Tail Project Completed

Day 252: The Tail Project is done, its fringes all tied! Made largely with loom waste from my floor loom, this throw would make my grandmother proud of me for maximizing the materials available. It was an exercise in design to find the proper balance between colours and the "tail count" in my scrap bags, but I am quite pleased with the way it turned out. A scarf using the same colours in different proportions is now in progress on my small rigid heddle loom. The tail census has been substantially reduced, but not eliminated entirely. I see more scarves in the near future. If the pandemic has an "up" side, it is that it is forcing me to use the materials in my stash, many of which have been waiting their turn for several years, and I am now coming to the point where selecting a "main colour" is almost impossible. What I have remaining is small balls and hanks, fifty yards here, ten there, and while I could crochet them into an afghan or use them in Fair Isle knits, it's much more fun to engineer order out of chaos in a well-balanced project for the loom.

Works In Progress

Add caption

Day 248: Years ago, I realized that I was going to have to set some rules for myself if I ever wanted to see a project through to completion. As a young needleworker (and by "young," I mean in the age range of 4-18 years), it was not uncommon for me to begin knitting a sweater (for example), finish a few inches and then start knitting a hat or mittens. My workbasket might have contained three partially-completed knit items, an equal number of crocheted pieces half-done, and off in the corner, perhaps two pieces of crewel embroidery or needlepoint on frames or in hoops. I wasn't finishing anything because I wasn't focused. That was when I wrote the Law of Projects: that no more than one piece of any type of needlework could be in progress at the same time, i.e., one knit item, one crochet project, one piece of bobbin lace, etc. That said, there is some latitude in the interpretation of the Law, as is the case with most contracts: if the form of execution is sufficiently different, the second project may be considered as a fiberart of another type. This interpretation is particularly important when it comes to weaving.

The floor loom and the rigid heddle are two entirely different breeds of cat. The floor loom is treadled to form the sheds, whereas with the rigid heddle, the reed must be lifted manually, processes as individual as dancing opposed to lifting weights. In the case of the large frame loom (rigid heddle), I work standing up, as opposed to sitting on a bench when working at the floor loom. The action of passing the shuttle back and forth, although common to both methods, is as incidental as the use of a knife to cut bread or to whittle a stick: same tool, different product. The Tail Project (top) is an active sport. In weaving it, I am standing to manipulate the sheds, stepping from side to side to draw the weft across the work, beating the threads into place with physical exertion. The slub cloth on the floor loom (bottom) becomes a meditation, a repeated sequence of steps, throws and beating done in rhythm.

Should I be so inclined, I could add backstrap, tapestry or card-weaving without breaching the Law of Projects, but there are other fish in the ocean: a quilt to finish, a tablecloth to crochet, spinning to be done. How do people find the time to watch TV or play on their computers when there are so many crafts begging for hands to complete them?

The Tail Project

Day 246: One drawback to weaving is that there is always a certain amount...sometimes quite a bit...of "loom waste," the section of warp between the heddles and the back beam. When calculating yardage requirements for a project, the weaver factors in an amount appropriate to that distance and the loom being employed. Different types of loom will have more or less waste depending on their design, so sometimes it's possible to take the waste from one loom and use it on another, or to use it as weft for narrow stripes. Oh, hang on! I've gotten ahead of myself with this story. You're probably wondering where this loom came from, aren't you? Yes, it's "new" (to me, anyway), given to me by a member of our Morris-dance side, and looking very much like a pile of kindling at the time I picked it up. The brochure she gave me to go with it was rather unhelpful. It wasn't that it was written in German; I could stagger through that. It was that it didn't show any model which went together with the parts I had laid out all over my living room floor. Several visits to Mr. Google later, I had a handful of blurry photographs which showed at least some of the parts (not always in the same places) and a model number, Kircher-Rahmen WU80. Don't even ask. YouTube was no help at all.

As the afternoon wore on, I discovered that the "pile of kindling" actually contained two looms, the Kircher and a tapestry frame, the parts of which could not be made to relate to the tapestry adaptation for the WU80. So...I got two looms for the price of one (free!), and two smaller rigid heddle looms (one missing a handle) thrown into the bargain. I'm still not sure I have all the parts in the right places, but what the heck, it's a loom. The heddles go up, the heddles go down, threads can be secured to the beams. That's really all any loom needs to do.

And that brings us now to the Tail Project, i.e., what to do with all those five-foot long bits of warp from my floor loom. I had to pull in some other yarns from my stash, but was eventually able to formulate a plan for a striped lap throw which will be fringed on all four sides, substantially reducing the number of bags of loom waste occupying my crafts room. As my grandma used to say, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." Weavers, take note. Those tails are good for something. Save them until you have enough.