Weaving takes planning.
You have to decide how wide you want the fabric to turn out, figure out what thread count the yarn or string you want to use will work at, convert the width of fabric from inches or centimeters or what have you into threads, cut that many threads that are long enough (which is a bit longer than you think because the loom will eat a certain length of yarn, called “loom waste,” and then you need a percentage over for the threads to go up and down around each other).
After that you have to thread the yarn through the heddles in a way that will let you get the pattern you want of threads going up and down. And if you want lengthwise stripes you have to do them in the threading step. If you’re not doing tabby weave on a rigid heddle, you’d better decide which combinations of heddles you want to lift together for the warp and weft to make the patterns you want; if you’re using a loom with treadles you’ll need to figure out a tie-up.
It’s enough to make you think that once you have a plan that’s it.
Then, the yarn store doesn’t have enough of the same dye lot. Rather than one big stripe you need to do several smaller stripes or alternate so often the difference doesn’t show or divide them up to use all of one for your warp and all of the other for the weft to get the same effect or…something.
Or the yarn you wanted to use as warp breaks too much, or sticks when you open the shed, so you have to either slow way down or scrap or maybe re-space the warp (salvage it as weft across something else or … ?).
Or your helpful pet gets in there and all you-know-what breaks loose.
If you’re not planning, all you-know-what will break loose constantly, but you can’t just plan — you have to adapt to the feedback the universe gives you about your plan as you go.
To get back into weaving, I had a plan: make up an embroidery frame, order heddles and a reed almost as long as the frame’s width and a shuttle from the Woolery, build a couple harnesses that fit the heddles and rig something up to hold them in place above or below to open a shed, and then it’s a loom so start weaving.
Then the universe gave me feedback on the plan, in the form of a deal too good to pass up, because they were moving and needed it gone urgently, on this:
(technical difficulties — picture of four foot width floor loom coming soon)
It wasn’t local, so if it’d been in most places, I would’ve had to pass anyway. However, it was in Oregon, and I still have family there. Including my father, an over-the-road truck driver, who could fit it into a load that didn’t quite take up the whole trailer.
So, I adapted — cancelled my Woolery order to build up a new one based on things I could use with it like shuttles, found a spot on my workroom wall where it just fits, moved the shelf that used to be there — and now here we are, and just as soon as I can shake loose a nice long quiet moment to plan a project, I get to find out how much I remember.
