Thursday, March 19, 2009

This Loom Was Made for Walking

And that's just what she'll do! For all her great size and weight, on my wood floors,
Barbara V creeps while weaving. I don't know if she moves around when I'm not looking but I don't think so.  Gene cut some boards up for me like we did for the Murphy loom when he was a little creepy. The solution is simple and for cleaning, easily removable. I pick up the boards and throw them onto or into the bench. The board Gene grabbed was a test piece for a stencil I eventually did for the bedroom floor. Boy, has that piece of wood been around for a while!

Coop's saddle blanket is finally on course after putting the tie-up back the way it was.
I am having a little fun with the color progression. I was given a rogue skein of the Silver Cloud Farm Romney, this one a pale and beautiful gray and decided to use it in the rotation for part of the patterned areas. In this picture I am just going back to the dark grey brown to complete the area of diamonds before weaving the single color through the body of the blanket. I don't think I would want to do more than 2 at a time
but the next pair going on will be using the pattern I wanted to get by changing the tie-up. I now know why custom made saddle blankets are so darn expensive. They really consume a lot of wool. Out of the 8 additional  dark grey skeins I purchased, I have two untouched and the third is in process.  Another 5 skeins will have to be purchased to finish with each blanket using about 8 skeins of a single color and one each of the second and third colors. The linen warp was rather costly too and brings up the cost of each blanket for materials alone to around $110.00-$120.00.  I'm a slow weaver on this loom. It is not the most comfortable loom for me to work at for long periods and juggling those 3 shuttles makes it hard to get into a rhythm. Saddle blanket #1 probably took 6 hours done in 15 and 30 minute intervals, numerous stops to reset the temple, advance the warp and scoot BV back into place.

Yesterday, along with weaving and some knitting, I managed to get 3 of the boys out for some grooming time. Every one of them needed mane and tail trims. A lot of folks love that long let the mane grow look but it has never appealed to me. I like the manes short at 4-5 inches or roached. My guys have pretty necks and I like to see them. Tails
got banged (cut) to show off fullness rather than length although they are pretty long and we started in with the shedding blade. Good god these curly horses grow a lot of coat! It is a major undertaking to get them looking decent at this time of year. It is also wise to wear something slick, like a nylon windbreaker. I neglected that part and went out in polar fleece. Needless to say, every shed hair that was flying around embedded itself into my pullover. The horses looked pretty good by the time they went back to the paddock. I, on the other hand, looked like some animal infected with mange.

2 comments:

Life Looms Large said...

Fleece and animal hair....a dastardly combo! I have one LL Bean fleece that doesn't attract as much hair. No clue why....other of their fleeces are hair magnets.

The saddle blanket looks beautiful!!! You'll be pleased to know that I bought a temple yesterday. It looks a lot like yours in fact. So far I've already had one temple injury (I cut my hand on it a little getting it out of the giant bag of yarn I brought home from the guild meeting.)

So far my looms don't walk....but I'm glad to see your solution because if I move my Toika to the living room at some point, I bet it will walk around.

Sue

Anonymous said...

Theresa - I had looms that would walk around on me also - I read this somewhere and gave it a try and it works!Rubbermaid non slip shelf liner - cut squares to put under the feet. It should do the trick.
Dawn