolf is pretty rad. 111
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 01/09/2026A little basketweave/pie-lattice if you need another carving motif? It looks fun so far. 110
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 31/08/2026I gather it knits up and crochets nicely too. I am unqualified to say anything about needle arts it seems also like one could couch it onto a surface like goldwork. 010
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 31/08/2026I have a bunch of commercial Japanese paper yarns in my weaving stash - it softens when washed but doesn’t disintegrate like you’d expect. And if you don’t wash it it has a really neat sculptural hand. These are pretty small amounts and fairly coarse so probably destined for book/box closures. 120
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 30/08/2026Some yarn spun on a cross-arm spindle from a few kinds of paper, started awhile ago and finished at yesterday’s meetup with my spinning and dyeing crew. #handspinning #handspun 🧶 3200
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Also, I’m a chemist by training but my MechE friends would often decorate their work spaces with ‘failure analysis’ broken things/sculptures (just as my lab bench was awash in colorful residues, wee glassware, and wild glassblowing failures. Comedy a/o decoration in educational drag, if you like. 120
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 29/08/2026If you have to keep the new lab academically dignified, maybe you can bring some quirkiness into a smaller volume of space, eg the sign-in or equipment-queue is housed in a dog-crate sized and oft-updated tabletop shrine to the lost maker space. Part display/lure/puppet theater/tactile experience? 210
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 29/08/2026I am definitely in a post-TdF spinning lull. Not quite a hiatus, as I have a dressed distaff of flax and I am meeting up with local spinners tomorrow, but dialed way back from the Tour. I have to attend to my -other- craft practices too! 110
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 29/08/2026How sad! Even if it isn’t ’Net Sad’ for your makers overall it is still definitely a bummer. 110
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 23/08/2026I don’t have any resources for you but I want to hear ALL about it. 030
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 17/08/2026The mostly-Nordic breed study from #TourdeFleece is almost as entertaining to wind off as it was to spin. #handspinning 🧶 1170
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 17/08/2026I was taught to make them out of burls whenever possible, to take advantage of the chaotic grain’s resistance to the hard life of the tool. 110
Pips’ Left Paw @pips-left-paw.bsky.social · 16/08/2026The PNW backyard cotton-growing experiment is progressing along very sloooooowly. #slowfiber #cotton #handspinning 🧶 0160
