Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Done (For Values Of)


view of towel showing part of the large motif and the hem area.  If you look really really closely you might be able to see the cut line - two picks of a pale green where the design reverses, near the right hand side of the photo


Yesterday did not go exactly as planned. 

Doug set about fixing my headphones (hearing protection with a cable that plugs into my boombox so I have music to weave by) and quickly discovered it wasn't the cable that needed fixing but the jack itself that was broken.

We then set about trying to find a new jack but no such luck.  And, it being Easter Monday, very few stores were open.  We aren't sure how many stores that might sell replacement jacks are even open during the pandemic, so I was feeling very out of sorts at the prospect of not having music to listen to while I wove.

We then set about trying to find some other cable that might have the right size of jack that could be used as a spare part, but none of them would work for one reason or another.  However, I did find a bag with a couple of very old headphones (not hearing protection, just stereo headphones).

Unfortunately they each had the large size jacks, not the little ones that my boombox needed.  On the other hand, in my search for a small jack, I had found an adapter that made a big jack into a little one, plus extra cable so that I could actually connect the headphones to the boombox and still sit at the loom to weave.

Whew!

Once that was sorted I had lunch and wove a towel.  It went fairly well so after taking a break I wound a couple more bobbins and wove another.  I might just possibly have been able to squeeze one more towel out of the warp except I was down to the nitty gritty of the broken peach ends and decided it was too close to call and didn't want to deal with any more of the peach ends.

To make sure I didn't try to eek one more towel out of the warp, I immediately cut the warp off the loom, declaring it 'done'.

This warp was made up of yarns that were very similar in colour and value and the beige weft only very slightly darker in value.  On the loom it looked very bland.  However, now that it is off, the light strikes the areas of warp and weft at different angles and shows off the design much more clearly.  Instead of 'bland' it is 'subtle'.

Today I have some organizational stuff to do but the big goal is to see if I can get the next warp beamed.  It won't look like much because it will be white.  Sometimes dramatic is good.  Sometimes subtle is just the thing.

Just like life.  Everything in moderation - even moderation. 

Right now I'm very close to making my goal of emptying the pirns and even though I won't get them all cleared off, there are a significant number that have been.  My goal is to continue with the pirn clearing until the end of April and then see how things stand.  I do have other things I would like to work on, after all.

At the end of April we will mail the box(es?) of empty pirns promising the rest at some point in the future.  And then I can look at working on some of the other things I need to do.  But another box of stuff will have left the studio and stash reduction is happening.

4 comments:

picotsnkeys said...

I like your creativity in technology (yes, the work around with the jack is technology) and applaud your tenacity.

Laura Fry said...

And the hoarding of things that later become useful again. ;)

Anonymous said...

I had to laugh Laura - as a a former musician, I have a stockpile of different adapters to change big ones into little ones and vice versa. Those little ones can be feisty. Some have a single ring on the pin, some have 2. For stereo and mono. Work in some sockets, not in others. Ya just never know. But I'm glad you got your sound back!

And those towels! I love the subtle patterning. It's so elegant. Some of the prettiest things I've seen woven were just white on white. To me, it draws the eye to look for pattern. Really beautiful.

Tom Z.

Laura Fry said...

Hi Tom, yes we have a drawer full of odds and sods of adapters and cables. All fine, still work, kept 'just in case'... :)