I finished weaving the watermelon warp last night.
First photo below shows the last of the watermelon warp coming off the warp beam. It may take weeks to get the warp onto the loom, but the weaving part is always astonishingly fast. Also..., I tend to sink into a meditative state while weaving, and what seems like ten minutes of weaving might actually encompass the passage of three or four hours.
It was a happy thing to draw all the newly-woven cloth off the cloth storage beam last night at 10:30. I'm always like an eager kid when it's time to unroll the new fabric.
Once the project is off the loom, though, the loom looks forlorn. It was all bright reds and greens, splendid and sparkling gold thread, much clattering and thumping and constant motion, the whir of the shuttle, the soft bell-like clang of the iron weights...but now the cloth is finished and off the loom, and what felt like a kind of joyous festival is over, and the room goes quiet. The loom light is switched off, the new cloth folded up and taken upstairs for wet-finishing and pressing.
As much as I love the moment when the cloth comes off the loom, a warp beam emptied of its threads is a sad-looking thing, and my mind turns inevitably to the planning of the next project to go on the loom. I love the cloth I weave, but it's the weaving of it that is the big deal for me; the 'becoming' of a project, and the processes surrounding it. It is a kinetic thing; a process always in motion.
First photo below shows the last of the watermelon warp coming off the warp beam. It may take weeks to get the warp onto the loom, but the weaving part is always astonishingly fast. Also..., I tend to sink into a meditative state while weaving, and what seems like ten minutes of weaving might actually encompass the passage of three or four hours.
It was a happy thing to draw all the newly-woven cloth off the cloth storage beam last night at 10:30. I'm always like an eager kid when it's time to unroll the new fabric.
Once the project is off the loom, though, the loom looks forlorn. It was all bright reds and greens, splendid and sparkling gold thread, much clattering and thumping and constant motion, the whir of the shuttle, the soft bell-like clang of the iron weights...but now the cloth is finished and off the loom, and what felt like a kind of joyous festival is over, and the room goes quiet. The loom light is switched off, the new cloth folded up and taken upstairs for wet-finishing and pressing.
As much as I love the moment when the cloth comes off the loom, a warp beam emptied of its threads is a sad-looking thing, and my mind turns inevitably to the planning of the next project to go on the loom. I love the cloth I weave, but it's the weaving of it that is the big deal for me; the 'becoming' of a project, and the processes surrounding it. It is a kinetic thing; a process always in motion.
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