My secret weapon

I totally forgot to mention this ages ago! I have a secret weapon I use when winding off warp. Since there isn't room in my little "studio" to hang my warping board on the wall (or mount it on a shelf like I had when we lived in Tech Village) I have to put it on the floor. That's all well and good but cones of yarn don't like to pull off nicely from the side. They need to be below the warping board or on a cone spindle to pull off from the top and not fall over. Well I didn't want to buy a spindle and I didn't have a paper towel holder either (which I had considered using at one point). So this is what I came up with:

Ta da!! Behold my secret weapon! A Chaco box! They're wonderful! I'm so glad I never threw this away.

See they have these great holes in the side (which becomes the top) so when I'm winding off warp, I stick the cone in the box, pull the end through the hole and the box remains upright and the yarn pulls off easily! Jeanne always used to tell us that weavers were resourceful people. :)

Oh also Chaco boxes are made from really sturdy cardboard so they don't fall apart easily. I also discovered that this method prevents fiber dust from floating around in the air for me to breathe in. When I opened the box to take the cone out the last time (and several times before) I saw a pile of fluff lying around the cone. Tencel sheds horribly. That's my only real complaint about it. Otherwise I love it. :)
~JoAnna

Threading, threading, threading!

I have spent nearly the entire day threading!! But I'm finally done! I think I'm going to save tying on and winding for another day. I'm a bit sick of looking at the warp right now. haha. :) So that will happen Friday, most likely.

The threading sequence. I wrote it down on a piece of paper. It repeats 5 times in my warp.

Here's my loom all ready for threading. I fold down the back and put my little, padded stool right up next to the loom. It's actually really convenient because you can get so close to the heddles. Not much reaching involved.

I had to use an Ott light so I could see the difference between the two colors I was threading. It's hard to see in normal, incandescent lighting.

I do get some natural light in my "studio" in the afternoons. I love that time of day. :)

I'm back at the farm tomorrow; most likely back in the goat maternity ward. *lol* I love it though. It makes me want my own herd of animals. Either sheep or angora goats...or both... :D
~JoAnna

Heddles

It's a good thing I started counting heddles because I just had to go through and move around a bunch of them so that each shaft would have enough for this pattern!! Also I'm so thankful at this moment that I have a Macomber because this process would have taken much longer on a LeClerc simply because of the way they are designed.

I'm still all confused on exactly what I want to use for the weft color. But i'll figure it out soon enough. It's probably just going to take a bit of sampling at the beginning. :) well off to threading.
~JoAnna