Back in the Saddle…

Before I get to the business at hand, I need to mention that tomorrow is an anniversary of sorts.  Four years ago, I started this blog, because I read a column in Handwoven Magazine, by Syne Mitchell, about how important it is to reach out to each other and how easy it is to start a blog, and I just started fooling around and four years later, more than 500 posts, 400 subscribers, and 2500 comments later, (and I read every one I can assure you), I can’t imagine my creative life without it.

I use to journal every night, which is a wonderful thing in itself, good to keep the pencil/paper skills sharp, pun intended, but it was tough to visually document some of the things I was doing without creating a scrapbook, though I keep a journal or sketchbook of all the weaving projects, drafts, etc.  The blog was an easy way to keep track of what I was working on, keep me motivated, keep records, add links to remember where I’ve been, and actually, if anyone read it, that would be a bonus.  Silly me…

In the last four years, I’ve had a lot of bonuses, I had a husband who actually followed what I was doing, much of the last few years he has spent overseas.  He would remind me when I hadn’t posted in awhile.  I’ve had the most glorious feedback from you dear readers, who have encouraged me to think harder and go back to the drawing board on more than one occasion.  I’ve had support, and advice, encouragement with my kids and with with my personal life.  I’ve had laughs and cheers and even some well intentioned criticism.  It is all good, and I wouldn’t trade a single post.  Even the one that pissed off an organization that shall remain nameless.

So thank you all dear readers for sticking by me, and making the last four years a wild ride.  I love getting your comments, don’t be shy, they cheer me and when you ask a question, if I don’t reply in the blog directly, know I reply in a personal message.  And I really do listen to you all, because as much as I love working in my studio alone, no one can work completely in a vacuum.  And for my non fiber lurkers that have no idea what I’m talking about half the time, I love you most, especially when I see you at a social event in town and you tell me how you follow my adventures.

And now, having recovered a bit of my focus this week, I decided to just jump in head first, get something on the loom, or at least one of them, I have 19 (shaft looms that is, not including the 20 inkle looms and 25 frame looms…)  But before I could really dive in, I had to correct something that was making my OCD twitch.  In my last post, I showed a photo of the Runic Pick-up band I was working on on the inkle loom.  There was a lovely gradation of silk across the band, until you got to the right side where it stopped abruptly with a grey stripe that seemed to come from nowhere.  The more I proofed the blog post, the more the grey stripe stood out making me annoyed.

So I carefully pulled the heddles from the right section and rearranged the warps, you can do that on an inkle loom with a little guts and some patience, and the shift is invisible on the right side.  So now, the grey stripe is gone, and the blending much improved (the three grey threads just moved to the right against the border).  Now I’m happy.

I went to my wall of dyed skeins (last winter’s project, MX dyes from ProChem), and I started pulling colors I haven’t used, that I seemed to have a large amount of, and orange was the clear winner.  I may overdye some of the excess, but I like orange, and I just wanted to get a scarf run on the loom without thinking too much.  The colors are very bright and in your face, but I plowed onward, this may look like crap when I’m done, or it may be bloody fantastic.  That’s sort of the nature of handweaving, you never know until you start weaving, and actually often you never know until it is off the loom and washed.  And of course, sometimes I take some of my ugliest fabrics and turn them into garments that become my favorite.  So I carried on…

The problem with hand dyed skeins, is that they have to be wound back into balls in order to use them for warping.  I bought an electric ball winder from Boye awhile ago, it is a quirky little thing, but I’m learning to use it and actually becoming friends with it.  I have a light weight easy spinning umbrella swift and I set the whole thing up, turn the dial on, and stand back and it does the work.  Mostly.  Once in awhile there is a jam up, but mostly this little baby purred for two days winding all those skeins into center pull balls.  Except I hate center pull balls.  The center never stays where I want it to.  It always pops out to visit the yarn on the outside and they start a dance that takes me hours to untangle.  So I wrapped an index card around the shaft of the electric winder and the center is now embedded around the card and I had not one issue with these little puppies while I spent the last two days winding warps, using the AVL warping mill.

I sleyed the reed.

I threaded the heddles.

I added the tensioning sticks and started to beam.

I added bridge sticks over my sectional pegs about half way through to keep everything lined up, this is a 12 yard warp, and I didn’t want any tensioning problems down the road.

I beamed the supplemental warps onto the lower warp beam.

I tied everything onto the front apron bar.

I did not re-tie the treadles.  I decided to write my blog instead.  I’ll do that tomorrow.  Stay tuned…