What's on the Loom
I love that you can think you’ve found the best way to do something and then you learn something new! Learning is always happening. I’ve always tied my warp onto the front warping stick the same way: take a small bundle, split it in half, go over, then under the front warping stick and tie using a surgeon’s knot. I’ve tried lashing and didn’t really like it, mostly because that long string for lashing was just annoying to me.
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.
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.
If you are a beginner weaver, you will understand that there is a whole new language that weavers use. There’s warp and weft and sett and picks, then add in the abbreviations, ppi, epi and wpi, and soon your eyes just start to glaze over. But don’t be discouraged, the language will come, and experienced weavers will understand even if you use the wrong word (or the right words the wrong way)! We are generally a gracious bunch.