Away from weaving a bit

Just as I got a warp on the loom for a run of 8 Christmas tree towels, flop, there went a harness down. I thought at first one of the hooks had come undone, but sadly no--a cable was broken.

Woe is me! A broken loom when I have Christmas weaving to do!

I put in an order with Harrisville Designs and a week and a half later (an eternity I tell you!) I have my replacement cables.

Here's the loom, back in business:



While the loom was out of commission, I got a lot of knitting done. A pair of socks for my sister are all finished, but I'm not posting pictures in case she looks here.

I should probably go do some weaving now :)

Busy busy

I've got a new warp on the loom. 10/2 cotton in an 8 shaft rosepath pattern to do some fingertip towels with pattern borders. I'm doing 4 of them with Christmas Trees for a pastor at Brent's church. She's requested them before Christmas for her gift giving needs.

I just got started weaving today after spending quite a bit time with my tieup plan. The Christmas tree draft requires 17 treadles, which is great if you've got a computerized loom, but not so great for a 10 treadle loom. I used the treadle reducer here but it said there's no way to convert the draft to 10 treadles without depressing more than 2 treadles at once. I messed around with the inputs a bit and got it all into 10 treadles except for one combination (shafts 2 and 6). So I went with that tie-up, and when I come to the pick for that one missing combination, I just pull the cords manually to lift the shafts. This is working out quite well since that pick only happens twice per towel.

I'm quite proud of my own cleverness (and grateful for the treadle reducer tool).

Unfortunately, after just finishing weaving one border of Christmas trees, one of my shafts fell. Now that happens sometimes if it escapes its little hook, but no! Eek! The cable broke. Booooo! Fortunately, Harrisville Designs has extra cables available on their website so I put in an order.

In the past week, I've also been putting a few things up for sale on etsy. I keep accumulating woven fabric and I had several things from the guild sale that didn't sell, so I got them all photographed and up online here.

I also pulled out some ivory felted fabric to see what I might be able to make from it. I made a sample baby bootie but I'm not quite happy with the shape so I'll set it aside and do some thinking about what I want to make.