Cloth On The Beam

Day 93: It has been several days since I felt like sitting at the loom and I'm not there yet. I'm still running a fever, coughing, find it a great effort of both physical and mental strength to knit a whole row, and the only thing I feel like eating is homemade bread. Fortunately, I made two different kinds before this bug took hold of me. As a consequence of my lack of vitality, you may be getting some rather mundane photos and superficial descriptions until I recover. That said, I wish I felt like weaving. The table-runner project has been moving along much more quickly than anticipated. Here you see the finished cloth being wound onto the appropriately-named "cloth beam" at the front of the loom. I have one six-foot runner completed, and two feet on the second. I warped for three, and I hope to put one of them in the Washington State Fair this year along with some bobbin lace. I've never entered anything in Home Arts before.

This May Take A While

Day 83: This may take a while. The new project is on the loom: three six-foot table runners worked on a rose path threading. The repeat is 22 throws, just slighly over an inch. I warped at 15 dents per inch (i.e., the number of warp threads per inch) and the weft (crosswise threads) is packing at 21 throws per inch. The thread is a 6/2 cotton, natural in colour for the warp and a dark blue-green weft. Amazingly, I completed slightly over a foot of cloth before bedtime last night.

This is the type of weaving project I most enjoy. It takes quite a bit of concentration, as opposed to the brainless "tabby two-step." In fact, my attention faltered for a moment during one session last night and just as I began what should have been a new sequence, I noticed that my last diamonds only had a single eye rather than the two they should have possessed. I picked the work back about eight throws until I came to a position I could identify easily and then resumed at the point where I had gone astray. Mistakes are usually obvious, but you have to be paying attention to catch them.