Another Look at Number Three

Today's first priority was to complete my sales tax return (ugh!), which is due July 31. Because we leave in just under a week for the Bellevue Art Museum show, that means the tax return is actually due now. After updating my sales tax spreadsheet with the past 12 months' worth of data, and then filling out all the myriad idiotic forms by hand, I treated myself to a few hours at the loom. Amazing how weaving at least a little every day can relieve a lot of stress and tension!

I wove for a while, maybe a yard of cloth, then managed to drop my thread snippers onto the floor. As I leaned down to retrieve them, I got an unusual view of the cloth on its way under the loom. It's a bit dark down there under the beater (and the flash just wipes out detail) but the diagonal lines formed by the structure were much more visible than when I'm facing the cloth straight on as I weave.



And just to include a matching view at the back of the loom, this shot will show you what I meant about knots, and how they slow things down.



Each scarf starts out clean, with only two selvedge threads, one on each side, dangling off the back of the loom. (I added them after the rest of the warp was beamed, when I decided on crepe rather than plain weave for the body of the cloth, so they're weighted separately.) By the time I'm half-way through a scarf, a flock (covey? maybe coven?) of film canisters has joined those two back there. When I finish the scarf, I swap the original warp ends back in at the dividing line between the current and next scarves' fringes, and start clean again.

You can just see part of scarf #2 winding onto the cloth storage beam. I really like the color of that one, and can't wait to see it wet finished. Can't wait to see 'em all wet finished, for that matter. The texture that crepe weaves create is really wonderful. If you don't believe me, go to Alice Schlein's blog, and read about some of her exploration of this wonderful family of structures. She's been sampling them for a couple of months, and shows some wonderful examples (including a few "before and after wet finishing" photos).