Flu

I'm not at my best at the moment, spent most of the time in bed these last days. But I have a gem of a friend who cooked for me and came with diner and all to eat here with me at Christmas Day and Boxing Day. The family will come at a later date.
So, all I can do is try to get better.
The loom will have to wait for now.

Before the flu: the warping went smoothly on my own

I use an old roll of wallpaper in between the warp, but the first bit is done with kitchen towel roll as there were a lot of knots to tidy away.

After winding the warp onto the loom I had to thread the heddles

Above shows the halfway stage
Below, you can see how easy it is to thread this loom, you just tip the front up and you can get right into the loom for threading the heddles.

And here the threading is all finished, through heddles and reed

 

All I need to do now is tie onto the beam. The warp is already knotted in small bunches and I use a long thread to thread these knotted bunches onto the beam. A great way of saving warp and getting a good tension. I need to feel a bit better to do that job. I want the tension to be correct and not to have problem later with uneven warp tension.
Next post I should be weaving hopefully.

Winter

It keeps on snowing here. Overnight we had more, so my blue car is more like a white one now.

I cannot remember the last time I saw this much snow. Life is disrupted as there are very few trains running in this area and no buses either.

The grandchildren are enjoying the snow though and transport can be quite different from normal times, this was how Syb was taken to his local children's club this morning.

I've made progress on getting the warp from the Leclerc loom to the Magic Dobby. My friend Romy helped me this far yesterday:

The warp is on the raddle but I now need to beam up and start threading. I have to see how I'll be getting on with that as I seem to have some problems with my right forefinger since last night at the joint with my hand. No idea what has caused this, even typing is painful. I'm sure it is just a temporary thing.

New Loom ! Christmas comes early....

At last I made the decision to get myself a dobby loom. I enquired about delivery times on Tuesday and Wednesday morning Jan Louet delivered the new loom as he happened to be passing this way anyway! How is that for speed!
I have gone for the 70cm wide Magic Dobby, the loom that I was able to use for a while during the Summer. That was a mechanical dobby and I have chosen the computer version but at the moment the interface box is not available so for the time being I have the mechanical version and will exchange this for the interface when it is available again. That might be some time in February.

The loom came in 2 boxes and I spent Wednesday most of the day putting it together. 

boxes unpacked 

putting the stand together

centre part of the loom on the stand (most heavy part with all the shafts in place)

When I was nearly finished I discovered that I should have taken the beams of as I wanted them fitted on the stand.
Only way to do that was to dismantle most of what I had put together. Oh no!
I left it like that last night and started again this morning. It is all done now and ready for a warp:

Tomorrow I might take of the warp from the Leclerc loom and put it on the Magic Dobby. I'll decide in the morning if this might be a good plan. Snow arrived again this afternoon and more is to follow, so, good weather to stay in and get on with things indoors as there is also a cold wind blowing.

Weaving Study Day

I was lucky to go to the first Study Day of Complex Weavers outside USA last Thursday. It was by Marg Coe at Handweaver's Studio in London. Meeting up with old friends and meeting others who I only knew from mail contact. Marg has written a book Fit 2 be Tied about weaving design in Photoshop (Elements).

This is a simple curve design in Elements

And below what it looks like in PCW via Sketchpad

It was stimulating to work with Photoshop Elements (completely new to me) into PCW. May be just what I needed to get away from paperwork etc and be creative once again. I really look forward to playing about with this and designing some lovely weavings to be woven up...
Going to London was an emotional trip, travelling completely by myself (done that many times but always had someone waiting at home). I've done it and stayed a few days with a dear friend which was a great help too. It's always nice to go to London but this time it was special. Next trip will be less emotional I'm sure.

More snow is forecasted for this week, so I'm hoping to get around to doing some weaving again after the emotional roller coaster months behind me. This trip has certainly helped me towards that way.

Snow

Last Monday the first snow arrived here this Winter.

The grandchildren are enjoying themselves!