365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Friday, September 8, 2023
Spillway - The Teaser
Day 330: It's a dam spillway! This is the teaser. I recently found instructions for a weaving structure I had always thought was impossible to create on a four-shaft loom, i.e., that it had to be woven on a minimum of eight shafts or on a drawloom. I won't give it away just yet, but having done a small experiment with the leftover warp on the floor loom, I am reasonably certain that I understand the technique. In any event, I decided it was prudent to warp it onto my table loom so that there would be less wastage in case everything goes pear-shaped on me, and that's how I've spent the morning. I chose the metaphor of a spillway for good reason: although the threads are each drawn through individual heddles, they pass through "penstocks," four in a bunch in each dent, separated from one another by an empty dent. It makes for quite a cascade! I need to settle on a design before I can begin, but let me assure you, this is the most excited I've been about a weaving technique since I discovered the joys of overshot some fifty years ago.
Labels:
reed,
table loom
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