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Teaching weaving

hooray!

I taught my first person to weave on a loom today!

It's the lady who taught me to spin, Anne, and she's got this wee Kromski Rigid Heddle loom, with a stand and all that she got at woolfest.

it's quite a pretty wee loom, very nicely made, and it's got a warping frame built into it with the removable pegs and all that. the ratchet mechanism is not very good though. never mind. anyway, i managed to make a right hipse of the warping demonstration, doing everything back to front and that. but we eventually got a wee warp onto it with some disposable machine-knitting cotton and started getting some checks woven up.

it doesn't seem to work too well with the stand as it goes, i don't think it's that stable. but it's cool, cos you can just lean it against the edge of a table. used to do that with my table loom actually, but it's uncomfortable cos it's heavy.

anyhow, yeah, wow. i am so incredibly bad at explaining things, it's completely unreal. i mean, maybe teaching's something you have to learn perhaps, but i just do not have that gift like. i don't think i could explain eggs to a chicken, even with the use of a slide projector.

never mind, we got there in the end. and she's got a copy of "learning to weave" which, though i've only flicked through it looks like a very very good book to me. though it does do this funny thing of a warping method where it has you threading and sleying before the warp's on the beam and that's never worked for me. it seems to raise a lot of possibilities for buggering the warp right up in the beaming process as well, so never mind that. i know i'd make a hipse of it anyway, my warp handling is pish

oh oh oh, i've just remembered something

oh great, now i can't copy and paste embed tags from youtube. just brilliant. you know, this is absolutely typical, abitrary, computer behaviour. you know the one time my mother came round to my house to have a cup of tea and sit for a bit and do some weaving, i go to put a dvd on the computer and, guess what, it wasn't working. for the first time ever. and after she left i went to put the same dvd on and it was fine. i mean, it's just silly. so why can't i copy and paste the embed tags?

damn damn damn

that's buggered that right up. oh well.

on a lighter note, i'm lying on the couch, and my dog is asleep against my legs. but there's very little space between me and the back of the couch. so her face is on my legs, and her arse is halfway up the couch stickin in the air. it's kinda amusing. she has no decorum

-a

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hooray for you!
and thanks for a great post - lightened my day.
Judy
Anonymous said…
I've always thought the Kromksis look really sweet. I like the flourishes. It sounds like you had fun and did a good deed!

I know what you mean about explaining things, I can do it in writing where I have time to think, but it all gets tangled when the person is in front of me. I can't even tell my husband what cupboard something is in. Apparently, my brain works at typing speed rather than talking speed. A contributor to Handwoven Magazine wrote a book about weaving as metaphor called "This is How I Go When I Go Like This." Me exactly.

Explaining eggs to a chicken sounds HARD, what with the language barrier!
Andrew Kieran said…
cluck cluck peck gobble

i've got it nailed
Anonymous said…
It must feel wonderful to be able to pass on your weaving knowlege, even if you feel ackward about explaining things! It's interesting that the Kromski stand didn't work well -- when I had a Kromski for a few weeks (it was a larger one), the stand seemed to work very well, as long as I put my feet over the base. But, I didn't weave on it, so what do I know!?

I'm glad to meet another weaver who is a dog person (we had one for 12 years until he died of old age) -- I'm constantly hearing of knitters/spinners/weavers who are cat people! I think we're in the minority. (I love cats, but am allergic!)

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