Today the cleaners came but it was too hot for me to go out, and I stayed home but out of their way. They're like a tornado, rapid movement in all directions, no chat, they know the house so well. In an hour and a half they were done, and the house is shining.
Meanwhile I finished that woven belt, with the slot to thread the end through and modeled it.
And I'm planning on the next adventure. This was a good day to work indoors, and I'm going to try out a thing I've been interested in for ages and why not now.
It's a warp weighted loom. This is the way weaving was done before the horizontal loom was introduced. It's a vertical setup where the warp threads are hung with weights to create the tension.
Penelope wove on this loom when she was unweaving daily. The Bayeux Tapestry, actually an embroidery, was worked on fabric woven on the warp weighted loom.
I love simpler ancient techniques relying on a lot of common sense and ingenuity before engineers started complicating the issues in order to simplify the process for the worker.
Anyway here's what I'm thinking.
Here's my yarns, and I checked to make sure the yarns could be threaded on the heddle. I'm using the rigid heddle rather than the string heddles you see in the reenactment pictures.
I need a plan and this is the back of the envelope idea as of now, sketchy as you see.
Since I need to set it up vertically, i think I'll use this rod across the door of my supply closet. First I'll remove the curtain, which is an Indonesian handwoven piece. Then I'll set the rod up firmly enough to withstand the weights.
I'll attach 120 warp threads 60 double lengths with larks head knots, to the rod, reaching the floor, thread them through the heddle, then attach weights to bundles of the threads near the floor. The weights will be the one pound soft weights from my leg weight set.
So far so good. I fact if it works, I'll just leave it in place as a new curtain across the doorway. I'm studying a lot of videos to make sure I've got the gist before I get on. There's a heddle issue to figure out.
Meanwhile one of the friends who now has a piece of my art, this one an embroidery, sent me a picture of it in its new home. Her kitty Sesame helped, but Pumpernickel jumped out of frame at the last second.
And there's an updated bouquet
Added to the usual suspects are baby's breath and dayflowers.
Happy day everyone, remember your yoga
