Adversity

We Are Warped

by CZeitler

I now have my 16 shaft table loom warped up completely and I have been weaving on it this week. A couple of threads snapped and a couple are floating rather than separating so I have to figure out what is going on with them. After I finished weaving the first towel, I decided to take each shaft off of its rail and take off the extra heddles that I had on the end. This was going very well until I reached shaft 14 and then the shaft decided to snap on me, essentially the bottom came off before the top was out of the rail, and it snapped. I was able to glue it back together using gorilla glue, however, that happened just this morning so I will not be able to put it back on until tomorrow morning.

I know that the gorilla wood glue worked because after half an hour the shaft stayed together without the clamp on. I did manage to get all of the extra heddle off and shifted where the last shaft is going to be by adding the pieces onto the other heddle. Essentially now only the 16th shaft is missing the part that keeps the heddle rods in place. Do I regret doing all of this, while the loom is completely warped up, not really. Considering how much time and effort it takes to warp up the loom, loosening the warp from the back beam and allowing the heddles to shift in place seems to be the best way to do this. That being said, I have not found out where the sticky warps are nor whether anything is shifted or twisted, so wait and see if this actually works or not. Since I am having a Weaving Guild meeting on Saturday and they asked us to bring our own place setting, I’m going to wash the towel now that I’ve hemmed it and see how it works.

There is one more aspect to this saga and that is the paper that I used to wind the back warp. Since it was not exactly the same size as the back warp beam, it wound up crinkling and wrinkling. Those crinkles and wrinkles cause the warped be held at a different tension which completely messed up my front tension. I should’ve seen this coming however, I did not. I am still debating different ways to potentially resolve this issue. The back warp reel is actually quite wide, though it isn’t 36 inches wide which is what I think the paper is.

I believe taking off the extra heddles will give me room to figure out which of my warps are crossing or doing other things that cause me to not get a clean shed. I also believe that if I can find some way to wind the warp on with even tension I will solve my loose warp problem, though I do not look forward to unrolling the entire warp just to try to roll it back on the back beam with even tension. Perhaps unrolling the back beam and pulling it through the front reed and heddles will help me figure out my threading problems, then I can concentrate on the tension problems. I hope to get both of those problems solved this week, though again it will all have to wait until tomorrow morning when I can get the last shaft fixed.

As you can probably tell, this has been my all consuming project this past week. The quilt as you go project went well, not everyone finished since I had between 16-18 (I lost count) people wanting to do the project. As a result, even though Wednesday-Sunday I’m supposed to be off, I will be coming in to work for 2 hours to set up and help everyone finish their potholders. Each person will be making 1 and I have enough supplies for 12. I’m also teaching Scissor Fobs on Saturday, so I will really have Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday off. That is alright, I will use the ‘on days’ to run other errands and take care of other chores around the house.

I think that is it for this week, so until next time remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!

Severely Sidetracked

by CZeitler

Crafting content will begin after the ******.

I went outside this morning to get my 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, also known as using my old fashion lawnmower to mow my lawn. I love my old fashion mower because it is not nearly as harsh on the grass as an electric mower, or a gas powered mower, it also is very environmentally safe, and the blades do not need sharpening. I had mowed my front lawn on Thursday because I had a little bit of time and I knew that since it was forward facing I wanted the front of my house that everybody could see to look nice. I had decided to leave the backyard that nobody except one neighbor can see alone until I had time on Sunday. Imagine my surprise, when my beautiful, plush lawn was scalped. I know that someone thinks they were helping me and giving me a hand, however, all I feel is devastated and violated. My lush green grass is now almost down to the dirt and it looks horrible. Somebody came into my yard without my permission and did what they thought was best without consulting me or talking to me or anything. I know that the short way of thinking of this is that somebody mowed my lawn for me, however, all I really feel is violated. If they think it’s OK to mow my lawn without permission what else do they think it’s OK to do without my permission on my property? I’ve been trying to slowly do some landscaping, last weekend I put out some new, stepping stones for my pots and other things.
because of this, I wound up going to my local hardware store to buy a blank sign. I put the sign out after I wrote down something to the effect of ‘Thank you for mowing my lawn. Please ask permission.’ I plan on keeping it up for a week. While I was there, They had bushes half price so I did get a bush for an area that I was planning on putting in the back and a nice lilac bush that I put in a pot out front. In total, I spent all of what I earned teaching yesterday on some of the yard work as opposed to saving it as I had planned to do. I also think that I might need to put out some cameras on the backyard so that I can keep track of what’s going on. I didn’t want to be that kind of paranoid person, however, I don’t want people thinking that they can do whatever they want on my property.

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due to circumstances beyond my control, I have not gotten around to creating the organization post that I intended to. Since it is mirrix, weave every day month I have managed to get some weaving done almost every day. The most exciting achievement that I’ve managed is that the reed on my 16 shaft loom is completely threaded, and I have almost half of the heddles threaded as well.

I did have to take a break in the middle of my project to create my own lease stick so that I could attach it to the back roller of my loom. For the life of me, I do not know what happened to the original, however, with some para cord, an impact driver, and some ingenuity, I did manage to get the lease sticks for the front and back of the loom finished. I have been having some trouble with the lease stick on my rigid heddle loom as well so I am not sure if I’m going to just use para cord to attach it to the front and back beams or if I am going to use the slightly thicker wood that I purchased to create my own lease sticks.

I did manage to get all of the pieces cut out that I need for the quilt as you go potholder class I am on Thursday, that did take quite a bit of time and playing around with the machines to make sure that they were going to work. I also had to remind myself that fold over binding is just fine because I am not going to try to teach 13 people on the fly how to do regular binding. I am not that much of a masochist.

I know that this is not the post that I promised you, I do hope to get to that before the 11th. I hope that everyone has a wonderful week and remember to live life a little more abstract.