Saturday, February 2, 2008

WEAVING REVISITED / FIFTH TIME AROUND











Funny how things work out sometimes. Above is my latest attempt, not completely successful (but good enough), to warp the inkle loom for a simple weaving pattern of five tiny deep-red rectangles repeated throughout the length of a black belt. Yesterday when I sat down to weave (see photo from yesterday), I realized that I put the cotton rug warp on the loom in such a way that it was impossible to begin weaving. It was as if I somehow built a house without remembering to make any doors or windows and found myself sitting outside, feeling pretty silly.

Last night before I went to bed, I unwound all the cotton rug warp and began the process of warping again, stopping after a few rows.

This morning, during my "drawing" time, I worked on putting together a portfolio of 15 pieces of art work in digital form for a CD that will accompany my application for the Visual Communications (Graphic Design) Program for Fall 2008 at the local community college. That was another challenge because I had to teach myself to use Microsoft Powerpoint. Fortunately, I was able to keep a relative sense of humor in that process.

As a break from the computer, I decided to finish up warping the inkle loom so I could take a photo for today's post, a photo which would show the correct way to warp an inkle loom. Just as I was almost finished, I noticed that I had made a mistake at the point where I had stopped warping last night, so I unwound the warp. About half way through the next try, I saw that there was yet another problem. What I thought I needed to do was make a splice, but I was wrong.

Finally, the best solution I could come up with was to accept that I had to give up on the idea of having five tiny deep-red rectangles repeated throughout this particular belt and settle for a black belt with three tiny deep-red rectangles repeated throughout.

It is possible that the left-over yards of spliced black and red warp can be made into the belt with the pattern I originally chose. The first time I tried doing this simple pattern last summer, I made several mistakes that weren't obvious until I was at a point where I was NOT willing to start over. My goal this time was to be careful and not make any mistakes. FUNNY!

It's important to me to give myself the opportunity to make ALL the mistakes that need to be made as I learn how to weave again. If I didn't love weaving, I would find this impossibly frustrating.

If I didn't love life, I would find it impossible.

I like the way Oboe is looking at my imperfect, but good enough, solution.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't understand all that weaving lingo *lol*, so I didn't see the humor in the last post, but it looks like Oboe's on top of it here, so...

And good luck with that Graphic Design program. Sounds good.

~Later

robin andrea said...

I've been looking at both photos of the loom, but because I am completely loom illiterate, I can't see the difference (yet). You make me want to learn how to weave!