Onward Voyageur, Loom that is.

My loom and I became much better acquainted this weekend.  We are as close as can be when one person is learning all about the other thing.  It is fully beamed, threaded, sleyed and tied on.  We are warped, but then as some of you know, we already were that way.  the knitter and her loom are in sync.  I am ready to weave but for winding a few of the little spools for my boat shuttle.

Some of the things I learned, were things I thought I learned in knitting.  The first and biggest thing as that I can't count.  That was just a little disappointing, but it was something I was completely prepared for.  I also learned that there were things I could do to make the task go much faster and more efficiently for this particular loom.

I watched the warping tutorial by Barbara Elkins of WEBS fame.

She is working on a Wolf loom or one of the Wolf loom family, and while this was by far the best loom on back to front warping on  the net, there were things that just didn't work for me.  And possibly wouldn't be the best way for this Voyageur loom either.

I also learned that there are things I am going to have before I warp the next time that will save me tons and tons of time. Like repair heddles, in case I mess up threading. And different apron rods that aren't going to slip out all over the place till they are fixed by tension.

It was a really interesting experience but it took forever.  It was one of those patience of Job things where sheer orneriness and knit picky persnickety perseverance completed the task.  But it is complete.  I am not sure if I will weave today.  I may just sit and look at it for a day or two.

There was knitting too.  Significant knitting.  The kind of knitting where there was great speed in the knitting just to work out the tension of the day.  The kind of knitting that, if you aren't aware of the tension of your knitting, can turn out really really tight.  I was aware of it going in, so I was careful to work on stuff that would take the edge off first, in other words socks.

The socks are moving along really nicely, although I am a little worried that I am going to run out of black.  What you see is all that remains.  I  have some dark navy blue in the same bag and I have a ball of black Kroy, which is a little heavier than these yarns are, but which would work. I don't really want to use the dark blue.  I have a thing going here and I hate to interrupt it so close to the end.  I am going to look in the rest of the box of ends too.  If I have a black somewhere else, that is a little bit lighter then the Kroy, I would rather do that.

I did a long bit of work on the sweater too.  I wasn't planning on it, but, well, I will save that all for tomorrow.

It was a busy weekend.