Weaving and Crocheting and Knitting, OH MY!
It’s been one fiber-intensive week–35 hours of learning to weave, a crochet class, knitting for the store, and my regular pleasure knitting on top of that. Yikes! I’m looking forward to our beach trip next week to take a little break from fiber. (Well, not completely, that would be silly.)
I took the week of weaving class at WEBS this week with Scott Norris. The class was as intense as the class description led me to believe. Just about everyone else in the class had woven before, except for me. My background basically was that I had made one belt on an inkle loom in college and then…it stops there. I managed to keep up with everyone and even got to do a third project yesterday. By the last day, I was able to wind a warp and dress a loom all by myself. And with the good class notes and the pictures I took, I might even be able to do it again in a year.
Day 1
Scott had already wound the warps for our first project. So we began by learning how to dress our loom, a Norwood 22″ Workshop loom (4 shaft/6 treadle). Next we began to weave our color gamps, the first being a plain weave. The second was a twill.
Day 2
I was far enough ahead that I could to a second twill gamp. So by the end of the day I had three color gamps finished, tied them and washed them in the evening.
We also got to start our second project, a twill sampler, and picked two colors for it. After staring at those rainbow colors for 1 1/2 days, I wanted something soothing. I chose two colors that reminded me of roasted marshmallows. We learned how to wind a warp which I actually found quit relaxing, unlike anything up to this point. By the end of the day I had started to dress the loom again.
Day 3
We talked a lot about twills today: Straight draw, Point Twill, Rosepath, Gooseye, and Dornik. I finished dressing my loom and began weaving the balanced twill part of my sampler.
Day 4
Today was not a good day for me. I was tired from the weaving and hot room, and my brain just wasn’t working well any more. I did manage to finish weaving the balanced twill and the warp-face twill sections of my sampler, but there was a lot of unweaving today.
Day 5
I was determined to have a much better day and got in early. Within the first hour I had finished the weft-face twill section of my sampler and could go on to the third project, a log cabin pattern using two shuttles. I choose six colors for the project, learned to wind the warp holding two colors at the same time, and dressed the loom by myself.
OK, here are some not very exciting pictures of dressing the loom for the final project. Mostly they will help me decipher my notes months, years from now when I might need to dress a loom again.
Winding and tying the warp
Preparing the loom and warp, attaching the warp loosely to the warp beam
Arranging the warp across the raddle, tying the warp to the warp beam rod
Winding the warp onto the warp beam
Threading the heddles, sleying the reed, tying on
By the end of the day I had finished the log cabin design and could go home and start packing for the beach.
Conclusion: well, I can imagine weaving again, maybe even owning a loom someday. But I would want to take more classes first. There is so much planning and prepping before the actual weaving. It’s completely different than knitting. It could never replace knitting. I could be a knitter that weaves, but never a weaver who knits. Weavers are so serious.
Comments
2 Comments on Weaving and Crocheting and Knitting, OH MY!
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JessaLu on
Sat, 15th Jul 2006 6:55 pm
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Mel on
Wed, 26th Jul 2006 12:28 am
They have to be serious – they’re concentrating on everything they need to remember ;o)
David has made similar observations about weavers – type A all the way. I’ve always thought it would be kind of fun to learn, but I don’t know that it could ever replace knitting for me, either. If I had the space, though….
