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!!!!!
