The Pillow Covers That Will Be Pillow Covers
Although the finished fabric is very soft… no no no. Pillow covers. Not a scarf. I do not need any more scarves.
It took me about six hours over four days to warp the loom. I did a direct warp on it again, but it’s too unreliable and creates crossed threads. This is plain weave. I did consider trying twill for the first time, but I wanted to see what kind of a pattern the variegated yarn made on its own. It’s created a sort of mock plaid, very subtle and organic. I like it a lot.
I really, really enjoy weaving. It’s a pity that three-quarters of the time devoted to each project isn’t the actual weaving part.
Now I’ll wash and block it, then machine-sew two lines of running stitch down the middle right next to one another and cut the fabric between them so I have two squares, and cut the fringe off (that’s not true fringe, it’s loom waste left over from the warp tied onto the loom). Then I’ll need to decide if I want this to be one single cover with the woven fabric on both sides, or two covers with one woven panel for the front and and one solid fabric panel on the back of each. I think I’ll go with the latter.
Next, I think I’ll try weaving a stole or wrap the full width of the loom. I think it has about an eighteen to twenty-inch weaving width, but the problem will be missing heddles on the shafts; on a project twelve inches wide I had only five heddles left empty on the first and fourth shafts, although there were about ten to fifteen each on the middle two. I can order replacement heddles, but I’m trying to stay away from my credit card. Maybe there’s somewhere local that I don’t know about, despite thorough Googling. I think I’m finally going to have to contact the local guild for information.
Halloween 2009
School party tomorrow. Here’s who will be in attendance.
He’s already planning to save the attending princesses from dragons and supervillains. Never hurts to be prepared.
The sheer glee as he put it all on and ran to a mirror was very gratifying. He kept backing away and running heroically at the mirror to watch himself rush to save someone. Then we had to place one of his stuffed rabbits in distress ( “Help! Help! I’m trapped in a building on fire!”) so Superman could run into the room, dive onto the table, scoop up the bunny, and roll off the other side in a dramatic rescue. Very impressive.
Another Vague Weekend Roundup
The humidity is melting my brain.
Friday afternoon HRH came home early and announced that he was taking me out to lunch, so we checked to see if our favourite sushi spot was still open for lunch (it was!) and headed out for a light sushi nibble. We shared a salad and had just enough sushi to make us feel fabulous. We hit two bookstores (one had a lineup directly from hell so we went to the other for the gift we wanted), did groceries, picked up what we needed at the pharmacy, and then had a stop at home before collecting the boy, who had spent a fabulous day with friends he hadn’t seen in a while. When the boy went to bed I put the mute on the cello and played for a while. Just as I feared, the cello doesn’t come to mind very often now that lessons are on hold for the summer; I play once or twice a week and that’s all. But I’m working through Mooney’s Position Pieces book one, and on some independent stuff too.
On Saturday HRH was supposed to hit Mousme’s place to continue painting while she was away for the weekend but there was a key kerfuffle, so while he waited by the phone the boy and I took the bus to the fabric store to buy some velveteen to cover the Styrofoam inserts HRH had carved for the hard cello case. The bus trip was fun, except for the tears that made an appearance when we got off the bus ( “But I don’t want to get off the bus — I want to get back on that bus! I don’t want to take a different bus home!” What the hey? Good grief.) We found some really nice taupe/grey velveteen on the bargain shelves and brought it home. We had a brand new bus on the trip back, and the boy charged right to the back seat and had a blast swinging his legs and jabbering about how excited Dada would be to know we had been on one of the new buses, with the new seats and the new paint!
After his nap he cheerfully suggested, “I know! Let’s play Rock Band!” and so I tried the drums for the first time ever. Holy nasty timing on the bass pedal. Give me the bass guitar back, please. Then we went out for ice cream, which was as hilarious as usual because the boy always gets chocolate and his face is a mess during and after the experience. Then we walked to the fruit stand nearby and picked up a tray of mixed berries, and stuffed ourselves on them during the drive home along the Lakeshore. We put the boy in his bathing suit and turned the sprinkler on in the back, and he soaked himself and screamed quite happily. (Placing the sprinkler so it drenches the slide? Priceless.) I baked two loaves of bread, and we ate one in entirety for dinner. Ice cream, fresh local berries, homemade bread: I count this a winner of a summer weekend dinner, personally.
Once the boy was in bed I cut out, fitted, pinned, and sewed the velveteen covers for the cello case inserts, and they’re essentially done except for the final handstitching of the end flaps. (I also need to trim and reglue the existing velveteen lining where HRH took out the built-in curves that were interfering with the 7/8’s position, but that’s cosmetic.) There was Sewing Machine Dramah where it refused to work, producing loops and snarls and jams instead of the smooth line I needed, and the Internet was useless; I have no idea where my manual is, and I couldn’t find one online. Nothing I did worked, not adjusting bobbin tension, not adjusting spool tension, not rethreading repeatedly, not changing bobbin thread, not changing the spool thread, not cleaning, not waving my hands over it and chanting mystical gibberish. Not until I did it all over again in a different order, that is, and magically the problem vanished. I did a thorough cleaning, and that may have been a factor; evidently the last major thing I sewed on it was HRH’s Van Helsing coat, because holy cats, the amount of black fluff inside it. Oh no, hang on; I sewed and then tore apart and remade a kick-ass black mock suede corset for band after we moved in; that’s what it all is. I hang my head in shame for not cleaning the machine properly afterward. I must admit to essentially leaving it alone for four years, though. I did some sachets on it, hemmed a baby sling, and made curtains for the boy’s room, but that’s pretty much been the extent of my sewing aside from the corset since we moved and the boy was born. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I missed sewing while I worked on the inset covers. One of the things I did to distract the boy from his tears when we got to the fabric store was take him to the catalogues to look through the costumes, and he found a standard superhero pattern and declared that wanted to be the Flash for Halloween. I told him that it was duly noted and we’d revisit the notion in September (which is five weeks from now, WHERE DID THE SUMMER YEAR GO). We never did get around to making the lovely little pirate coat for which I gathered all the materials and accessories a couple of years ago; he wanted to be a superhero or an engineer instead. Maybe this year he’ll actually let me sew something for him.
