And So It Begins ...

I built a loom.

The awesome Dread Reverend made me a couple bobbins on his lathe.

And I began weaving.

I'm ecstatic. This is so much fun! And so addicting. Not to mention really relaxing. I can't wait till I've learned enough of the basics to start my first real 'tapestry' project, because I already know what it's going to be, and I'm incredibly psyched about it.

I'm using a book called "Tapestry Weaving: A Comprehensive Study Guide" by Nancy Harvey. I like the book so far. I'm only a few chapters in, but I've learned enough already to begin successfully accomplishing the basics. She explains things well enough that a total novice like me can understand it, and make progress immediately. Probably most importantly for a novice, she goes through things likely to go wrong, what they look like, and how to correct them. When learning a new hobby, those educators who only tell you how things are supposed to look, but don't explain the causes behind the inevitable mistakes or how to correct them, are only doing half their job. Not so with this book.

I also like that she gives directions for building this easy, inexpensive nail-frame loom to start on, just for practice, so that you can try weaving quickly, without a large investment. The total cost to build this loom was about $6.00, and all the supplies were available at my local hobby/craft store.

The only thing I wouldn't have had on hand was anything to use as a bobbin, and I've never been very successful at making 'butterfly' skeins (yarn wrapped around your hand and fastened into a little hank). Fortunately the talented Dread Reverend was able to whip up a couple bobbins for me on his lathe, and they work great.

I also had to order the weaving materials, as my local hobby store didn't carry those. I got 8/4 cotton carpet warp for the warp, and Bartlettyarns Maine Wool for the weft, from Halcyon Yarn.

This is the only thing about this book that I find a little bit disappointing - the author doesn't go into as much detail as I'd like about fibers. It's not that she doesn't explain things, it just feels like she's talking over my head - like, for example, if you needed A, B and C to understand weaving fibers, and she greatly explains B and C but forgets to talk about A.

Even though I knit, weaving has a whole 'nother language ... the numbers (8/2, 20/9, etc.) aren't ones I'm using to seeing in knitting yarn (sport weight, DK weight, etc.). The two can both be used to describe some fibers, but I still find it confusing. I was very unsure of what to use for warp and weft on my first, practice project. She actually recommended a 4/2 carpet warp, but after hours of searching on the internet, I could not find such a creature anywhere. I opted for the extremely popular 8/4, and chose the Bartlettyarn Maine Wool based on yardage-to-weight information from the book. It seems like I guessed well enough, as it seems to be working. The yarn is a little thick and fuzzy for my tastes, but that doesn't mean it isn't a perfectly good weaving wool - it just means that when I envision future work, I picture something smooth and with great detail. I actually want to try weaving my first 'real' piece with perle cotton, because I love the way it looks woven (have used it for both card and inkle weaving).

I won't have any idea what to use for warp with it, though, but I realized this is far from a disaster. The best thing I could do is make a couple more, smaller nail frame looms, and just get different fibers and experiment ... what happens when I use this warp and this weft? That will probably be the best way for me to learn, anyway, rather than someone just telling me "always use this and this." Or some such.

Right now I'm just weaving the hem, and it's going very well, I think. Once I get past that I'll begin working with the first practice pattern in the book, when I'll begin learning to work with multiple colors across a row, different techniques for dealing with color changes, and how to make shapes and whatnot.

I am so psyched!! I know I have a tendency to pick up a new hobby, get all excited, then lose interest in it in a few weeks or months. And there's nothing wrong with that (once I learned not to go out and spend $500 on equipment for a new hobby before giving it a chance to see if it's going to 'stick' or not). Trying new things, even briefly, is a fine thing. I didn't stick with card weaving, but it left with me a deep interest in weaving, and I learned skills there that transfer to this type of weaving.

But this smacks of something that's not going to go away ... it's difficult to describe, but I just find the act of "painting with wool" so incredibly fascinating. The idea of being able to create pictures of anything I can envision, woven in fiber ... well. A picture's worth a thousand words, and that about covers it.

More pictures as I progress.