Smoke and mirrors!

Meet my rooster, he is a Wellsummer, a breed known for their gentleness. He does not attack people, he is very alert though not brave. He is somewhat of a chicken, if the truth be told. He is always ready to sound the alarm. He has 14 hens that he is in charge of, and although he knows each one by name, I can't really tell most of them apart, except the hen with the crooked beak and 7 toes. I call her, well, the hen with the crooked beak.

Here are the 2 Nigerian dwarf dairy goats that I have. Snickers and Mopsie, I had no hand in naming them. They will be going to be bred later this month...........

That was all just to get away from the fact that I have done hardly any weaving this week. I could actually post the pic from last week and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, though there was a few inches woven on the bread cloths.

Early this week I was all set to fasten the warping board to the wall so that I could easily wind warps without over exerting my legs. I had it all ready, propped up, you can even see the level at the top. Went to the drill pack, and what do you know, NO DRILL! I called DH to see if he knew where it was. Yes, he did, it wasn't here, it was someplace else. Rats, says I, foiled again. You know how it is when you are all ready to do something, and you are afraid that if you don't get it done right now, it won't get done. Well, that is me all over. That was 3 days ago, I am still waiting on the drill.

I did get these 10 yard warps done for mug rugs. This is all the black 8/4 I had on that rug shuttle. (I am not even going to go into how I managed that, too long and tedious.)

I thought I would use a monks belt threading with these beautious bright colors as weft.

My plan for today, besides the blog, is to get 3 or 4 towel warps done so that I can just grab one off of the rack and wind on when I finish the rugs. That loom is really more suited to towels I think. I am going to wind a warp, then work on a bread cloth, then wind a warp, cut some blue jeans up for a rug, etc. You get the idea.

Here is a shot of Wally in his element, this is the view from my upstairs studio. At 5 months he is really getting to be a joy. He is across the street getting into all kinds of heavenly stuff. When he isn't there, he is busy finding all the garbage in the ditch and bringing it home, or laying right in front of the door snoozing.

See it worked again, didn't it!

Happy Weaving, Tina

Tuesday update.

Once again it is Tuesday! A bunch of us are here at the center working on various projects.

Last week I cleaned, lubricated and tightened up my empty loom, so that this week it would be ready to roll.

Carol had found a warp she had wound who knows how long ago, we found it as we were organizing a bit. She thrust it at me and said "Here, this is your next project." It is for hand towels, with a really sweet rosepath design on one end.

Here it is in the raddle, getting ready to start winding on. Normally I go thru the reed, then heddles and then wind on, but with no room to maneuver in back, I chose to wind on and then thread from the front.

Wally, of course was his usual helpful self. Once I got it wound on I realized that I would need to rearrange the heddles a little on the harnesses, and since there wasn't time to complete that today, I will leave that for next week.

I am always delighted to see what the different wefts do to this rug warp! Here Alan has taken a weft heavy in rust and used it in this blue and brown warp. Beautiful!

Bonnie is making great progress on her lace hand towels.

Here is part of our last carpet warp order. There are 2 more boxes under these! We use it a lot around here. Not only for rugs, but also for place mats and mug rugs too.

I didn't want you to think that Wally sleeps the whole time we are here. Here he is trying to get to me. I had gone away from my loom to help someone else. Imagine that! How dare I! What you can't really see is that he is "sitting" in a box, a broken box now!

We miss those that couldn't make it today, but we keep plugging away trying to empty our looms as fast as our 4 hours here a week will let us, dreaming all the time of the next project we will undertake on that loom or maybe the looms we have at home. We all do have at least 1 loom at home, usually more than that. It is a sickness you know.

Happy Weaving, Tina