Goldie and her parts are on the balcony, ready to go and I'm looking forward to having the space for yoga. The only other thing I need to remember is the bench. I'm including the LeClerc shuttle that came with her and which I like very much, but I feel that Goldie is LeAnn's loom and that as such and in her spirit, I think it all needs to go together. There's also a Deborah Chandler book, but it was published when her name was still Reedy.Lauren and her husband will be here Wednesday evening to pick her up and take her to the high school art room, where she will be joined by another loom. Lauren is commited to developing a fiber arts program with her students and has taught every one of them to knit this year. She has donated fleece from a teacher - nice stuff - and Melissa gave me a bag of roving to pass on to her students. We met again Wednesday in her art room for another drop spindle session. She started off struggling, just like last time. I isolated the steps into four parts and showed, then she tried, and I showed, and repeat. And then she got it. She was absolutely giddy and can't wait to start teaching her students.
Our guild makes drop spindles which we sell for $5 as part of our mission "to promote the fiber arts." Lauren has ordered 35 of them! Nancy emailed me this morning and says she is on it. We are all pretty excited about Lauren's vision. Her students love her!
I've got the failed denim rug draped over Maudie Mae and am mining it for it's strips. I have to cover my looms anyway since the studio is open to the great room and ash from the woodstove gets on everything.
I want so much to be able to weave rag rugs and thanks to Hiliary, I have made a couple that I absolutely love - the limitation is my loom. Hiliary is my weaving midwife. She birthed me! I emailed her after looking at the placemats on her site and asked for suggestions. She emailed me wonderful directions and invited me to call, which I did. The denim is much more suited to this sett. I learned yesterday while winding the warp why people have warping mills. My warping took on the aspects of an aerobic exercise. I wound the top yards standing, and the lower yards sitting, using both arms to warp yarn on the pegs. Up, down, up, down, arm up left, arm up right. I'd like a warping mill but I can't complain about this form of exercise.
It wasn't until I took this picture that I realized I have an error running right up the center of the warp, so I've decided to call it a design element. I wound on that ten yard warp today and now I know why people have tension boxes. That's the longest warp I've put on the loom and it was more aerobics and an absolute fight to keep it tensioned. There's not a lot of weaving equipment being sold around here - there are probably a total of 50 weavers in our county and that would guessing high - so I don't imagine I'll find these items used.
I took this image about 3:00 today and as you can see, we are still gloomy. It's been raining off and on all week. Very unusual for this time of year in the high desert. I'm so glad I didn't wait to buy the S.A.D. light - it has been a life saver. The plants are greening up in spite of little sun. They're like - Mother may I? And Mother Earth says - Yes, you may.
6 comments:
I Like It! See, no sense wasting all the denim prep :) ....
I spent the day being lazy. My poor right arm is hurting, so I gave it a rest. Mix a start of carpel tunnel, add a ganglion cyst in my wrist, a tennis elbow and a rotator cuff that is wearing out and I feel like my arm is gonna fall off~ Hoping this rest is what'll make it all better!
I went to the Junque shop we call Fritz's and snooped around there today. Spent less than 15$ there today. Brought a few items home, but no textiles. I'm feeling overwhelmed with the piles downstairs!
I'm thinking I should look into one of those SAD lights. It's raining here and the radio just said something about snow. UGGGHHH
Sometimes, when I see a threading error like that, I just rethread the part that's wrong. If I have to make a heddle so be it.
It shouldn't be that hard to change, if you want to, of course.
The denim is looking lovely - looks like a good place to fix the error - it looks like you are between pieces at this point? The spring has been so odd everywhere. We finally had a full day of sun and I took advantage of it and was outside most of the day. They are calling for more rain tomorrow.
Well congrats on a whole student body being converted to a fiber fanatics! Goldie will surely be treasured.
The placemats look wonderful but Hilary is right, you might be able to re thread with the addition of a handmade string heddle or two. As to tension, you know I don't use a ton of tension winding on my warps, as long as it's all of even tension. Of course you might be talking about holding tension on the warp while weaving but that's a whole nother thing.
I would be happy if we could like put two sunny days together...
Lovely! I've been weaving denim, too, and although the prep is a whole lot of work, it ends up great.
I can't weave but have decided that I need to make two rugs for either side of our bed. I have been looking at materials to make the rug out of. I have never made one but have seen other's work and think I am going to make one to see what happens.
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