Moving along through the tapestry...

I've gotten several inches into the new tapestry now.  I was away from the loom for a day earlier in the week when I went to Asheville for a meeting, by way of Sapphire, North Carolina.  I stayed overnight there with friends, Noel & Patrick... Noel has Norsk Fjord Fiber and I picked up more yarn while I was there that I'd ordered from her.

So lovely to see all those grays together!  But the skeins need to be either rolled into balls or onto spools before they're ready to easily use.  Winding a ball from the skein involves an umbrella swift and ball winder -- and time!  I've clocked myself at about 3 minutes per skein to put it on a swift and wind the ball; that's when I don't run into a snag that sometimes happens.  So I'd gotten 33 new skeins... 33 x 3 minutes = a hour and a half + of non-weaving time.  Then there are the minutes of preparation before the next skein is read to wind, then taking off the ball that was wound, putting it out of the way, picking up the new skein...soon those 99 minutes actually turn into several hours of yarn processing.

A couple of times in the past I've hired a young person from the university's art department to help with tasks in the studio so I did that again.  Here's Alisha, a art student who's studio concentration is textiles, helping out:

And here's the result of her few hours of labor--neat and orderly balls of Norwegian Vevgarn, one of my favorite yarns to use:

And... a quick photo of progress at around 1 p.m. today, May 25, 2012: