A Weaving Post!

It recently occurred to me that even though I intend this blog to be about weaving, homesteading and gardening, I have yet to provide a weaving post.

Today is the day!

I am the only one that was in the house and can’t remember diddly-squat about it. Granted, I was in about two through three, and maybe a bit of my fourth year of life at the time and the house was sold about a year or so after that. I look at family pictures of the era, but I still can’t remember the time I spent there for the myriad of Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners around the extensive dining room table surrounded by family and friends and mountainous plates of exotic foods.

I have one memory; that of sitting on a cement lion. The lion was one of two that were perched on each side of the brick sided front porch steps, ostensibly guarding the entryway from all foes and trespassers while at alert rest. My sisters, cousins and I (six of us in total) would perilously climb (don’t forget we were just little folk) up onto the brick walls that served as railings for the steps, then crawl to the end where the lions waited for us to mount up so we could pretend we were riding away with the wind. It was always a mad dash to see who could make it to the lions first. My only vivid memory is looking down at my cousins, who were standing on the steps sharply looking up at me, while I quietly delighted in the power I had over them because I got to the lion first.

One of my cousins, who is only 2 ½ months older than I am, can recall many precious memories of her times at the grandparents’ house. My older sisters and older cousins can easily recall fun family times as well. I can never join in during the reminiscing sessions. Life is not fair.

Back to the loom story.

Once it was ready for service, my life companion and I dressed the loom enough to make two rugs for the loom’s trial run. Whether or not I get the correct length for the rug warp is always a surprise until the end. No matter how much we crunch the numbers, I always end up with too much length of warp threads on the loom once my intended projects are finished. Since I have strong feelings about waste in projects, I always come up with ‘something’ to make to use up the extra warp and this time was no different than any other. I had a lot left over. Terrible math skills.

Consequently, I came up with the idea to not use several inches of the warp threads on the left side and just use enough from the right side to make up the width I want for the runner.

And that is where things started to go awry and I should have known better. In weaving, tension is King, Queen, Prince and Princess. In other words, it’s very important to have the right tension that is just tight enough to produce a quality project. I did not have the right tension because the warp threads were tensioned for a 25” width and not a 19” width. Not using the entire width of the warp threads caused major loose tension issues and I struggled with this short table runner longer than if I were making two regular sized rugs.

Though I did make it to the end and used up just about every inch of extra warp threads length. Of that I am proud. I am not proud of how the edges turned out. I have learned my lesson and will never attempt such a foolish endeavor again. The width I start with is the width I end with.

I made the runner to match the colors of the living room. It actually looks pretty good, but I can see the edges from across the room glaring at me and I am sad because a lot of extra finicky work went into making the edges look good and the end product fails my standard.

The loom performed fairly admirably, so that is a victory. I think one of the shafts was put in backwards and upside down, as the shed (the opening to put the weft material through) didn’t open up as far as it should have. But that is an easy fix.

I am happy that it’s done and is on the coffee table. I started the rugs project on February 17th. I finished the project in the middle of August. 🥲

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