28 February 2011

Whole lotta weaving going on.

I'm making progress as a weaver. I'm working on my first set of dishtowels, all the while asking myself why I'm doing this when they sell perfectly good towels at the store. My conclusion is that it's challenging, satisfying, and (most importantly), while I'm weaving there is not a single glowing rectangle anywhere in my line of vision unless Rob is trying to play "Words with Friends" with me on the iPhone. It's also good to be a total beginner at something once in a while, and to be reminded that impatience will only get me broken warp threads that will cause even more frustration later on.

I decided to tackle a log cabin pattern as my first real project, a project that has a pattern and everything! As so many other weavers have said, log cabin weave does seem magical since the weave structure is just plain weave (one over, one under, one over, one under ... rinse and repeat). The magical pattern blocks of stripes that appear to be rotated comes from the order of the warp and weft threads. That means I have to attentively count weft threads while I weave, or the pattern will switch on me before I am ready.


Log Cabin Dishtowels
Those are 457 individual warp threads, each 5.5 yards long, to give me four dish towels.
Log Cabin Dishtowels
The work in progress
Log Cabin Dishtowels
See the magic!
Log Cabin Dishtowels
The last picture is of the fruits of my impatience, also known as broken warp threads. Since they're not connected to the back beam anymore they have to be weighted in order have the same tension as the rest of the warp. The key works well, and so do pill bottles with a couple of screws in them. These bobbers fascinate the kitties, especially when I am actively weaving and the threads dance a bit. All the more reason to keep it all covered up when I'm not around.

3 comments:

mrs_sweetpeach said...

Your weaving looks great to me. As for why, I have the same problem with my knitting and crochet -- there is so much available commercially, is there really any benefit to investing my labor into hats and scarves? The vast majority of what I create is given to charity but it would the people of the world benefit more from something else?

HubbleSpacePaws said...

Oh, WOW! I really have to catch up... you have a loom!!!

Crafting for me sure isn't about what's practical. It's therapy and life lesson reinforcement and creative outlet kinda rolled into one. I do counted thread work (embroidery, pulled and drawn work) and I know it's not "worth it"... but it's so, well, worth it! LOL!

Margaret B. said...

Good heavens! That is awesome. Weaving is something I've never even dabbled in, so it really is magic in my eyes.

And I really appreciated the shot of how you take care of problems...

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