
I -- excuse me, we -- have decided to brush up a bit on a smaller loom before starting on the first large project in too many years, sort of like practicing scales. And a one and a two...
Clearly, it's become a family affair.
The smaller loom I'm using to bone up on is a tapestry loom by Mountain Loom Co. of Colorado. Unfortunately, Mountain Loom Co. doesn't make looms anymore. I was fortunate enough to order mine in the 90s, when they were still in operation, and had it shipped to Switzerland, where I was living at the time and learning to weave.
And in fact, this loom slipped through my fingers when I sold it to a friend several years later and immediately wished I hadn't. About two years after that, I happily bought it back from her. This time, I'm hanging on to it.
Here's a view from the back:

It's a great little loom, perfect for workshops because it folds up and fits in a big suitcase.
You may be wondering why the celestial heavens are rolled up on the warp beam. Yes, it looks a lot like Christmas. When I came to wind this warp on, I discovered I didn't have enough wooden slats the right length for this loom and no brown paper or corrugated cardboard, which I also like to use for winding on a warp. What I did have, however, was leftover wrapping paper.
It's really kind of nice to look up from weaving and see the cosmos hovering above.
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On a related note, I just bought The Tapestry Handbook by Carol K. Russell and I highly recommend it. I bought mine used from Amazon for about $15 in hardback. Worth every penny.
One interesting little tip I picked up from Carol is to use a loopy acrylic yarn between the initial rag-woven warp-spacing rows and the heading of the tapestry that gets woven before the design begins. This loopy yard does two things: it helps space the warp ends because of its loops, and it pulls in just enough to establish the final width of the tapestry, so all the pulling-in takes place before the heading is woven. Very neat.
Carol uses a nice black loopy yarn for this purpose. Of course, when I went looking for my loopy yarn at the only yarn store within a hundred miles of Licking, this is what they had:

The first rows of any weaving are always colorful, at least at my house.
What you're looking at here are actually the warp-sreading rag rows followed by the spacing loopy yarn and then the heading. The heading will get tucked under the tapestry like a hem and the rest will be removed and saved for later use after the tapestry is cut off the loom.
See how the heading is already very neatly a quarter-inch narrower than the rag strips? It's like this on both edges. This is exactly what you want. Now the selvedges can remain straight for the next five yards of sampling...if I do my job well.
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And speaking of jobs, I'm on a well-deserved four-day vacation from the newspaper. My wonderful colleague at our two-person enterprise was out on medical leave for a month, just returning full-time this week. I managed to do most of the work of both of us, with a little supplementary help from our larger parent paper in Salem, for five issues.
All I can say, folks, is don't try this at home. It's why I've been away from my blog for so long, and from just about everything else in my life as well.
In case you're interested, by the way, here's a link to our little newspaper: The Licking News. Small-town life.
These next four days, my nice loooong weekend, are meant to restore me to human-hood so I can go back to work on Monday and stop making the kind of silly mistakes I tend to make when I'm stressed out and overworked. And on a newspaper, all your silly mistakes end up in people's mailboxes every week.
My therapy? Guess.
The plan is to dress the big loom this weekend and continue with my practice on the small loom in preparation for what I'm calling my Lotus Tapestry.
Oh yes, and rest.
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Swiss weaver Silvia Heyden has been one of my favorite artists for many years. Today, I ordered a new film about her weaving life, A Weaverly Path by Kenny Dalsheimer. This link will bring you to a short video of Silvia and some of her amazing work.
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So this morning, I'm rejoicing in the sunny day, reveling in my time off and, of course, snuggling with my ever-present fuzzy companion, who likes weaving almost as much as I do and denies all responsibility for fugtive yarn balls.
Till later, from Moose Lodge...
