Progress, slowly

I was starting to get really stressed out under the pressure of launching/managing Weavolution while juggling my regular job, so I decided to take Saturday “off”.  I caught up on sleep (11 hours!), went for a 90-minute bike ride, read another chapter in Bridal Couture, did some weaving, and went out for dinner with B..  And I feel much better.  The last two weeks, I’ve been working 12-14 hour workdays between my two “jobs”, and I was suffering from serious exhaustion.  Hopefully things will slow down now that we’re launched.

At any rate, I had a very lovely day off, and I did finally get to do some weaving!  I wove about ten inches 0n Saturday and another 4-5″ so far today.

It is very slow going.  Because the dense warp tends to be sticky, the threads occasionally wind up in the path of the shuttle.  And because the warp is quite fine, when the shuttle hits them they tend to break.  So I have been averaging one broken thread every inch or two, and there are currently 18 repair threads dangling from the back of the loom.  I am probably spending as much or more time fixing broken threads than actually weaving, which I find somewhat frustrating.  I did figure out that opening the shed ALL THE WAY (as opposed to most of the way) makes a big difference, so I’ve only broken one thread in the last five inches.  May this continue!

I had been thinking I would be able to weave about 2 yards a week, which is about 10 inches a day.  That now looks optimistic.  I think I might be able to manage 1 yard a week, in which case it will take about 5 months (!) to finish weaving the piece.

At any rate, there is no point in despairing over the amount of work left; I’ve never found that to be productive.  What is important is to focus on what is directly ahead, and on celebrating successes.

So here is mine: I passed the two-yard mark today!