Eight-Throw Pinwheels

Day 16: You might recall my use of the word "challenging" in yesterday's post. This is it. I am weaving a pattern designed for an eight-harness loom on a rigid heddle. That means that out of the eight sheds required, only two are loom-generated. The other six have to be manually picked up with a pickup stick. One pinwheel (eight passes of the shuttle) takes about ten minutes to create. It's easier to see the design from the side like this. Looking straight down on it (the weaver's perspective), your eyes tend to go all M.-C.-Escher-ish, only allowing you to see either green whirligigs or blue ones. However, at this stage of the game, the weaver is focused on individual threads: lift two, push one down, lift one, push another one down, lift one, push two down, repeating the sequence for that throw across each colour. The six pickup rows are all different, three starting with "lift," three with "push down." It's amazing how many times your mouth can say "lift" even as your fingers push down the threads. Which was correct? Pause, regroup, begin again. Focus is mandatory here. Destined to be a runner for the harpsichord, the spring colours are apropos. It may take me until April to finish it!

Working Up The Chain

Day 15: Yesterday was spent working my way up the chain, i.e., winding warp onto one of my rigid-heddle looms for a rather challenging project. I should explain that I live in a small house. While I have sometimes had several looms and a quilting frame set up in the living room (the Loom Room being almost fully occupied by the floor loom and storage cupboards), having multiple "portable" projects in my living space makes me feel a bit too squeezed. For that reason, I tend to cycle through the various types of weaving, albeit not in order, going from one band loom to another, to inkle to rigid-heddle to backstrap and so on. I just finished a band on my Leksand loom, so I decided she needed a rest. A particular pattern has been nagging me to try it, and since my floor loom is full of overshot and my table loom is full of false damask, the only feasible solution was to pull out the larger of my rigid-heddle looms (I'll be explaining the project in greater depth in an upcoming post). Just suffice to say that I measured warp from peg to beam ten feet away while navigating around a quilting frame, two warping boards, one band loom, a frame loom and a spinning wheel, plus various baskets of fiber and tools without tripping even once. Tippy, familiar with his mama's antics, prudently stayed in the chair.