Jim and I went to a SF State textile department sale on Sunday. Usually trying to get him into San Francisco is impossible. He really hates everything about San Francisco. But due to the fact that he had the week off and because it was textile related (and because I couldn't find anyone to go with me), he acquiesed. We got up there very efficiently, even finding parking in the closest possible free area they had. Amazing in itself given that there were graduations happening all weekend. We even got there about 20 minutes before the sale started. We had some good conversations with people waiting in line and I saw a couple of people from the Blacksheep guild as well. There was lots of stuff in this 20x40 foot room that looked like a lab room without the lab equipment. People were grabbing stuff so fast, you hardly had time to look at it. The largest things they had seemed to be spinning wheels. I think there were three of them at about $100 each. I got probably 10 old Handwoven magazines for $1.00 each, about 25 pounds of heavy weight chenille (at $2.00 a pound) and some tools: rope maker, some small shuttles, a warping paddle and about 20 cardboard spools for $1.00 each (not a bargain but I didn't have to pay for shipping). When I'm doing a big spinning job, I like to wind off the yarn onto these kind of spools so that I came compare colors from yarn that is still tensioned. If you try to put them into balls, there is no tension and the yarn relaxes. Lately I haven't been plying my yarn because I would rather wait for that process in case I want to weave with it single ply. Once I ply it, that's it and I have no more yarn structure creative control over it.
Do you know what the 2nd picture is of? It's a tamping tool for either tapestry weaving or cut pile. I'll be using it for cut pile.
