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!