Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Gung Hai Fat Choi - Year of the Dragon

I've started getting ready for the weaving "demo" at next month's meeting at Limestone Creek. On Sunday I measured out 80 ends of 5/2 perle cotton, 80 in. long, for the warp. I warped the Dorothy today. I warp front to back, meaning I sley the reed first, then thread the heddles, tie onto the back apron, wind the warp onto the back beam (with a layer of paper grocery bag going in to keep the threads from burrowing into previous rounds), then finally tying onto the front apron. I'll also add two floating selvedges (selveges?) later. It should be plenty wide enough so everybody can see different patterns emerging as the weft goes in. I'm taking a bunch of books too, so they can get an idea of the hundreds of patterns possible. I've just done a "straight draw", that is, threading the first thread in the first heddle on shaft 1, the second thread in the first heddle on shaft 2, the third in the first from shaft 3, and the fourth in the first from shaft 4. Five through eight go into the second heddles on the shafts in the same order, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, until there are 20 heddles on each shaft that have threads running through them. I used white, sort of an off white, for the warp. Then the weft will be one of four different colors, also 5/2 perle cotton which was left over from the overshot class, to show contrast.

I've also started collecting various things to take with me - sley hook, heddle hook, different shuttles, the aforementioned books, the few things I've already made, including the sample from the overshot class I took and the "Cats Track and Snail Trail" runner I made on the end of that same warp.

DGD pointed out the sliver of new moon in the sky tonight at sunset. It was new at 2:39 am yesterday (Chinese New Year), making it about 39 1/2 hours old when we saw it at around 6:10 pm, just about the youngest I've seen. I think the record for the youngest moon observed is around 19 hr. I don't usually see them until they're at least 45-46 hr. old.

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