Hey Y'all! Watch This!!

So I started to write a post last night, but was interrupted by:

Slim: "Ewwww!! Mom, Mom! L pooped in the bathtub!!"

Ahem.

Anyway, as I was about to say:

International Weaving Woman of Mystery

Sorry for the crappy webcam quality (the digital camera seems to have given up the ghost), but LOOK -----> We Have A Weaving!!

I am more than pleased to announce the start of a new hobby. Can't say the same for The Cap'n, but he's been incredibly supportive of it.

It's been a long, interesting year. Last year around this time, I had just helped close down a fiber arts workshop that unfortunately couldn't be saved. I wish that I would have had about $50,000 of my own to turn it around. But I did what I could, and before I helped sweep up the last dust bunnies and box up the last yarn, I was encouraged to buy a donated Beka 32" rigid heddle loom.

They were really good fiber pushers around there.

I was a little shell-shocked after the store closed though, and felt very guilty that I couldn't do more to save it. So the Beka sat in a box under the bed for the last year. Around the time that I was working at the store, I also tried biking again and the tendenitis in my left thumb started acting up too.

So other than a couple of knitted hats over the last year, I was off fiber. I got a little stopped up with out my daily dose. (So to speak...)

But I missed it. Terribly. I just didn't know it.

Then on May 6, the Cap'n was involved in a bad motorcycle accident on his way to work. A woman pulling out from a stop sign didn't see him, and hit him. He shattered his right wrist and elbow, and broke 4 vertebrae in his back.

Talk about a game changer. He's doing better now, but it's been a long, hot, miserable summer. I had to return to fiber just to hang on to the last drips of my sanity that were seeping out of my ears.

So about a month ago, my KnittinSis came to visit, and I got her to help me dust off the loom and figure out what screws I needed to put the floor stand together.

It's a monster. 32" is not a shy and retiring size. Luckily the Cap'n doesn't mind it taking up one big corner of the dining room. I haven't named it yet, but maybe one will come to me.

For a first project, I decided to wind up some Louet Opal superwash yarn that I had purchased from Springwater in its first, healthier incarnation. It seemed karmically correct. I had navy blue and spring green, and I wanted to make a table runner.

Bear in mind, I saw people work on the rigid heddles at the store, and I saw warping being done, but I was way too busy to learn any of it. But I guess some of it came through osmosis, and a lot came through the innerwebs. I found this and this to be helpful.

Turns out I should have used a 10-dent heddle instead of an 8-dent, and superwash actually doesn't full (or felt) that much in the wash. And even selvedges? HA! I say.

Whatevs.

Any disappointments I may have had with my first weaving project were washed away as soon as Slim saw it and said, "Mommy, is that for me? Can I have it?"

So instead of a fuzzy crooked table runner (just what we need on our frequently crumb-y table), we have a warm, soft scarf for a very special little boy who is starting Pre-K next Monday.

Yay!