Warps Waiting..

Ever wonder what $930 worth of carpet warp looks like? Here it is! We ordered, as a group, from Great Northern Weaving. I did the order online Wednesday and it came in 2 boxes on Friday. That's the quickest I've gotten yarn from them yet! Besides ordering for our department, about half a dozen individual members ordered for themselves. It took several hours Saturday afternoon to get the orders organized and ready for me to take tomorrow to the center. Figuring out individual bills made me wish I'd taken accounting or something at U of M back in the day!

The colors are so awesome. I didn't order any for myself this time. It sure is tempting to put another order in for more for my stash but I think I'll weave more of what I have first.

The price of cotton has really gone up lately we've heard. Well, it sure has! I was a bit surprised at how much it had gone up since we ordered last year.

 There's only one loom with a project being woven right now in my studio. It's the pup with bamboo scarves on it. So, I've been winding warps. We were invited to a wedding Saturday down in Savannah GA. We couldn't make it but I didn't have a gift anyway! My traditional gift is a set of placemats. After getting those pink and blue placemats off Thelma, I decided I'd better stock up on neutral placemats for weddings for the next few years. This is a long warp I'm slowly winding on. Having that sectional beam in the back is a bit of a pain but I haven't decided to remove it yet. The problem is the metal sections aren't smooth. What do you use to make them slick? I'd say age and the fact that the loom came from New Orleans is why. I'm having to slowly wind it, checking every 8 inches or so to be sure the thread isn't hanging up on those dividers! Once it's done it'll be a breeze to weave on.

 I only have one raddle for my LeClerc looms. This warp is a production one that's waiting for the raddle to be done on Thelma so I can put it on Nilus and get this one going. This is the warp that I do hope to have woven by the end of the week. It's bright colors in the warp, stripes, took forever to wind on because I kept changing colors from every half inch to 3 inches. I'm weaving it with black. This is another progression I figured out a couple of years ago and this is the third warp I'm doing with it, each one with different colors. On the picture you can see the cushion I covered to sit on while I weave. It's a thick foam  that I covered with upholstery fabric. Sitting at a loom for a few hours each day, you have to have something like that to protect your muscles and bones!

 I did get the baby wolf emptied and the scarves that were on it are about finished having fringes twisted. So, the next warp on it will be handtowels. They're waiting for time for me to get them on. It's stripes in a peach and navy. I got some yarn at Fiber Forum but decided they weren't really strong enough for warp. So I checked my stash and these are very similar in color to those cones. My stash yarns are the warp and I'll use the Fiber Forum yarn for the weft. It'll work fine! It's a fairly short warp for me. about 7 yards only.

I did get my Ashford loom finally completely assembled Saturday afternoon as well. I've wound a very short navy warp for mug rugs to put on it to be sure it's working right before I put the complicated warp on for MidWest Weavers Conference. Sometimes I think we bite off almost more than we can chew. I'm dreading putting that warp on but will let you know how it goes. MidWest is in a month so I do have time to figure it out. I'm taking the preconference class with Sheila O'Hara.

This morning I saw on the computer that Joplin MO got hit by tornadoes last night. In going to these conferences over the years I've met alot of people from all over the midwest. Of course we don't remember all of them but I do know that at least one of them comes from Joplin. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by the storms yesterday. We just got a tiny hint of what they are experiencing now.

Well, I'll see how much I can get done this week. With the last "winter" hopefully over down here, we're having warmer weather and it's tempting to go outside more.
Carol