Friday, April 22, 2011

They're multiplying~

Looms, not Border Collies.  This month the table loom and a nice old JL Hammett floor loom traded homes.  The table loom is going adventuring, the lucky thing.  The friend who had the Hammett has a daughter in Nova Scotia who didn't have room for it, so it has come to live with us and the table loom is going to be crated for eventual transport 'out east'.

What have I been weaving lately?  Rag rugs on my Harrisville (they'll move to the Hammett), a rather lurid yellow yardage (#47 from A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns) on the Macomber.  The thread was some sort of acrylic and greenish yellow (my DH calls it "dog sick yellow").  It came with the Macomber and the yardage isn't intended to be anything.  Next up was the M&W pattern included with Madelyn van der Hoogt's Warping Your Loom DVD and I did about a 6-inch wide strip (yards long!) out of various green perle cottons, intending them to be potholders and hotpads.  The perle cotton also came with the Macomber.  Imagine getting a retiring weaver's stash thrown in for free with the loom!

What's next? The black and white color-and-weave Labyrinth pattern from Tina Ignell's Favorite Scandinavian Projects to Weave. The towel is one of the textiles shown on the front cover of the book and it is a toss-up whether it was it or the red and white cloth that made me buy the book.  I'm such a sucker for red and white.  That (the book) is a compilation of designs from Vävmagasinet, the great Swedish weaving periodical.  As it happens, I've since acquired some back issues and, in particular, the one with the Labyrinth design in it.  That was good luck - I was having a little trouble understanding the draft in the book. It seemed to only show the black threads in the warping/threading.  I thought I knew what I should be doing but am not real confident yet, certainly not enough to trust my assumptions.  Hah!  The pattern in the magazine has the correct draft with both colors indicated and I had guessed right. (It shouldn't have been a hard guess, but this confidence thing~)  I have the warp wound and today hope to get it sleyed and threaded.   So, onwards!  Happy Easter, everyone.