The Mistake

First, I wanted to mention to anyone who is in the northern NJ, NY City area, that I will be teaching a basic jacket making class at the Newark Museum for their arts workshop, March 20-23.  The information is listed under upcoming events, and the brochure has just been sent, and can be accessed online.  The Newark Museum has a number of great classes, and it is a terrific place to learn to weave.  They have a beautiful fiber studio with a number of Baby Wolf Looms.  If you have taken a jacket class with me in the past, you are welcome to bring your own pattern.

My daughter took advantage today, of the holiday.  She slept in, as any teen would do, but once she was up and fed, she wandered into my studio where she only had about 1/3 left of the placemat exchange warp to thread through the heddles.  She decided she’d finish this off today, so we could beam the warp and start weaving.  So she sat down and every so often would call out, “Another repeat done!”  She got to about an inch from the end, and called me over trying to understand why she ran out of heddles on shaft two.  She had carefully counted before she started, and using the software heddle counts, thought she put on plenty plus extra.  She started to examine the warp, the threading, the draft (which she memorized right up front for quicker threading, keep in mind this is an overshot threading and quite complex for a beginner), and suddenly put her head in her hands and tearfully exclaimed that she had memorized it incorrectly.  So the entire 384 warp ends were threaded wrong.  She sat very still for a long time.  This is one of those times when you want to jump in and make it better as a teacher and as a parent, but if she was ever going to be a weaver, this was one of those moments when you understand, that there is nothing to be done but to take it all out and redo it, and that it is about the process, and it is about learning, and doing it correctly.  It is about perserverence, and climbing that mountain…

She asked if she brought in her iPod, would it bother me?  I appreciated the consideration, and though I like to work in silence, I thought it best to let her do whatever she needed to do to get her through the re-threading.  The photograph shows her taking out the warps from the heddles, and starting over.  In less than an hour and a half, she had the whole warp rethreaded.  I was very very proud of her, and she did it without complaining once.  I gave her a few hugs and lots of encouragement, and then just left her alone.  She climbed that mountain and reached the top all by herself.

Meanwhile, I played around with layouts for the coat pattern I talked about in the Project Three update.  I think I’ll be able to squeeze the pattern out of the coat, with some creative selvedge piecing, and before I actually make the first cut, I want to duplicate the pattern pieces so I can really see if what I think will work will actually work.  It’s gonna be close…