What's on the Loom
We’ve all put a warp on our loom and regretted it later. Sometimes we even know ahead of time that it isn’t a good idea and we do it any way! And if you’re like me, when it comes off the loom and is so beautiful and soft and cuddly and you just love it so much, you promptly forget how terrible it was to weave and you actually choose to do it all over again!
If you follow me on social media you will know that I recently had a warping disaster. Far too much cotton ended up in my garbage and my husband had to refrain from comments like, “I slid your loom over a bit to the left, hope that’s ok”. (Seriously, he thinks that’s funny!) Anyway, it led me to think a little more about warping and why I wanted to learn how to indirect warp.
Let’s talk about colour. It seems to be either something we love or something we dread. We often believe that we are either “good” or “bad” at putting colours together. But just like most things, we can learn.
I am not going to discuss colour theory, I’ll leave that for the people who can explain it better than I understand it! What I will talk about in this post is confidence, the world around us and playing. I’ll tell you how I pick colours and hopefully give you some resources to build your own sense of colour.
Today I though I’d give you a peek at what it’s like inside my head. It’s a scary place, chock full of ideas, plans and sometimes paralysis! I’m an idea person…that means I see something and I think hmmm…how can I do that? But I’m also a vision person…which means I see a yarn and it must be X.
I love weaving. And I love efficiency! Here’s a little trick I learned and pass onto students in my classes. The first time I taught it, they thought it was magical. I hope that you find it useful too!
After you have your warp all wound up and you are ready to thread the heddle, try this:
Have you ever been weaving away and suddenly you realize that your weaving is crooked? That one side is way higher than the other? Maybe that happens to you a lot, or maybe on just certain types of projects. For me, this is most likely to happen when I’m working with really fine yarn. Today we’re going to look at possible reasons this happens, how to prevent it, and how to fix it if it does happen.
I’ve already written a blog covering pick-up sticks, you can read it here. Since writing this blog though, I have learned so much more! So today we’re going to look at combining plain weave and pick-up patterns.
This is not a post about how to read drafts! I have no trouble reading a draft designed for a shaft loom but I honestly have a terrible time reading a draft for a rigid heddle that uses a pick-up stick, or multiple pick-up sticks. And I know that many rigid heddle weavers have the same trouble. I hear it all the time in the shop! So, I write my patterns differently from the standard rigid heddle patterns. There is no “typical” draft. In fact, I write my patterns very similar to (or in the style of) a knitting pattern. It’s pretty intuitive to me, but I still get lots of questions, so I thought I’d explain here.
I weave a lot of tea towels. Tea towels are perfect for trying out new patterns and seeing how colours play together. Even if in the end, the pattern didn’t work as hoped, you still have a useable tea towel! I generally use 8/2 cotton doubled, which leads to the question: why use 8/2 instead of 8/4 cotton?
We all make mistakes, and that’s ok. Sometimes it’s not even a mistake, it’s just learning how not to do something. This is what I tell myself when I am learning something new. And on the topic of learning new things, let me digress for a moment. Be gentle with yourself…especially when you are learning something new. Pay attention to the words you use in your head and out loud.