Torrid Affair or is it True Love?

On Sunday, my friend's Leslie and Sam dropped off a bunch of wooden bits and pieces, an envelope of nuts, bolts and 6 little screws and a 12 dent reed. Yes, I did measure it, just to be certain.

On Monday, I sat down at my little Leclerc Artisat and wove and wove and wove to get the scarf project, off the loom. The green is the apple leaves with iron mordant, the blue is either vatted Woad or Dyer's Knotweed and the grey is natural. I finished it up fairly late in the evening, leaving time to twist the fringes on only one scarf.

Tuesday morning, I twisted fringes and twisted more fringes until all 3 scarves were finished. Thankfully some enterprising soul invented the fringe twister. I swear that handweavers would have no fingertips or fingerprints without those nifty little tools.

I tossed them in the washer, watching like a hawk to wet finish them and then spun them out and blocked them outside on the deck. You couldn't do that today because not only is it raining, but it seems like the trees have devested their finery, dumping it all on the deck. Tuesday though was somewhat sunny here. After blocking the scarves, I folded up the Artisat and immediately, Inspector Helper Kitty decided that I'd done it just for him. After trying to distract him, I let him be and made lunch. He'd wandered off shortly after that so that I could start assembling these wood bits. I totally understand his reluctance to leave the spot on the rug though. As I was on my back tightening the nuts on the carriage bolts, I didn't want to move either. The sun had heated the carpeting to near nap-requiring temperatures! mmmmm By dinner time, Fanny was assembled and I had to head out to a meeting.

On Wednesday morning I dithered about what colours I was going to use as a trial warp. I wanted an 8/2 cotton warp because it is fairly easy to warp, forgiving to weave and becomes functional items. In the end I grabbed a huge cone of yellow cotton something that I was given, a few cones of Lily cotton and some unidentified mystery cottons, the latter all being shades of browns and all seeming to be at least close to 8/2 cotton. I wound the warp. The yellow threads I did singly but the bouts of random threads I wound off 4 at a time. It would have been fine except that afterwards I realized that one of the cones was S twisted, while the rest were Z twisted. It managed to twist itself around the others and made for a tad of straightening later on. If I'd known that there was a cone of S twisted thread in my stash, I'd have saved it for a totally different project - but it has never occurred to me to check twist before.

It took most of the day on Thursday to dress the loom. I took my time as I didn't want to get stopped at some inconvenient moment - like having a handful of ordered threads when the oil man stops by and you have to scramble for bulldog clips to organize it all while he's waiting at the door and you can't pretend you're not home because your loom is in the front windows of the house and are curtainless so the guy has already seen that you're home and you're hurrying as fast as you can go without losing your project so you can get to the door before he glares at you through the window.... 'cause you know that waving a fist full of threads at him will mean nothing unless he's a weaver! Okay so that did really happen and I was waiting now for the second oil guy who was supposed to inspect the furnace and replace a fuel line. He never did get here that day so I just enjoyed my leisurely loom dressing day.

After dinner I finally started weaving. Now I adore my little Artisat. I've been able to all sorts of projects that you're not supposed to be able to do on a fold up, nearly portable loom, which is ancient and rickety. BUT... BUT... I think I have fallen in love with weaving all over again. Fanny is sturdy. She is quiet. Her treadling action is specific and easy. Her shed is fantastic and it only took me few shots to figure out the difference of throwing the shuttle without a shuttle race. Within moments of starting to weave I was thinking of all sorts of projects for this old gal, who is much obviously younger than my other loom. I don't think this will be a short lived but torrid affair with a newcomer, I think this is true love... sigh...