Phew, progress made........

Today I spent some time putting together my 12 page handout for the Name Draft weaving guild program I'll be giving/teaching next month. There's a handwoven sample on the front cover, a piece of chocolate in a custom matching wrapper, a pencil with a good eraser, a worksheet and cardstock cut for 'weaving'.  I've got 36 of them ready to go each in it's own sheet protector. I've got references (magazines/book) and a few woven samples in my rolling cart and dry erase markers for the white board I've been assured is at our not the usual meeting place. All I need to do is write myself a few notes. Feels good to have that finished.

Have I ever mentioned the 'WOW' factor when giving a guild program?  Gotta WOW them so if I say or do something stupid they won't remember that - they'll remember the candy, free pencil, handwoven sample, etc. Irma, an older guild member, used to be my gauge on if my guild program was good - if she stayed awake it was a good one (which she always did, thank goodness). Irma has since passed away so I just have to hope I do ok these days, haven't found another guild member that falls asleep if the program bores them.

So........the past 2 hours I've spent thinking/planning future warps to go on the looms........that really felt good as I'm not getting enough weaving time these days.

And then UPS showed up with an Ashland Bay order of roving that will need to be weighed, bagged, labeled and put into inventory.......and since these are new colors I'll need to do photography work. It's not as big an order as usual but still around 50 pounds - it's mostly merino/tussah in test colorways to try out and see how they're received and some limited merino multi-color colorways that I thought would be fun to add to the thousands of pounds of roving already in bins here, what's a few more???  I'm going to choose to ignore that huge box until next week, there are other things on the schedule for the next several days.

One warp off, another to go on........

I finally got back to the loom to finish up that warp based on the name draft 'Sand and Sea'. I wove 4 placemats and a runner with green and tan for the weft, very subtle, then today I wove this runner using lavender and white for the weft. They are in the washer as I post. 

I pulled out a painted warp to put on the loom next, enough for 3 tencel scarves.....have decided on 8 harness turned twill blocks using a Fibonacci sequence for the warp blocks and will treadle random size blocks......will be fun to play. Not sure if I'll get it on the loom tomorrow but I'd like to think so.....sometimes life gets in the way........

Final name drafting

I started getting this warp on the loom yesterday, finished up this morning and started weaving placemats and will eventually weave some runners. This is another example of a name draft for my April guild program - it's 'sand and sea'. It's very subtle which is not good for a photo but I really like it - there are 3 colors alternating in the warp, a very pale blue, pale sea glass green, pale lavender. The ground weft is a bit darker sea glass green with a tan pattern weft. Warp & ground weft is 5/2 perle cotton - pattern weft is 3/2 perle cotton. The original thought was to weave 6 placemats and 2 runners, now am thinking 4 placemats (3 woven so far) and 3 runners - I don't think 6 rectangular placemats will fit on the oval table at the beach cottage - if I have 6 for dinner I'll use some round placemats. Am thinking at least one runner might lean toward lavender.

On another note for those of you who are curling enthusiasts....if any of you are. I found the NBC schedule for televising the Olympics and was very pleased to see quite a bit of curling including games the USA teams are no playing in. You can bet I'll be setting my dvr for all of it. If you're interested in the NBC schedule for when events are televised (in the States) click here.

In 12 minutes online registration opens up for the Complex Weaver's Conference....which is why I had to walk away from the loom. I'm hoping to get my 1st choices in seminars but even my 2nd & 3rd would be quite ok. I've never attended a Complex Weaver's Conference so I'm pretty excited. Sam and Bailey will hold the fort down here while I'm learning new things there in June.

Name Drafting

I finished threading a name draft on the leftover warp from our holiday cards for 2013. This draft is based on the words 'happyholidays' and it will be used for our 2014 holiday cards - whoo hoo - I'll be ahead for once. Even though I worked it out on graph paper I still don't know exactly how it will look until woven - I like it, I think it turned out great, and it's an original overshot design. It would be so easy to preview and work on it in weaving software but I'm doing all on graph paper since that's what I'll be teaching in April......after all everyone doesn't have weaving software, besides it's a good learning tool on how to draft for all those newer weavers in our guild, as well as the more experienced ones who just follow drafts but don't understand them.

I can't believe today is my 1000th post on this blog - hard to believe I've kept it up, hard to believe people do read it........

Name Drafting

In April I'm giving a program for my weaving guild on name drafting. It's a process of creating an all original draft based on a name/word/saying. In the past I've made table runners to gift using name drafts to commemorate special occasions - then in the hem of the table runners I've embroidered the name/word/saying used to create the draft along with the date. A short explanation is that each letter of the alphabet is assigned a number from 1-4 in the case of a 4 harness overshot weave structure. Since my head is still 'cloudy' from my cold I decided this was something I could concentrate on today - just playing with graph paper. I have several magazines and books for my bibliography but can't concentrate on reading those articles right now, maybe tomorrow........

Here I was playing with a draft using my guild's name, 'Saturday Handweavers Guild' and another one using 'Love To Weave'. There is a much quicker way to do this using a weaving software program but that's not what I'll be concentrating on since most guild members don't have weaving software.......plus a big purpose in giving this program is to teach drafting and we have many newer weavers that have not gone past reading a draft and weaving, they don't understand how the draft works.

I'm trying to come up with some fun hands-on ideas for learning to make the drafts, first learning how to do it on graph paper, then maybe weaving with cardstock - doing that really makes it clear how it works when you treadle a pattern, raise certain harnesses and put the slip of paper through so you can see what happens when some harnesses are raised and others that stay down. I'm thinking this may be a fun activity to drive the concept home.

I'll need to start working on a handout and weave some samples - would love to get this program finished up early and let it sit until April so I can move on to other weaving.