Warp from hell

I had visions of a beautiful orange,yellow,red rep weaving, but stupid me didn't sample. I know that I am suppose to sample when working with new materials or a new weave structure. Well, in my defense I have woven with linen before and I have woven a rep weave before. I had just never woven a rep weave in tow linen. I should have known better. Can you say sticky? Can you say no shed? For those of you non weavers out there,Imagine picking burdocks off wool mittens. Fun. NOT! I had to take out half the threads in order to get a shed and therefore had to use a different weft. I am sure that I am confusing some people. Time for "Weaving for Dummies" Weaving is basically having a bunch of yarn all laid parallel to eachother. To weave, you go over the first thread, under the second, over the third , under the fourth, etc. The next time , you go under the first, over the second, under the third..You get the picture. It would take a long time to do this by hand, and that is where a loom comes in. It holds all of your yarn parallel (this is a warp) and raises every second one. When every second yarn is raised, it is called a shed. You have a bobbin which basically looks like a long skinny thread spool and it is onto the bobbin that you wind your weft or the yarns that you are using to do the over under thing. It goes in a shuttle which is smooth and slides throught he shed. And lastly a rep weave when finished looks sort of like corduroy , but larger. I can't think of a better way to describe it. I am sure that there is a better way , but I am drawing a blank. Oh yeah, Tow linen is slubby, hairy linen. It likes to stick to itself if it is to sett to closely together.

Lesson learned...Again...Sample. Sample. Sample.

On the bright side, Liz, Kate, and I made out like bandits at Briggs and Little woolen mill. We stopped off at Blacks restaurant to have coffee, which expanded to fries and westerns, and in my case, breakfast. I have enough fleece to satisfy my daughters needle felting craze for quite some time. I even got some for myself. All I have to do is find time. It seems that there is so much to do right now. Oh yeah! It's that Christmas thing. Right . Right.

Last night was also the annual Stitch and Bitch Christmas gathering and Yankee swap. I am the proud owner of a fir and pine swag thingie that is over a picture in my living room. It looks quite nice. I also came away with two crocheted doilies which are now under plants. This year we had a $5 limit as always, but our gifts had to be, at least partially, hand made. It was all good and lots of fun.


Kate took some pictures of the temari balls (aka pretty useless things) but DUHH, I am having a hard time getting them out of the e-mail and into iphoto and then on to this blog. It is time for Tech Support! Aka DH. Who is at work. Maybe later I will get this thing to work. Sigh. I hate being technology challenged.