New Loom and Wintery Weather

The rigid heddle loom came unfinished and unassembled.  I stained it with what used to be a Minwax stain, but is now labelled Varathane.  It's the same colour range and label though, just with a new brand.  Then I coated it with 2 coats of Behr tung oil.   I checked around to see what a new tin cost, as I'm almost out of this one.   It turns out it was discontinued over 10 years ago.   I used it anyway, and still have some left in the tin.  There are a couple of other brands of tung oil out there.   I don't know if they have the same warnings as this one - don't throw out any rags or brushes used with this stuff, unless you let them completely dry first.   I just store them outside until dry or it's garbage day.  Less risk of them combusting inside.    

Putting it together was easy.   Everything is pre-drilled and the instructions are straight forward.  Of course it was easier for me since I walked into the room where I'd been working on it and found hubby assembling it for me.   

I used the direct warping method, which is really easy and amazingly fast.   I used the yarn I'd recently dyed.  It was a knitting yarn, wool, Lion Brand Fisherman's wool.   I used the 7.5 dent reed.  The dyes were a dark  blue and a warm red.  It blended somewhat to give lovely denim blue shades and some rusty oranges.   I love the colours.  The warp is 10 inches wide and was 3m long.  I had done the calculations as I would for one of my multi-shaft looms and came up with 3.2 m in length.   After doing some more research and checking out other people's projects, I reduced the length.   I may have been able to shorten it more as it seems that much of the loom waste can be used for fringes if you're using them.

I'd watched a video with a woman introducing the rigid heddle loom, dressing it with the direct warping method and then starting to weave.    She used a stick shuttle which was wound around the middle.  It was so fat that it barely fed through the shed, which on a rigid heddle isn't huge.   While I'm sure there are some reason's why you'd wind a stick shuttle that way, using a figure 8 winding technique on the sides of the shuttle, keeps it flat and holds so much more yarn.   I have found it to be much more efficient to do it this way.

Another video said to remember to put your working yarn in a bowl to keep it from rolling around on the floor.  They neglected to mention that your cat will find it right away since it's contained, grab it in their mouth and run!  At least it wasn't Keven who would have chewed it up.   Phil just likes to get it slobbery.

We went on a short hike today.   It was snowing when we left.  Not a lot, but enough.   It was coldish too -6C, but it was the wind blowing in our faces which made us turn around sooner that we wanted.  The stream that runs through this area is still open.   Weirdly, because I've never seen one this late in the season, there was a Blue Heron still there.  

Usually, they migrate a bit farther south.    While we're not all that far from what is considered their year round habitat, it was still surprising to see one this late in the season.    Of course, our weather has been weird, with winter weather interspersed with milder weather.   Maybe that is why he was still here.

Some fungi that was on a log that I came across on yesterday's walk.    So interesting!