Learn Something New
The schools are back which means that I can get on learning and weaving myself, and also I can start to teach others various yarny things.
I’ve finally managed to get my warp that I started in Bradford onto my table loom at home. This isn’t something I really want to do again, mainly because the yarns I used decided to stick themselves nicely to each other and it meant that I attached it onto the warp beam with them all out of order.
Warp wound up from Bradford and waiting to go onto the loom
Not what a warp should look like
Warp sorted at last
It was a nightmare getting it sorted in the end as I had to wind it onto the front beam after threading it up, and then back onto the back beam. There was some hacking with scissors involved, and I replaced one of the yarns at the same time.
On the plus side, I know now I can do such a thing and what to watch out for in the process.
This means that weaving has started again on my samples (hurrah) and I’m realising that the colours of the warp aren’t quite matching up with my artwork, so may need to do something to sort that out. It’s great to be getting back into the swing of it again, although finding time is proving to be difficult. I just need to discipline myself better.
I’ve started up the after school Yarn Club again and this year it’s widened to let in kids from Primary 4 and 5. I’ve got a couple of the girls from last term, as well as quite a few new ones. They were weaving on cardboard looms that I’d made and I let them dive into the box of ends of threads to weave with.
Cardboard weaving loom
They seemed to love it and it’s really great to watch them all get absorbed in weaving, and the ideas the were having for their creations were great. Apparently one of them even took theirs to bed to do some more. I’m going to start to try and get them to crochet over the next couple of weeks as I’m hoping it may be easier for them to pick up than knitting. This could be famous last words.
For a while now I’ve been talking with my lovely friend Karen, who runs the excellent yarn shop Once A Sheep, about doing weaving classes. We’ve finally managed to organise a Creative Scarf Weaving Workshop on Saturday 27th October where I’ll be teaching different ways of making scarves on a rigid heddle loom, and also for the more adventurous, how to do a moebius scarf. I’m really looking forward to it and I hope that it works out as I’m really enjoying teaching and want to take it further.
There is now a Classes page on my site and that will be updated with any more dates of classes in the future.