I still need to block it and trim the fringe, but it's officially off the loom, and I'm very excited about it, as it's the largest thing I've woven yet!
For this project, Mom expressed an interest in learning a bit more about weaving. So, I put her to work! She came over one afternoon after I was done with work, and together, we wound the warp and dressed the loom with it. Then, she did the first handful of picks. (Woody supervised, like he always does when anything with string is involved!) The result is that my Mom is now thoroughly bitten with the weaving bug, and is now waiting for a loom of her own to arrive in the mail! Exciting!
Also exciting is the fact that I bought myself a second set of heddles and heddle blocks! This allows me to do a lot of fun and complicated things with my rigid heddle loom. I decided to start by setting it up to do plain weave using two heddles (and therefore, a much finer thread can be used). It took me a while to wrap my brain around how this would work, but I got it figured out!
The yarns I'm using are nothing special; just some sort of mystery fiber (very acrylic, I'd guess) weaving yarn that I got for free, and so wasn't worried about "wasting" it. For starters, I just did a handful of picks with first the white, and then the pink yarn. . .
Next up, I'll be playing with alternating the order of the heddles, as well as trying out some techniques with a pickup stick. I've also been looking at some drafting patterns that are intended for floor looms, but I think might be able to be modified to work on the rigid heddle loom if I do some experimenting with dressing the loom for that.
I'm very excited about all of this, because I really feel like the sky is pretty much the limit with my rigid heddling now!
