very slowly warped

Well, it's March, so it's time to get a new warp on the loom. Now that I've run out of warp chains that the loom's first owner made that are appropriate, (there is one more left, but that's for another project someday) I have to learn to make my own.

When I set the warping board that came with my loom, I thanked my lucky stars to have this equipment that came with the loom. I remembered, in my long ago past, knowing how to do this. I'd carefully studied books which showed how to use it (note book right next to warping board) and indicated that one person should wind the warp in one day, working continuously, to maintain the right tension. Yeah. Hah. Right. Well, that's not happening here. I am planning to commit the afternoon to this, but the short version is that I see why people might could go out of their mind with boredom while doing this...and I'm not even doing a big warp, as far as I know. That there is not even a third of my warp. Whoa. Long haul ahead.

I am taking the advice of the nice weaving guild ladies, who suggested I do my next rugs at 4 ends per inch, and double, triple or quadruple my warp threads if necessary to get the thickness I wanted. 4 ends to the inch, and 4 strands per end, and ....that's, hands down, a lot of thread. Luckily, my stash is deep, and the cones were there already. I even overheard several of the nice weaving guild ladies suggest that they wound more than one warp at a time, and invited people over to do it with them. My basic ineptitude and the piles of mending (on left side of photo there) and the fact that I'm warping on the patio table (indoors) has kept me from inviting any audience to speak of!

I can just imagine saying hey brand new acquaintances who seem like proper ladies my mom's age... welcome to my house! Whoops! Watch out for those dog toys. Here's a pile of books to dodge. Oh, and over here, next to the patio furniture? Right, just climb up to the second story over here--that's my loom set up. Next to the bedroom, where the dogs are sleeping on the bed. Come on in. Nope, not quite yet...maybe I'll have them over for tea first. Maybe I'll even clean up first.

This handy tool here, on a patio chair, is holding up two cones of yarn and threading that yarn through these eyelets so it feeds easily as I measure the warp. Ingenious! Amazing! I have been waiting for years for something like this for managing cone yarns. I'm so lucky this came with the loom too.

If you're a knitter and your eyes are crossing with all the weaving (I felt this way about weaving myself about 4 months ago, so don't feel embarrassed...) I've just started a scarf design experiment with Zitron Loft yarn I had in my stash. It is roughly based on the Gator Gaiter in Knit Green. It's not the same gauge or yarn weight or even, maybe, exactly the same pattern, but I'll see how it comes out and get back to you. In the meanwhile I am also still working on a stranded sock pattern and a sweater pattern that I'm knitting from an actual pattern. None of this is going along with the speed of light. I seem to be in a very slow- but creative- holding pattern.

One problem with this slowness is that I am spending more time online than I really need to. I'm trying to decrease my email/internet time, as I'm not being all that productive. I am, however, reading every single comment and even responding to them sometimes. I also try to stick to posting here twice a week, too. I enjoy the blog (I hope you do too?) and want to keep it up if I can...but I need to figure out how to hold my internet usage up "to a light" and examine if it's all really worth that much time per day.

Talking about light, I have struggled with catching a photo of my new rugs that were February's project. This is my favorite one, a twill rug woven with Icelandic wool. I'm slowly sewing on the carpet binding and this one is done. I asked the professor how to catch a light colored textile properly with a photo and he said, "Use side light." I was completely mystified...was this piece of equipment someplace in our house? "What's a sidelight?" I asked.

"You know," he says, "light that comes in from the side." Oh, right. We've got more of that now that March is here. It's getting lighter every day. It is bright and shining off the melting snow...and distracting me a little from this warping thing...