What loooooooms ahead

Get it? Looms? I just got a loom? GET IT? Next you know I’ll be making jokes about the tangled webs we weave. Get it? WEAVE! Thank you! I’ll be here all week!

Anyway.

Years and years ago, a group of us went to Rhinebeck; while there, Sharon became enamored of weaving. I, however, did not. Who has that much floor space?! Not me, I have way too many hobbies that take up way too much room already. And I have to admit, it didn’t look like much fun. Just… to many parts. Too many pieces. Lots of moving things that the cats would flip out over. And I have to come clean, I knew a number of weavers locally, and they were … well, kind of stuffy. If I had to be bitchy to new crafters in order to be a weaver, that just wasn’t going to be for me. Even though Ginger is a weaver, and she is about the polar opposite of bitchy… I didn’t like the majority of the weavers I knew. So why take up a hobby that meant so much to them?

Fast forward to having Hanks, where Ginger would occasionally bring a loom. She had a table loom that she would sometimes set up in one side of the store, to give herself something to work on and also to show that we were weaver-friendly and could order cones of yarns when requested. And I would watch her take days to set up the loom for weaving, and still… it looked less than fun. One time I watched her pick up her stuff and leave, because she’d spent almost two hours on it and it was wrong. To me, that did not sound like a fun hobby! I’m cross enough anyway!

Fast forward a couple years to my friend Jacquie learning how to weave on a small knitter’s loom she bought. Hrm, I don’t seem to have a picture of the scarf she made me! If you’re on Ravelry, though, you can see it here. (Come to think of it, Jacquie has really spoiled me — she also made me this!) Anyway, Jacquie made it sound so fun and easy, that I started thinking that maybe a knitter’s loom was the way to go. Knock out a bunch of scarves out of sock yarn and handspun, and if I went with a rigid heddle there would be a lot less moving parts, and they come small enough to sit on a table, so… maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe. But like I need another hobby, AMIRITE?!

Fast forward to my birthday last year when Caitlin gave me this scarf. Erm. A scarf that I’ve also apparently failed to photograph. WTF, self, for all the things I photograph in a day, I couldn’t do gifts?! Aha; wait! Self-stalking research finds a picture of it here. ANYWAY. This scarf, dyed in a colorway just for me (Caitlin knows my favorites), named after me (Caitlin has a sense of humor), and woven for me (only the fourth thing she ever made, and perfect of course). This scarf was the tipping point. Laugh at me if you want to, but I wanted to be able to make someone feel as special as Jacquie and Caitlin had made me, with their lovely gifts.

So a couple of months passed, and Arne started talking about buying my wheel. I started thinking of all the practical things I could spend that money on (like groceries, and electricity)… but that wheel had been bought with money I made from making handspun on my first wheel, and I wanted to keep the craft money circle intact. So I emailed Ginger, and told her what I wanted in a loom, and she gave me a whole list of things to think about that hadn’t even occurred to me — for instance, I wanted a loom that folded so that if I got busy with other things in the middle of a project, I could fold it and put it temporarily out of the way; Ginger suggested I make sure that the folding loom I wanted could in fact be folded with the warp still on it, because a lot of them can’t. Advice like that. That Ginger! She’s got smarts!

Fast forward about another couple of months, and Arne bought The Sonata from me. I turned around and put the money into a Kromski Harp (yes, staying with the Kromski family… perhaps there’s some sort of link to Poland in my past that I’m unaware of?). Caitlin came over last Sunday and taught me how to warp it (hers is the same model, only the 32″ wherin I got the 16″ wide loom) and gave me an introductory lesson. Here’s my first weaving, and you can tell that my selvages are definitely going to need improvement. So will my tension, because the poor thing bows in at one point because I was trying to get the selvage TOO tight and even. So this first scarf will definitely need to be gifted to a family member, one who loves me very much and won’t mind that it’s not perfect but will grok that it was made with love and excitement. The funny thing is that that describes everyone in my family because they are all craft-positive and loving.

Anyway. Yes. Weaving. Apparently the need to do it just had to percolate for a few years.