Sunday morning we dropped HRH at Mousme’s house so he could strip wallpaper and paint her bedroom. The boy and I had a lovely morning out and about, and everything was spectacular until nap time, when he had a tearful meltdown about no, not needing a rest, really. Then it was about how noisy his room was and it was quieter outside it so he’d sleep out there (no), and then it was about wanting to keep me company while I worked (also no). I finally got him into our bed and snuggled him until he passed out an hour and a half after he usually does, and he slept for an hour before we left to pick up HRH. We had tacos for dinner followed by freshly made chocolate ice cream, then the boy had his bath and went to bed without a problem. There were some impressive thunderstorms that went through last night, which unfortunately necessitated closing the bedroom window, which faces west. If we weren’t going to NS soon I’d have HRH put the air conditioner in, just to take some of the damp out of the air. It’s not that it’s hot; it’s just wet all the time, and everything smells musty.
Okay, I need to go lie down. The day’s work is done, and despite being adequately hydrated and fed I’m dizzy and kind of flopsy. I knew this wouldn’t be a good fibro day after two nights of broken and low-quality sleep, but I just got up to answer the phone and am having more difficulty than I expected. I guess it’s reading or staring into space for the rest of the day.
Orchestrated Update
New words today: 2,003
Total word count, Orchestrated: 9,393
Hello, pages and words. I love you.
Two new scenes, and my two protagonists have met and shared info and are now friends. Good. I may even have given a decent sense of who the new character is.
And speaking of orchestra, it’s the first rehearsal of the 2008-2009 chamber orchestra season tonight! I, of course, do not yet have my cello back from the shop, but someone is lending me one for the night. I’m very excited about going back because I miss playing (and not having a cello within reach for the past two weeks has driven me crazy), and also because we’ll meet our first guest conductor and get our music for the concert in late November.
Now I’m going to go get myself a drink, read some more Anathem and enjoy the language, and think about what to make for dinner. (I made sun oven-dried tomatoes with sea salt, herbs, and olive oil yesterday; maybe I’ll do something with them and some chicken. If I don’t eat the tomatoes right out of the container, that is.) Basically I intend to enjoy the fact that I have the next two hours to myself before the boys come home. Maybe I’ll have a nice, warm bath. Hmm; that thought has much merit. I also have a couple of sweaters to mend, as they seem to have developed holes during their summer sojourn in a drawer. I suspect that the bath will win out, though.
Warp And Weft
I am now the owner of a 24-inch four-harness table loom. It’s missing the shuttle and I believe a heddle hook, but apart from that it’s in usable shape. It’s very similar to this model, only older and a bit more rustic. An elderly friend of the ADZO family passed away recently and left no local family. She was a weaver, and had three (three? two?) full-size looms set up in her split-level home. She was a member of the Lakeshore Weavers Guild, who came in and took the full-size looms. The ADZO family went over yesterday and was told to take whatever of her things they liked. One of the things they mentioned seeing was a tiny loom in a back corner of the storage room.
My maternal grandfather was a weaver. I have a set of curtains he wove hanging in my office (which can be seen in these pictures). One of the atmospheric things I remember the most clearly about his house in Farnham was the entire room he had upstairs filled with his floor loom, his wools, and his equipment. Over the past couple of years I’ve planned to at some point learn how to use a drop spindle to spin my own wool, as part of a spiritual and meditative practice. Ideally, once I’d worked on that for a while, I’d move into weaving with the yarn I’d created. I like the sense of taking up a craft that’s been in my family.
It seems that the universe has decided to switch things up for me a bit.
Jen called and told the executors that she’d found someone who wanted the table loom if it was still available, and so ADZO and I went over this morning to collect it. There was a member of the weavers guild there too, and she asked me if I was interested in joining. I told her quite honestly that I had no time at the moment but a beginner’s workshop at some point would definitely interest me, so I got as much information from her as I could. Before we left she rummaged through some bags and gave me three huge spindles of synthetic yarn to dye and play with.
A 24-inch loom is tiny. You can’t do huge projects on them, unless you intend to patch your work together somehow. They’re pretty limited to table runners, place mats, scarves, that sort of thing. But it’s not the products I’m interested in so much as the process. There is so much spiritual metaphor and simile encapsulated in the process of weaving, as well as the attractive notion of doing something meditative with the hands that doesn’t feel like a waste of time. And as I said above, there’s the family connection that makes it all the more special for me.
I suspect that I’ll invest in a stand with treadles when I get around to using it seriously, because using hand levers to shift the harnesses slows you down a lot. You only have two hands, after all, and they’re already passing the shuttle back and forth and operating the beater.
So I have a whole new set of things to research and read about. (Plant dyeing! Patterns! Techniques! History!) It’s not pressing. I’m looking forward to it.
(What am I talking about? Wikipedia has entries on looms, heddles (which are set in a harness), and weaving in general to help you out.)
