New Year's Day - Hello 2014

I love being on holiday.

Yesterday was a very long day, with a headache that lasted all day, despite 6 Maxigesic, a nap, food, and a massage. In the evening we went to Cam and Marcia’s for a New Year’s Eve BBQ. Brown’s, and parents-in-law, Heke’s, James and the kids and us. The food and company were good, and Dan and I won a game of pool against David and Shannon. By the time we came home (and bought Azariah with us), the headache had finally gone, but I still went to bed early. Slept in till 1100 this morning.

I’ve spent most of the day working on my weaving project. Trying to figure out how to warp the wire heddle, without it and the yarn running away. I hit some nails into a piece of timber, which I then clamped to the dining table. That would hold the hanks of yarn.

But then I needed something to hold the heddle still. Sitting it in the loom wouldn’t work, because it’s much taller than the loom frame, and I had no way of fixing the loom to anything. (yes, I tried that!) Putting it on a music stand failed. Balancing it on a desk failed. Then I had the bright idea of turning the table over and, using clamps, a bracing bar and lots of masking tape, taping and bracing the heddle to the table legs:

Well, that worked. Now this took four or five hours to do. Twice – because I stuffed it up the first time round. And I used my nice new crochet hook - that certainly made it easier! Once it was threaded thru the heddle, it had to be tied onto the rear and front loom bars.

Here it is on the back loom bars:

Then it was time to start weaving. Which is the quick and easy bit. Cream double stranded cotton and Royal Blue mercerised (shiny) cotton, woven in cables. This is from the Inkle Pattern book:

It's wider than I thought it would be, but I found if I pushed the heddle wires closer together it made it a wee bit narrower. 

Oh, and the first job of the morning was to clip Kama. He’s gone from chocolate dog to black dog. I put him up on the freezer in the laundry, rather than doing it on the floor or outside as I normally do, and ending up with dreadful back pain. I half filled a bucket with hair. I think he’s finally forgiven me. I think he looks very cute now.

Tomorrow, I'm going to have a go at making something called a reed stand - I'm not sure why, but I thought it was called a 'heddle tree', and of course when I did a search for that, google came up empty. Then, when I opened one of my weaving books to see how to tie off the front loom bar, there it was:

Lol. Gotta laugh. At least I have a good selection of dowling and timber. And my Grandpa Jim's trusty old hand drill and bits!  

It’s been a nice week away – feels like we’ve actually had a holiday. But it will be really nice to be going home. I miss my cats. There I was, saying, ‘when/if we move to Canberra, I’ll leave the cats behind; they’re just a couple of SPCA 10 year old moggies ...’ but truth is, they’re MY moggies. And I miss them, and they’ll come too.

It was a long night last night. When I went to bed I had ‘speed-wobbles’ – almost like the aura precourser to a migraine, and dreadful indigestion and stomach cramps which got worse thru the night. Around 0300 I got up and spent about an hour on the loo. L 0400 I grabbed a large, fluffy red dressing gown and curled upright on the couch, to doze on and off for the rest of the night. I think it was a combination of dehydration (I usually drink at least a litre of water a day, but here I’ve only had the odd glass), coffee/jarrah/lactose free milk (soy, wheat, casein), prunes (FODMAPS), and maybe some lamb that was off, and possibly dodgy bacon.

GOING HOME: Jobs are deputed – David to deconstruct fence, Becca to pack car and sweep floors, me to vacuum and put load of washing on.

WEAVING: This is not going so well. Talk about a learning curve.

There are two main ways to warp a table loom. The easiest one, and the way I used first, is called direct warping. You have a ball of yarn, the heddle on the loom, and some sort of post a couple of metres away (depends on the length of the warp) that you wind the yarn around. You take a loop of yarn, pass it thru the heddle, around the post, and back thru the next heddle, wrapping it either over or under the rear loom bar as you go. The yarn lays out nicely in order. One done, you cut the far end, wind the yarn onto the rear loom bar, and thread alternate yarns thru the holes of the heddle, then tie off to the front loom bar. Done and dusted. 

About 2-3 hours work.

Then there’s indirect warping, where you (in my case) use two wooden chair backs 2 metres apart. Once you’ve wrapped the number of ends you need, you then have to transfer that to the loom bar, then thru the heddles. Add #20 yarn, doubled (bloody fine!), and it twists and turns. Tie that onto the loom bar, and you have a great big lump of yarn. Wind it on, then try to lay out the pattern and it turns itself into a tangled knot. Oh, and of course, I miscounted the ends I needed.

This photo shows two sets of warps on the loom. 

One set of warps, but it's all bunched at one end, and I think it's going to turn into a knotty thing. You can see one of my warping plans underneath.

I tried to break it up a bit, but that didn’t help. In the end, I undid the whole thing completely, and broke it up into groups of warps that match the pattern. All this was probably about 6 hours work (going until about 2300 last night!). Because I was going to be cunning, and make two Inklebands of bookmarks at once, I stuck the warp on one end of the loom bar. Now I’ve realised just how long it’s going to take to set the other pattern straight, I’m only going to do one at a time. But that means taking the warp back off the loom bar, and moving it along into the centre, so it’s balanced.

The warp threads laid out on the warping plan.

Since everyone is still asleep, I might play with it for awhile.

This has pretty much consumed my week. Haven't had a chance to play with encaustic. Maybe next week.

Oh, and I forgot to repack deodorant after we went home. Doh.

COZ THERE'S ANOTHER WHOLE WEEK OF HOLIDAY AHEAD!!!!!