Therapeutic creativity

I've been back to the Weaving Rooms for more weaving.  Its been a interesting and, given present state of mind, quite a challenging experience, but one that allowed me to immerse myself into learning something new and letting my mind concentrate solely on the task in hand.  That task being warping up a loom from scratch for the first time and tying in all the threads to start a new piece of cloth.

I picked two contrasting coloured yarns, 100% Shetland wool - an almost gaudy shade of lime green and a contrasting blue to warp up in alternate rows to make a shadow weave pattern.   I want to make a piece of cloth that I can use for something practical so the warp is 20 inches wide and hopefully about two metres long... there's my age showing - mixing metric with imperial!!!

What that practical article will be is yet to be decided!!

process of warping

First I measured and then wound the warp into a large hank and then began the slow laborious but soooo satisfying transfer onto the the loom.  I love all the names the bits of looms have - the raddle, the heddles, shuttles - and I love the way its all so hands on, no digital at any level, every last piece is a purely hand engineered piece of work.

There is a lot of counting to be done to ensure the cloth does end up the size required, and that the right coloured threads are in the right order, I couldn't possibly manage a conversation and do this, so its a quiet absorbing task - I hope and expect it will become like knitting, almost second nature but for now its painstakingly slow and quite fiddly.  I did get faster once I had found a rhythm and the need to to escape into pure concentration was just what I needed.

Its taken me about 6 hours (sore back) to warp up the loom - but once it was on it looked right and suddenly it was all worth while and taking the time to ensure it is counted properly and tensioned nicely will really pay off now I start weaving.

Slowly I am beginning to understand the loom and how it works it is completely fascinating.  When I first looked at this peculiarly fashioned piece of 'equipment' it made absolutely no sense to me at all.  looking on YouTube just confused me further but 6 weeks into a class and it all becomes marvelously clear and very clever - I really love the idea of making my own woven cloth entirely by hand no mechanics other then me and the odd cup of tea to keep me going.

So now I have started to weave.  The warp is tied in groups of 12 threads so I am weaving the weft in lines of 12 and the pattern didnt take long to emerge...

fabric in production

It grows much quicker then I had imagined it would and it is that all absorbing task I need.  I'm using the simplest weaving possible known as a tabby pattern, plain weaving, in and out, using 4 heddles and the pattern is entirely in the coloured warp and colours used in the weft.  Its very clever and surprisingly effective.  I have tasked myself to produce a square piece of technically 'perfect' patterned fabric and then I am going to experiment with different numbers of rows and possibly introduce some other texture into the cloth to see what happens.

I'm also going to have a go at warping up my own 'borrowed' loom which is currently sitting in the garage looking less intimidating then it did 10 weeks ago.

blurry detail of pattern