Getting Excited

We had a much different group at our guild weaving outreach this year, and if you're interested, you can read about it here.  Last year was predominantly older women but this year the response was from families with young children.  This boy's dad (in the blue shirt) is at the loom in the background.  Of course, we did have very stiff competition from the most beautiful Saturday we've had yet this year.

Alexia and I wove a little tapestry on one of the cardboard looms last week so she could assist at that table, which draws a lot of interest from kids.  Virva had helped her rewarp her old cardboard loom and so she started on another project in between helping.  DD Chris sent me a picture of the project she finished after she got home.  She has rya knots down pat!

She worked hard and stayed focused the whole time, helping managing yarn ends and then removing projects from the looms and getting them tied off. By the time her mommy came to pick her up, she was utterly exhausted.  I was proud of my little ten-year-old helper.

The next day she sent me  this picture.  She had warped her loom on her own and started another project, this time incorporating a technique we saw on one of the YouTube videos we watched together.  It seems that one of those we reached out to was my very own granddaughter.

I wanted to get her a loom of her own and I kept thinking in terms of a rigid heddle loom,when it struck me that what she likes is the free-form creativity of the tapestry style of weaving.  I found this on Amazon, ordered it and it will be here tomorrow.  Alexia is on spring break so I'll take it to her on Friday and we'll get her started on something with a little more versatility.  I'm going to have to learn right along with her if I'm going to give her any help.

And while I'm on the subject of workshops, I learned something the hard way.  Is there any other way??!  I lash my warp onto the front apron rod which works fine for my floor looms because they're under tension.  It does not work fine for a folding loom because once the tension is lost, the lashed-on cord slides all over the place.  I'm going to have a mess here on my hands, getting this ready for the student to use next month in our learn-to-weave class.  I won't do this again!

I'm under the gun to get these towels finished so I can submit them to the Handwoven contest.  Yes, my towels were accepted but they were from a four yard sampler where no two towels are the same, even the same size for that matter.  I would never have submitted them had Sarah Jackson not invited me. I wound most of the warp yesterday, dressed the loom this morning and have begun to weave them as the towel I liked the best according to my notes.  There are only four towels so I hope to pull them off the loom tomorrow afternoon.  I need to get them washed and ready to hem since I'll have to stitch the hems by hand.

These are the cones I'm using on this set.  It takes me a while to pick my colors and then I leave them sit around like this for a couple of days while I play around with the pairing, because this draft is worked in pairs of colors.

 I was absolutely giddy this morning when I warped up and got to see how successful the colors are together,

I'm playing around with the idea of some "serape"colors.  I'm on the fence because I know a bright yellow is required and I only have butter yellow.  Buying a single cone of yarn plus shipping is nothing to sneeze at.  I'll leave these here and look at them over the next week.