It was over too soon…

Sigh.

The knots have crossed up over the back beam.

Let me explain…

I love to weave.  I mean, just sitting at the loom, working the loom, throwing the shuttle in a rhythm, back and forth from hand to hand, completely synchronized with my feet pushing on the treadles in a simple sequence, and the rocking motion that comes from beating the yarn into place.  It is a well timed dance. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

When I turned 30, I was getting to the end of my tenure as a production weaver.  I was tired.  I had done craft fairs for almost 8 years, and I was looking for something else to entertain me and I crossed one of those “what now” moments in life.  I had always wanted to ride a horse, and the opportunity presented itself in the form of an adult school class and I decided to try.  As with first approaching a loom, approaching riding a horse is just as awkward and painful and yet, I kept at it, eventually finding myself a private teacher on a local farm.  We would often ride bareback into one of the Morris County parks.  It was a great feeling once I learned to understand the horses movements, anticipate what the horse was seeing and feeling, and my body learned to work with the horse, not fight it.  The horse I rode regularly was temperamental and a bit clumsy and I learned to sense when the horse was about to trip and be able to use the reins to gently raise the horse’s head so it could recover from the near stumble easily.  Since I had no saddle, I could only hold on with my legs, which is what should have been happening anyway.

Sadly I had to give up my new passion within a couple of years as I found myself pregnant at 34 with my son.  The doctor wouldn’t let me ride, and that was fine.  But the experience of riding, actually racing up the steep incline into the county park, with just the muscles of the horse under me, there was no way to actually describe it except to say, it is a lot like what I feel when I weave.

I usually weave yardage.  I make garments after all, and it doesn’t make sense to me to weave anything else.  As a matter of fact, it was only in a blog post a couple of years ago I admitted that I had never woven a dishtowel.  I have since discovered the joy of giving hand made dishtowels, and actually my family rather expects them as gifts during the holidays, but really, the way I design them, they are just narrow cotton/linen yardage.  Single shuttle, simple treadling sequence.  I can fly like the wind.

Hence the problem…

I enjoy the design process, the prep work for starting a new piece of yardage.  I almost never weave less than ten yards.  Doesn’t make sense to me.  Twelve yards for me is a pretty standard warp length.  I can do a lot with that amount of fabric.  Sleying, threading, beaming, all the steps of dressing a loom are very zen for me, and I do enjoy each of the processes, but they aren’t physical and I’m not using my entire body, “running” with the loom.  That comes once the set up is complete.

And then I run, no actually I gallop.  The one thing I miss about my production years, was the speed I could maintain weaving off 30 yards of 45″ wide fabric.  Yes, it was only 12 picks/inch, but I could and did sectionally beam, thread, and weave off 30 yards of mixed warp in a single day.  I was young then.  I could do a lot of things in my 20’s I wouldn’t even consider today.  Yet, as I near my 60th birthday (next May) I still remember the feeling of riding bareback on a horse when I sit down at the loom and just weave.

Weaving yardage is not as simple as it sounds.  The rhythm is the most important thing here, and of course accuracy.  But mistakes can be cut around, and repaired later if necessary, having a consistent rhythm is critical to having consistent yardage.  And when you are in it for 12 yards or more, there is no room for dealing with broken threads hanging off the back with weights ( I just knot and keep going), temples, and anything else that can be fussy and cause a break in the momentum.

I use a continuous paper roll as packing that rewinds itself as I weave.

I use a heavy AVL end feed shuttle, which effortlessly flies across the shuttle race on the loom, and comes out the other side to be caught by my opposite hand.  It is all in the wrist motion.  Very subtle.  Easy on the joints.  My back is straight, I’m pushing away with my extended legs, like riding a bike, and my mind is wildly free to run amok, thinking about all sort of things, EXCEPT, I am acutely aware of everything the loom is doing underneath me and I can sense a broken thread, a skipped thread, a malfunction in a treadle or the loom tensioning system (occasionally my side braces slip on this old loom).   That kind of sensitivity is only learned by practice, much like riding a horse.

The sturdier the loom, the more successful I am at this, the more I am working with the loom and not against it.  The loom I wove the towels on is the same one I bought from Tools of the Trade back in 1978. (The photo below left is from around 1980). I had forgotten how much I love to just weave on it.  Nothing has changed on it in 36 years.  It still does it’s job.  (And yes, I’m weaving in my pajamas in the second photo which I took a couple hours ago).

It does it’s job so well that with little effort, the knots are coming up over the back beam signalling the end to a 12 yard warp and now the loom will sit idle until I have a need to warp it up again.

And so, it is with regret that I have come to the end of this lovely warp, which wove like butter.  I will soon cut off the towels, wash them, and cut them up, hem them and then gift wrap for my family and friends.  The towels were inspired by a project in the Sept/Oct 2014 issue of Handwoven. It was a great way to use up all my leftover discontinued Cotlin from Webs. I only had to buy weft.

I should mention here, that I will be teaching a five day weaving yardage class at Peters Valley next summer, along with a five day beginning weaving class.  The 2015 brochure should be up online within the month!

Stay tuned…