Weave or bust!

O.K. frustration level at an all time high. 

For those of you who don't know me ,you should know that my art adventures started with cross stitch...didn't last long though, stitching is not my thing. Don't ask me how I ended up doing Pine needle basket weaving (probably why my hands are so sore from needle pricks LOL). 

My friend Kraftymax (you really should check out her site, its awesome) brought over a Mirrix Bead loom one day that her parents had sent her from California  (They own Gilmore Looms).  From that moment I was hooked on weaving.  I started out with bead weaving...hated all of those ends (i.e. fringe, still do sometimes) when you got done...soooo one day I took out yarn, and it was ON. 

Unfortunately in Fl not many people weave, let alone tapestry a.k.a. weft face weave, and who ever heard of wool.  Lots of research on line, books were even hard to locate.  Kind of like with the square peg loom I have been playing with.  That was somewhere between 10 and oh 15 yrs ago.  I have built a lot of trial and error looms since then, and then had a friend of mine who welds build me one that combined the Mirrix qualities I liked combined with the Navajo loom features I liked, and I had him build it big. 

Unfortunately, even though I do have a place to weave where I am now, I prefer to downsize so I can weave in my room...thus the frustrations that lead to things like trying backstrap weaving, and the potholder loom.

    Soooooo, where all of this is leading to is that the last face cloth that I did today didn't turn out quite right either...made me pretty pi---- off.  So I just went up into that inferno of an attic and dug into my packed up boxes from home and put together a smaller version of my large tapestry loom.  Amazingly enough I found all of the parts and when I assembled what I could find it seems that it might even be better than the original as over the years I have continued to modify this TOOL of the trade.  What this means is I now have a portable loom and am about to warp (that is the up and down threads on the loom) it up and do some weaving that I am actually pretty good at.  WOOOOO HOOOOO!!!!!!!

Stay tuned ladies and gentleman...same bat time same bat channel you will be continuously updated as usual.  Here are pics of the loom and a couple of my first weavings.