Back at the Loom

This is the first weaving I've done in about 3 weeks, because of the hand and because we've been out of town a lot during that time. I managed to weave about 500 picks before the hand started to complain. The production schedule will have to accommodate shortened work days for a while. A new medication (colchicine) should help, but it will probably be a few days before it really takes effect. Once the flare-up has subsided, the doctor has recommended a medication that is supposed to prevent future attacks. Fingers crossed (but only on the left hand - I still can't do that with the right).

I'm working with an image of orchids against a background of ferns. Here's the original image:



And the image after cropping and adjusting contrast, color, and saturation, then indexing to 12 colors (the design is intended to be woven with 3 wefts - white, fuchsia, and green).



After substituting the appropriate weaves for each of the 12 colors, here's what I get:



Pretty exciting, right? At this point, it's a matter of faith. I have to believe that the weave will raise the right colors to the surface at the right time, and let the other colors sink to the back when they're not center stage. Faith.

The only hard part is remembering to throw the right shuttle in the right sequence. My mantra is "white, fuchsia, green, white, fuchsia, green..."

With 2-shuttle weaving, it is fairly easy to keep your place. Color A is always the odd-numbered picks, and color B is always the even numbered picks. But with 3 shuttles, all bets are off. My mental arithmetic stops being able to divide by 3 after a certain threshold is reached, so only the mantra helps keep things in order.

After a short sample (a 2-inch strip in the middle of the image, using sort-of-but-not-necessarily-the-final-yarns; this is why God made leftovers) to determine the correct aspect ratio, I began the actual weaving:



More tomorrow.