weaving and spinning tools

Last year, I was at a meeting in Fergus when Tamara showed me the wooden sword that her husband had whittled while they were camping. It was stunning to say the least and what totally enthused me as well, is that my first vision was of a weaving sword for a warp weighted loom. I commented on it and suddenly, from the back of her car, Tamara produced a "sword" blank for me. It was a long, skinny, fairly flat piece of wood. I've never carved anything before and even had to buy a knife. Slowly, I hacked away at my piece of wood. I ended up cutting it in two where a knot was as I realized it would be too long to use for weaving at the full size. What I ended up with isn't fancy, but the weight of each is light enough to use and they are fairly well balanced for use as weaving swords.

Now if I only had a warp weighted loom to try them with. Unfortunately, though I was going to get my loom re-vamped to be more user friendly, the photos of the brake system I wanted are on a corrupt disk and can't be accessed. So I'm guessing that my loom will be a good while longer before it's retro fit, since accessing the photos seemed to be the necessary ingredient to this project.

On Saturday we wandered off to Knight's lumber, a real lumber store in Guelph. None of the big box building supplies, but a warehouse of real wood. The place smelled incredible and they had varieties of wood that I'd never seen before. I found a really nice piece of maple which I wanted to turn into a niddy noddy. I got the design drafted and then hubby took the project over - please note, I didn't ask him or expect it, I was going to attempt this on my own - however, he decided to make and I knew that I'd get a really nice niddy noddy 'cause he is so precise, careful and always does a good job on these things. The three pieces just need to be attached. I think it is awesome and beautiful. Joint projects can be very fun. I got the design and the finishing aspects which are the parts I really love best.