Weaving Progress

I began the color sections today. In lesson one, the first technique to learn is slit technique, where you actually weave each color section separately, forming a small slit in the tapestry where the two colors are not interlocked. (Tyler was quite interested in this ... maybe he smelled sheep).

This was still a blast, if a bit tedious. But I'm actually liking working slowly and carefully, manipulating the warp and weft threads. It's the first thing I ever remember working on that I wasn't in an interminable hurry about, and frustrated by just having to take it slow and concentrate and actually learn new skills. Yeah - I'm still lovin' this.

Here's a close-up of the color section. You can see that a couple of the slits turned out far better than others. But I'm definitely getting the hang of it. There's only one glaring error, on the purple block on the right hand side, where I initially took the purple over too far. I could have went back and fixed it when I discovered it in the second row, but ... meh. Live and learn. It is a practice piece, after all.

This is way cool. I can't wait to get a 'real' loom and get started on my first 'real' project (i.e., one I design), but ... I'm willing to take the time with this to work carefully through the practice pieces and really learn the skills I need to do this well, not just dive in to something over my head and half-ass it.

I said "real loom" but honestly, I like this nail-frame loom. If it wasn't for the epi problem, I'd be content to just use one of these all time. While heddle rods would be nice (a wooden dowel with heddle strings attached to help lift the warp to open the shed - the space between one warp thread and the next, where you do the actual weaving), I actually enjoy the total hand manipulation necessary with this loom, picking up each individual warp thread by hand to create a shed for each weaving pass.

The "epi" problem is this: the warp must be set with each strand at an appropriate distance for the weft one is using. It's not 'one size fits all.' The initials stand for "ends per inch," as each warp strand is called an 'end.' So epi is how many warp strands you have in one inch. Unless one used the exact same warp and weft for every project, you could potentially have a different epi for every project. On a nail frame loom, once you put the nails in, that loom can only be warped at that same epi, forever. So I might need a multitude of different looms just to use different materials. That's the main drawback to this, and the main reason I hope soon to get a 'real loom' - one that can be warped at any epi, and has a tension adjustment, and heddle bars. The Dread Reverend has offered to make me one, and we will probably do that (he made me an awesome set of bobbins!). The only issue we're facing with making a loom is that since neither one of us has ever seen one in action, we're not entirely sure exactly how to make one properly, that has all the parts I want. But hey - that never stopped us before. We found some directions here ... they look a bit complicated to me, but I suspect it's one of those things that as you actually do it, it will make more sense. (And many thanks to Ms. Vera for posting them! I love when people post really useful things and I get to find them).

Yeah ... I think I found more than just something to try out for fun ... I think I found a new obsession.