Orphaned~

The table loom has come back home~ It's intended new owner was a young mum with two very active young children that she is home-schooling.  Her mum thought it would be something for her to use to keep her creative juices flowing, but now was not the time.  Oh well, if she changes her mind, it will still be here.

I think if I can ever build my dream studio, it ought to be called "Room for a Loom?" ;^)

Off now adventuring for a month!

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.

Why 'Frigga's Loom'?

Well, Frigga is the Norse goddess of, among other things, weaving.  Seems appropriate, doesn't it?  

Now for the other reason.  As a 'plain' weaver who is learning new things, I make mistakes.  Lots and lots of mistakes!  And sometimes in an effort not to let what my dear hubby refers to as 'weaving language' get out of hand, I will invoke Frigga rather than a certain other word beginning with 'F'.  

We share our house with 3 border collies, 2 floor looms (that's Baird, my new-to-me Macomber in the photo, all decked out for the holidays), a table loom, and no sofa.  It went to make room for Baird!  Doesn't everybody think a loom is more important than a sofa?