I was possessed by the urge to sit down at my loom last week, and this blue scarf, jazzed up with orange and reds, was the result. I warped the loom (a rigid heddle) on Thursday and spent Friday weaving--finished the scarf on Friday night, just about the time Bill got home from New Mexico. (Yes, that means that I didn't get any writing done on Friday. But I put in some good book-think time while I was weaving, and came up with a new plot twist I really like. Also, I watched Night Passage, Tom Selleck's version of the Robert Parker novel. Yum yum. I am definitely a Tom Selleck fan. If any of you see a resemblance between McQuaid and Selleck, you are dead on.)
The scarf is a bit of this and that. The weft is of different weights and blends, mostly wool but some acrylic. (A purist would sniff.) The warp is hand-dyed handspun, along with some commercially dyed wool yarn. Here's how it looked on the loom.
I warped it a different way than I used to (warped it directly on the loom, according to directions I found on the Internet), which is much quicker--or would have been, if I had bothered to read the directions closely. I didn't, so it wasn't. Next time, I'll pay more attention.
And there will be a next time. Soon. Like right away, actually, because I've just realized how close Christmas is, and how little time I have to finish making stuff. I've also got a huge stash of handspun, and this is a good way to use it up.
Now, which of my favorite guys gets this scarf? (No, not Tom Selleck.)
Reading note. Motivational speakers often pose the question, "If you were on your deathbed, would you look back and be sorry you didn't spend more time at the office?" The right answer is, of course, no--you'd be sorry you didn't spend more time with the people you love, or doing the work that will make the world a better place. I think maybe I'd be sorry I didn't weave and spin more, too. Because the more I do, the better everything else seems to fit together. The more I weave and spin, the more in touch I am with myself, the more meaning I find in my daily life. You know? --Linda Ligon, This is How I Go When I Go Like That