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.

The Little Engine that Could

Today was my intro-
duction to tapestry weaving taught by Toni Lowden through the Nevada Museum of Art. She provided copper pipe looms as part of the materials fee and that's what we're warping here.

I've tried to learn tapestry before and it's been a disaster. The hardest thing for me was working from the wrong side. You do what your cartoon tells you but you don't get to see your finished work until you are done - that's the traditional method. It felt like work to me, not art. Oh, and that 2 x 4 assembly on the wall, rear right? That's the loom Toni uses for her large museum-sized pieces. She wraps her warp around construction nails. Her work faces her as she weaves, and she gets to enjoy her design develop from the cartoon (picture) that she tapes to the wall. This workshop was stimulating and fun!
This is my piece from the workshop, which may not seem like much to show for being there from 10:00-3:00, but because it was so simple and we did it a technique at a time, I know exactly what we did and I know what I learned. I'm exhausted tonight but the actual weaving was peaceful and fulfilling. I went to it today feeling like The Little Engine that Could. I think I can, I think I can - and I came home with the affirmation, I know I can, I know I can.
This is the first loom I ever bought more than a dozen years ago. It's a 22" Mirrix tapestry loom. I've struggled to teach myself, Allison and I got together and tried to teach ourselves, and somewhere in there I took a class that was probably too advanced. I meandered into floor rooms and put tapestry out of my mind.

The missing piece was Toni. The Mirrix is still too much loom for me right now, but after the follow-up class in June, I'll be ready to give this one another try. I know I can, I know I can.
Meanwhile, Alexia has finished her scarf and given it to her stuffed dog. She has started knitting a matching scarf for herself. For adorable, click for big :)