Warping frustration; book update

Yesterday I wound the first six inches of the pattern warp.  This morning I threw it away.

Intensely frustrating, yes, but not entirely surprising.  I am totally out of practice with putting on warps; I’ve only put on two in the last year!  (Admittedly, one of them was 37 yards of 60/2 silk, and took nine months to weave off.  I haven’t been a total slacker!)  And the last warp that went on the loom went on over three months ago.  I’m rusty.

To make matters worse, I’m putting on the warp back to front, not sectionally. It has been at least three years since I last warped back-to-front, and I’ve never tried winding a back to front warp on the warping wheel.  As a result, I’m having to puzzle out all the steps, and am making mistakes I really shouldn’t be making.  I wound the warp all right, but botched the removal of the warp from the wheel.  In the end, I cut it off and threw it away.

All of which is a long way of saying, if you think you’re incompetent at warping, you’ve got good company.  At least for now. I’ll figure it out eventually, I suppose.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go do something simpler and less frustrating.  I think I’ll write a book. 🙂

Speaking of which, if you haven’t been following the book, it’s doing quite well.  I’m now done writing the chapter on ideas and inspirations – the latest post being an exercise for exploring materials – and it’s scheduled to finish publication in mid-October.  Which means it’s time for me to start writing the next chapter, which is about getting from ideas to an actual design.  I’m finding that the blog format is really working for me – it lets me write small chunks at a time, and because I’m committed to a regular publication schedule (three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays), it keeps me from flaking on writing. Plus I get great feedback from readers!

The book is also doing well in other ways. It’s been averaging about a hundred page views per day – which is not at all bad considering I started it less than a month ago. Seven hundred and forty-one people have visited, of which fifty-two people have “liked” the Facebook page, and thirty-one people have subscribed via email.  Not bad for a site only twenty-nine days old! I’m told it takes four or five months to build an audience, so this is a promising start. It’s nice to know that some people are reading (and enjoying!) it. It helps motivate me to write.

I’ve also started exploring the idea of editing the chapters as I go. Normally this would be a bad idea: because a book evolves as it’s written, many things may have changed by the time you get to the end, so time spent editing the chapters may well be wasted later. However, the psychology of the author also plays a part! I’m not good at writing in a vacuum and am worried about losing interest during the editing phase. If I can at least do part of the editing as I go, this might lessen the burden at the end. Still mulling it over, though.

Off to work on the book! Later I’ll try warping again.