Better

I got tired the sound of my voice, inside my head, whining, "I don't like any of the wefts..." so I sampled another lot. Usually this is a no-brainer, but the basement still looks like this; actually it looks messier because I've been moving stuff around as I work, but I dug in and got some more wool.

Oh, the top blue, I have about that much more left and that's it, but I had to try. The dark green possum/merino/silk I forgot I had because it's so not my color but it works in this context. Possible. All three naturals look unnaturally white in contrast to the very black black warp, so for now I'm not planning on using them.

I'm not a fan of using variegated yarns in the weft because they look stripey. The top navy/purple/green is a wool of some type my source sent me by mistake. It's woolen but tightly spun, but not high twist, and skinny and somewhat shiney, and not soft; it's not corse, but "hard". The resultant cloth, (still damp,) almost feels like I used, oh, a silk of some kind, not fluffy, not meaty, but drapes nicely, and the uniform value hides the stripiness; in fact the colors look great. So, unless the cloth turns out wire-y when completely dry, this is a definite yes.

The brown/range/yellow/pink (yes!)/green is 100% merino; years ago I bought 2kgs of it as a challenge to myself during my "absolutely no orange" period. It looked a little more sedate on the website, but unruly in real life, and over the years I asked many weavers what they would do. Knowing I hate taming colors by combining them with black, many have said this may be one time I might have to do that, all 2kg of it. It is a nice merino, and with the motif so big and in-your-face, I wondered if it might work in this context, and I'm kind of sitting on the fence, swinging my legs, and acting coy.

Black on black turned out funereal, although with 100% merino the warp does stand out just the way I expected. I'll do the dark blue variegated first, then either dark green P/M/S or the screamy orange, and then I'll decide. Names like "Shadows", "Ancestors", "Crowd" and "Picture Album" come to mind, so apparently I'm still on the many-faces track.

Between our colds, intermittent rain and threats of more horrendous weather, we've managed to wash and dry the wool carpet but not the underlay. Plus, if we are going to get more rain, we want to make sure the basement remains dry before we put that tiny area back to normal. Which is why I'm working in this obstacle course for now; at some stage soon we need to put things away because Syrie warp needs to be made on the horizontal mill, (it's the one in front of the back storage wearing a bedsheet,) and I don't really want to make a delicate warp in the garage.

I'm faring better, but I've been clearing my throat noisily every few minutes and I don't want to be a nuisance in class or at the cinema, so tomorrow is going to be a home day.