High-Fiber Diet

Day 154: I thrive on a high-fiber diet. I'm guessing that my stash of weaving cones and wool for spinning would last me at least two years if I didn't make any new purchases, and believe me, this is a thought which has been in the front of my mind since...oh, let's say the last week in January. Certainly, some projects might not be exactly what I'd prefer, but then, if your cupboard is bare of everything but canned peas, you'll bloody well eat canned peas rather than starve. As it is at the moment, I can pick and choose. Want a lighter shade of green in that band? I've got it. Need a handspun hat for a friend who likes pink? Can do! But if push came to shove (and I suspect it will), I'm sure I could design an attractive band around brown and grey and, boring though it might be, creamy white Corriedale wool has a delightful feel as it slips through the fingers to wind onto a spindle. The cedar chest is full of wool. The weaving cupboard is fully packed. Off camera, there are several bins of commercial yarn, every shade of embroidery floss known to DMC, linen threads for bobbin lace in sizes which would make a spider envious, crochet and tatting cottons filling numerous drawers. I may wind up with an empty tummy before this nightmare ends, but at least my hands won't be idle.

He Knows!

Day 88: He knows where those weaving cones are, and it's driving him nuts. He saw me put them up there, out of reach of little cats who have already caused mama some consternation by trying to swallow strings, but even from the arm of the triple-mirror vanity (off camera to the left), he knows he'd never make the jump to get them. That said, he's learned not to dangle from the warp on Jutta or steal the bobbin. He knows chewing on the yarn on the spinning wheel gets him into trouble. But those cones...those cones are more temptation than any little cat should be forced to endure. My crochet thread lives in the kitchen cupboard alongside bread pans and baking dishes; the socks I'm knitting are in a zippered cooler beside my chair; wool is sealed in freezer containers; pencils go head-first into pint jars to protect the erasers; the toilet paper is hidden in an upside-down coffee can. You really have to get up before breakfast to outsmart Merry!

Good For...Something

Day 38: They have to be good for something. As an inveterate "re-purposer," I have not yet been able to come up with a reasonable use for the plastic cones on which weaving thread is wound. I generate a lot of them, and when you consider that each one originally held 3360 yards of 8/2 cotton (that's 1.9 miles of thread per cone), weaving takes on a whole new dimension. Cones weren't always plastic. The white thread resting horizontally on the warping board is on a hard paper cone. When empty, it will go in the recycling bin, but those plastic ones disturb me. The recycling center doesn't want them. They are not heavy enough to make a gutter "rain chain," and they are not at all musical when struck together, so a wind chime is out. I seldom need a megaphone, and in any event, could only use one at a time for the purpose. Single-use plastics are a plague, and I hate to think that I am contributing to it, but I'm fresh out of ideas for re-purposing cones.

Coney Island

Day 119: A few days ago, a good friend asked me if I had a woven band appropriate to put on her new teal blue felt hat. "The colours in the lanyard you made me work just fine," she said. "Well, come on down and take a look at what I have," I replied, and then went off to arrange all of my rolled bands in a display tray for her easy viewing. Sounds like this should be fairly straightforward, right? She showed up in due course, having forgotten to bring the lanyard with, and after perusing my collection, was a bit mind-boggled by the wide array of colours and patterns. She decided to make a second trip, lanyard in hand for comparison. We settled on a design, and then came the challenge of selecting colours. I thought it might simplify the process if I invited her to my own private Coney Island, i.e., the cupboard in the Loom Room where all the weaving materials live.  One after another, we sat cones of cotton side-by-side, rejecting some, leaving others in a "possibilities" pile and, after twenty minues or so of dithering, settled on a deep loden green for the background, bluish-grey for the pattern threads and black for the border. By bedtime, I had the warp on the bonker and had woven roughly a foot of band. Only then did one of my mother's primary tenets echo in my brain: Never give a child under twelve a choice of more than one.

Rank And Order

Day 91: There are several different methods for measuring out warp, each with its own merits and drawbacks. I happen to prefer to wind my threads onto a warping board, although because I don't have a wall on which to hang it, I generally sit on the floor with the frame leaned up against something, although sometimes if I'm winding a particularly long warp, I'll set it on the piano bench and prop it up against the door. In either case, I like to keep the cones of thread more or less ordered by the colour in which they will be needed, removing them from service once they are no longer required. Sometimes it's helpful to leave a full cone in place to hold a nearly empty one upright, such as the yellow shown here which will only be used for two warp strands in the entire piece. I could just as easily have measured off those two threads first and laid them aside until they were called into use, but experience has taught me that no matter how carefully I lay them down, they will find some way to tangle themselves into "warp spaghetti" before I pick them up again. Having to stop mid-wrap to unsnarl a knot can be very annoying.

Warp Speed!

Day 196: I'm getting close to the end of my table-runner project, and the question of "What's next?" is hop-scotching through my brain. I've had several ideas, but haven't settled on one yet. I'm thinking ahead with an eye to putting something in the Washington State Fair this year (definitely a table runner in the Weaving category, and certainly a piece of bobbin lace), but of course this depends on being able to complete it in time to submit. As much as I'd like to get started on a piece of summer-and-winter or overshot, both are time-consuming weaves and probably better left for the long hours of winter. Ah, so many colours and so little time! What will it be?

Sticks And Strings

Day 87: A few days ago, a friend asked me what type of shuttle I use for weaving, and included a link to an article describing how tuberculosis was spread throughout the weaving trade by the practice of sucking the thread through the pirn (core) to start the winding process. These days, we have health and safety regulations which prohibit methods which might transfer diseases, but such was not always the case. In any event, I use stick shuttles for a variety of reasons. First of all, they're much cheaper than boat shuttles and second, you can wind a lot more thread on them. The drawbacks to them are that they have to be wound by hand and when the weaver is nearing the end of the thread, the tips have a tendency to catch in the warp threads and may result in a broken strand. That said, if I was working on a loom wider than four feet, I would invest in a couple of boat shuttles because they "sail" across the supporting threads much more easily. However, I seldom work the full width of the loom, so sticks suffice quite nicely.