What's on the loom?
I'm in sort of a quandary. I hate naked looms and I have two of them. I'm not sure which project should go on which loom. Old Weaver's Tale dictates only three days between taking one warp off the loom and putting the next one on. Well, I've missed that mark by months.
I've had one of Peggy's looms here since the beginning of January but can't decide what to weave on it. It's a nice big four shaft loom. If I love the loom I'll keep it. If not, we will sell it. I want to give it a good test - a chance to shine for me. I have big fat jute cored yarn that wants to be a rug. I have old blue jeans and t-shirts that need to be a rag rug. I have indigo dyed cotton that will be ikat kitchen towels. I have no end of cottolin colors for more kitchen towels. And some beautiful reclaimed silk ribbons that just need to be a scarf. Hence the quandary.
My Schacht Baby Wolf loom is sitting here patiently waiting for the next run of linen face cloths. I think the quandary here is what colors of linen yarn to use in the weft. That's totally ridiculous because the face cloths will be great no matter what colors I put in the warp. I usually just wing it anyway. The real stumbling block is probably having to get the warping board down off the wall and set up. That's also completely silly since it's right here and set up takes about 90 seconds.
My Cricket loom had a change of dress yesterday. I had warped it a while back when I was working on knitting and weaving kits but I really didn't like the yarn I had picked out. We took it to the shows in January to let people play with it but when I came home I didn't want to work on it. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out that you have a dog on the loom but when you finally realized it you have to take action. So yesterday I cut off the old warp and put on something spectacular. The yarn is a super wash Merino and Silk blend dyed by our friend Gale Evans of GalesArt. Gale has a fabulous color sense and does really wonderful work. I warped the look using "Ashes" and am weaving with "Graffiti". It's very cool.
My big loom, the 40" Gilmore, has been warped with green and natural cottolin for some great color & weave kitchen towels since last fall. I took the first six towels off so they could go to the guild's fall sale. Now I have six more to weave.
Maybe I should just put all the ideas on slips of paper in a basket and pull one out to see what's next. That was Cheryl McWilliams' suggestion at the West Side Weavers meeting today and it makes a lot of sense.