Friday, September 02, 2011

I Weft My Heart...in a Kromski Harp

There's so much to catch up on. Such as: I traded in my drum carder for a 32" rigid heddle loom. Below is my first project. The warp (long-wise) is Fannie's farmhouse sock yarn, the weft (short-wise) is Madelintosh Merino Lite. I love it. Consistent with almost all the other beginning weavers I've talked with, it took me most of the entire project to get the hang of the right-hand selvedge (edge). For some reason, I didn't have any problems with the left selvedge.


I have done a second project which I cannot discuss because it's a gift.

The third project is either a set of three towels in cotton-linen blend, for which I have fashioned a tartan pattern of black, gold, red, and yellow (which I have started to warp), or I'll do an "art" scarf with miscellaneous fibers, commercial and hand-spun. So many ideas!  So much stash to play with!

I did all this in Numbers on iPad. Neat, eh?


Just because I started warping the towels doesn't mean I need to start weaving them right away. I'm warping and chaining them (mostly) one color section at a time. As I'm warping though, I realized that the edges need something before the pattern repeat begins. The pattern begins and ends with the red, but I originally wanted it to begin and end with the black, so we'll see how this turns out. Yes, I know that's obvious when you look at the picture. It just wasn't obvious to me.


Update: I finished "sleying the reed" and my calculations were off...not way way off, but off enough that I have to adjust the finished width of my towels, and add a few more ends of black on one side. It'll be asymmetrical. Sure. That's planned.  I had to order another set of the same red, yellow, and orange to make sure I still had enough for the doubled weft.

In other projects, I'm working on a ring for a lovely faceted orange Mexican Fire Opal. I finished the shoulder bezel and, having sworn never to fit a bezel to the band again, I created a design where I have to shape the bezel to the band (which I finished since I wrote this two weeks ago, picture to come).


I figured out how I wanted to hang the big green pendant: on a combination of solid curved wire (a half choker) and chain, possibly with some beads in split complimentary colors - in this case, yellow-ey and red-violet. Or whatever I happen to have on hand :)

2 comments:

  1. You are a busy beaver and Michael is very pleased you are using the iPad for so much, even weaving patterns.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And I love the title, too! I weft my heart---you are so silly.

    ReplyDelete