A year, a month, and a day

Someone asked me recently how long I’d been weaving, which prompted me to go look it up.  And yep, today celebrates a year, a month, and a day of weaving.

Looking back on it, I’m amazed at how much I’ve developed as a weaver.   I started with a pretty ambitious beginner’s project – the rainbow shawl, which looked extremely complicated but which I assessed (correctly, as it turned out) as being no more difficult than any other pattern, so long as I followed the instructions carefully.  It isn’t my favorite shawl anymore – I think some of the color combinations are garish – but it’s a reasonably well-woven piece.

From there I went into weaving shawls and scarves for the family – basically a simple collection of crowd-pleasers – and then tackled my floral cashmere shawl.  I remember dyeing the yarns for it – I was nervous about dyeing such fine silk – but it came out fine.  Another recipe project, the snowflake shawl, came out well too.
Then I got interested in more advanced weaving theory, and bought a copy of Bonnie Inouye’s Exploring Multishaft Design.  An absolutely indispensable book, it taught me a lot about weave patterns, and, emboldened by this, I took on and modified extensively a pattern in Twill Thrills: The Best of Weaver’s to create the tiger eye shawl, the first one I could really describe as “my own design”.

Then I bought a 16-shaft loom, and really started to let loose.  First I finished the huck lace shawls that were on the Baby Wolf at the time, and then I warped up with the painted-warp shawl.  I struggled a lot with the loom at first – it was a nightmare of skipped threads, tension problems, and so forth – but eventually got it (mostly) working.

Then, I went into a relatively simple project – the 16-shaft placemats – which turned out to be a mistake, because with such a simple pattern I rapidly got bored.  After weaving those off, I went into the tiger cocoon jacket, and voila!  Here I am now.

12 weaving projects, about one per month.  Not bad considering the complexity and fineness of some of those projects, and that I was training for the Death Ride and holding down a full time job for most of that time.  I also have a much better understanding of weaving theory, and have had a real ball at weaving.

So what about the next 396 days?  I think my ambitions are:

• Understand network drafting
• Use network drafting with painted warps to create something akin to the beauty that Sandra Rude makes with her complex patterns
• Understand dye and color theory much much better, so I can apply it in weaving
• Play with complex designs in doubleweave
• HAVE FUN! (although, that seems to come with weaving 🙂 )

I figure that with another 40-odd years ahead of me (cross fingers and hope!), I have at least some hope of plumbing the joys of weaving.  I just with I had 400 years!  I suspect even 400 years wouldn’t be enough.  I love weaving.