I need to Get Some Looms Emptied

I have been looking at four looms that need to have warps woven off for various reasons.  

The Dorothy has had a double weave warp on forever.  It is a narrow warp and do I really need to weave it or can I just trash it...I have problems with that.

The Baby Mac has the leftovers of a workshop this summer with Robyn Spadey.  The workshop was wonderful and I enjoyed weaving several great structures.  My loom has corduroy left on it.

The Baby Wolf has the dummy warp from the previous post.  I have continued to weave scarves and the dummy warp has behaved just great.  

The Big Mac needs to have the Faux Ikat woven off so that I can weave the rugs that need to be done by the end of the month.

I want to take the workshop with Judie Eatough that the guild is having.  Since I am not working now, I have the time and I would love to spend 3 days with my weaving friends.  I don't want to take the Dorothy, so cross that one off the list.

The Baby Mac will fit in my car, so I decided to work on it.  I invited my weaving study group to come and weave a sample of corduroy so that I could empty my loom.  They did a pretty good job, but there was enough left for a good sample showing different densities of pile...

Meanwhile, we got a new car...yea, I can now travel my Baby Wolf and then I could do an eight shaft pattern instead of a 4 shaft.  So forget the Baby Mac and put more time on the Baby Wolf.  I have been doing great with the scarves, but I do not want to take off the dummy warp until they are all done.

I have become pretty fast with the weaver's knot

Number 10 warp looking good

I'm getting lots done on the scarves, but I also have to be working on the Big Mac to get the shawl off and get started with the rugs.

For my Faux Ikat technique, I wind the commercial hand painted yarn so that the colors "pool".  It is pretty funny because I hate to have my yarn pool in knitting, but I work hard to get it to on the weaving.

Here's the warp on the loom.

 I decided to use a plaited twill for the structure and found a ten shaft one that I liked.  I ended up using twelve shafts because I did not have enough heddles on shaft one and two.  But it worked out well.

Aurora Borealis

The finished shawl looks great and I love the structure.

In fact, I liked the twill so well, when I found another skein of painted warp when I was cleaning up, I decided to tie it on the ends and weave another  shawl.  This one is for me.  

Here's my warp wound, in the bag and ready to take to the loom

When I started tying on the warp I realized that this is a different yarn, instead of three plys, this one is two ply and I have more ends when I finished the warp.  I had to add warp ends to the loom (twice because I obviously can't count) and I had to use all my repair heddles and even add string heddles to get the full width threaded.

Here you see the pink I added first then the blue that I needed.

 Because this yarn is thinner, I also needed to resley, but that is quick.

Beautiful warp ready to find a good weft for it.

My workshop came and I did not have a loom empty.  I attended without a loom and found that I got help with my weaving program and am able to look at it and feel I can use it.  Before I felt every time I started working with the program it was an exercise in frustration.  I took the lap top and worked on my program.

Judie is one of the top teachers in the nation about weaving programs and she was more that happy to help me get started learning my program.  I got to spend the three days with my weaving friends and watch the samples that they were doing...some really cool designs.  I  had some of my beginning weaving students learn some fun new stuff.  But I came home early Saturday with a cold that I caught from the Mr.  

Today I feel better after spending 24 hours in bed.  Maybe now I can get one of these looms emptied!!!