The Kalamazoo Valley Museum Demo was Good

Demos (demonstrations) are usually good. We go somewhere, we sit at a table with tatting shuttles, and people come and say, "Wow! My grama used to tat! I didn't know anyone did that any more!" Great fun. Today we had one woman demonstrating bobbin lacemaking on both a cookie pillow and a roller pillow. We had three tatters, and I did a couple more rows of knitted lace on my tussah silk scarf.

This is the other end of my scarf from the Shetland Lace workshop. I have one end done, but I want both ends to match. That is, I don't want the pattern to be upside-down at the far end. So I'm making two ends that will meet in the middle and be grafted together. It is still pretty scrumply, but should look better after I get it blocked.

The yarn is tussah silk from a big cone my mom gave me years ago. It had gotten damaged on one end. I used my wool winder and wound pieces off until there were no more broken ends, so [I hope] all the damaged parts have now been wound off the cone. It was massive! There are still about two pounds left.

The disadvantage of this yarn is that I have to pick off the slubs (it comes with instant yarn-pills) and the occasional leaf-fiber strand before I knit each row. But it has a lovely hand when it's washed, limp, soft, shiny. Mmm.