Making Friday: Warpin’ mah looms

Yes, the title of this blog post would indeed suggest that I may use the personal pronoun as well as the plural with regard to weaving equipment because, after showing off on Instagram the fun I was having on a kiddie loom during my January break (pictured above), I was offered a fixed heddle table loom at an impossible-to-resist bargain price, which explains how I came to not only be the owner of TWO looms, but how I ended up spending the last week of January dominating the dining room with threads, upside down chairs and swearwords as I spent hours and hours and HOURS figuring out how to warp my loom.

I’m really not convinced that I’ll end up as a weaver, as I can see it requires a pretty steady temperament (not my forte), but I’m pretty fascinated by what I’ve been learning, and am willing to be surprised by what happens next, so watch this space.

Meanwhile, this new activity has resulted in me noticing some new shapes – the lovely spray shapes of the warp, in this case – and inevitably, they’ve started cropping up elsewhere too, starting with David Hockney’s 1967 acrylic A Lawn Being Sprinkled.

And then I saw that my old internet pal Eloise Renouf had posted this design she’s been working on (follow @eloiserenouf on Insta for more of her great midcentury style patterns)

And then I remembered a spray pattern of my own! Our Palmetto print from the Paradise is Here collection was inspired by palmetto fronds, but could well be inspired by warp threads, right?

Lastly, if you have the time and capacity for being utterly mesmerised (all things I hope weaving might bring into my life), watch how great sprays of starlings arise from telephone lines in Dennis Hlynsky’s astonishing Micromigrations video.

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PS: And in a mixed fruits postscript, below left shows my fairly satisfying results of my kiddie loom efforts, and the right illustrates the eventual results of my weaving hubris. Sigh. Looks like it might be time to start swearing again.