Top-of-the-Waves Tuesday...

...and the weekend report.

So, new loom!

• I had a blast watching YouTube videos about weaving! Webs published two videos - how to wind a warp and how to warp your loom - that were very good. The best part was that the instructor used a Wolf loom in the warping lesson, making it easy for me to see how it will work on my loom.
   
• Most of my weaving books are for the rigid heddle loom. I looked through the few that weren't and realized that I don't own a good basic reference. After checking on Ravelry, I ordered Peggy Osterkamp's Weaving for Beginners: An Illustrated Guide. It will take a while to arrive. In the meantime, I will continue to do online research.
   
• I couldn't get started until I had an actual project in mind. I went through all of my Handwoven magazine issues trying to find something that wasn't too daunting to become my first project. I also put the question out to my Facebook friends who weave.
   
• It became clear that I needled to learn how to read weaving drafts. None of the books or magazines that I own have a really good description on this. Back to the internet...
   
• I found a blog post from 2012 that does a good job describing how to read the drafts. (At least, it made sense to me.)
   
• Once I could interpret the weaving drafts, I could go through my Handweavers Pattern Directory book and make sense of the different patterns.
   
• I finally decided on doing a sampler of patterns, using the twill patterns in the pattern directory that have the same threading.
   
• Next was picking the yarn. I had some 10/2 cotton from a weaving kit that I bought last year. I bought the kit because I loved the colors, not knowing when I would be able to purchase my bigger loom. I had already used the blue in the Mermaid's Tale wrap [Ravelry]. I still have full cones of the purple and green, so purple it is!
   
• Then it was off to the weaving calculation spreadsheet to figure out how much warp I need for my project. I'm projecting that it will be about 12-inches wide.
   
• Using the Webs video, I wound the warp and chained it. By the time I finished, it was too late to start warping the loom.

In between all of this learning, I managed to finish plying the Empress handspun [Ravelry] on Saturday. No photos yet, but soon.

I made really good progress on the Friendship Star canvas work piece.It should get finished this month.

A busy, but enjoyable weekend!
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