The Bethel and Hamersville yard sales are today, and although the kittens woke me up at 6:15am, I decided to sleep in and not go. My house is enough of a mess as it is, and by the time I did get up, I would have been rushing around to leave, so I decided just to stay home. I have plenty to do here anyway, like pot up plants. Among other things. And Mom and Dad said they'd keep a look out for anything I desperately need to have. ;)

I sent away for the instruction book of my loom, and I am waiting for that before attempting to 'dress' it--I think that's the proper term. There's so much lingo! Warp and weft I knew, but beater and shed and pick-up sticks are ones I didn't know. Sometimes things are called different names despite the fact that they are the same things--like harnesses and shafts. I also found quite a few bloggers who weave--I'm going to have to go back and make sure I've bookmarked all the blogs that were interesting. I still haven't figured out what 'epi' stands for. Something-per-inch, I'd presume, but 'e'?

But while I was waiting, I decided (late last night) to get down my other loom; the one I bought at Burlington last year. It's a tapestry loom, or a hybrid of such, but has a nice heddle (the whole thing is nice, in fact; pegged and not screwed; completely handmade) and I thought I'd spend an hour or so 'dressing' it and then weave something. Or start to.

It took me a bit longer than I thought it would to remember how to dress it, but once I figured it out (and after realizing they make special hooks to get the warp through the holes of the heddle (I think they are called 'reeds') and finding that a very small crochet hook works just as well, it went much faster) I warped 50 strands of this slubby cone yarn I have--in three different colors, even--and started weaving.

By then, it was close to midnight, so I didn't get very far:



The pictures just don't show the sheen of this yarn--I really think it's mostly linen. It feels like linen, at least, but there's no tag on the cone at all for content or anything else. I am alternating colors in the warp as well as the weft, so once I switch to the next color, I'll take another picture. Maybe it will be brighter in my room by then.

The only issue I have with this loom is that it's very large--definitely not very portable and kind of awkward to stash somewhere for the night while weaving is in progress.

There's something awfully meditative about weaving. And I really think I like weaving better than knitting. :)

(This loom has a continuous warp; there's no place to wind it, so once I reach the top, I'll untie one knot and slide the whole thing around. It's easy to warp that way, but it's also limited in length as well as width. But it will do. This will be a scarf, I think. And the yarn looks brown on my screen; it's actually a dull orange color, and pretty.)

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