Thursday, December 18, 2008

Loom Lift

I stopped at FIT twice this weekend to get the weaving completed on my final assignment and both times, there were no other weavers that needed to get in. Security won't open the door for you unless there is also another student, so I had to wait until during the week when there is loom time to stop in. I knew that I'd need to be weaving well into the night and through the next day, so I picked up the loom today and brought it home. I'd just fitted the loom with tie in's and wove that sample until it was time to go to bed. It's amazing how s-l-o-w table loom weaving is. It's not even fun because there is no rhythm or fluidity to the weaving. Having to switch out the headles is jarring with such an ancient metal contraption as FIT has the students use. Ugh. I was happy to get to stop.
The heat was blaring and you could have cooked an egg on my abdomen it was so hot in the bedroom. I was completely awake couldn't get back to sleep, so I prepped the loom and popped it into a bag to bring with me to work. I was going to spend the day running reports and doing analysis, so there would be time to fit in some weaving while the report were queueing. I also decided to use regular floor loom shuttles intead of the flat table loom weaving sticks and prepped those with the right thread colors to be ready to weave. Surprisingly, this all took about 2 hours. It's amazing how long prepping to weave takes in comparision to the amount of time spent weaving- when using a floor loom that is. It took the entire extra bits during my work day to finish the project and the final scarf was on the short side, should have been at least another 6 inches. I also should not have chosen such dainty thread. Something with more heft would have been better suited to the assignment. It was difficult to choose when the class is so large. The thread remaining after many others had already chosen wasn't choice.

All in all, it was an interesting class. I didn't learn much more than I already had at the weaving class taken at The Spinnery. I did learn that I absolutely dislike working on a table loom. Too bad that FIT requires so many table loom classes before they allow students to sign up for floor loom classes. I don't understand why that is. It's like people that insist one takes spindling before wheel spinning. Sure it is similar. It's also not the same.
On the bright side, I did get to weave regularly each week.

Now that class is over, I'll have more time to weave on my floor loom at home. Yay!