Ideal Personality

Our old Ideal Rug Loom arrived with the remnants of it's last warp still intact. I think it gives the loom a distinct personality, a joyful attitude. Makes me smile and want to do the happy dance.

The waste yarn is woven in and already you can tell this is going to be a fun warp to play with. Lot's of possibilities.

A Loom With A View

This is going to be an absolutely glorious place to weave!

Our new/old Ideal rug loom is almost completely assembled, should be ready to warp tomorrow.

And some days are way better than others...

Last Thursday had all the earmarks of just another wonderful day of weaving.... until I walked into the Museum and was handed a note from Elliott the Director. The note contained a name & phone number and the words "Loom" and "Go Over".

Wonderfully long story made short, ends with me meeting a new weaving buddy and helping her relocate the old rug loom she was donating to the museum along with enough warp thread and fabric to keep our growing number of museum weavers gainfully 'volunteered' well into the next decade. Our rag box runneth over. My usual Thursday routine was transformed into an exhilarating adventure.

A new "Ideal Loom" was selling for $55 in 1930. This old Ideal Loom will prove to be invaluable as a tool for attracting and training the next generation of museum quality weavers. I expect to start assembling the loom on April 8th - helpers welcomed.

The loom is in remarkably good condition for it's age.

It's equipped with a fine sectional warp for production weaving.

And OMG, a half a truck load of fabric.... we could carpet the entire museum.

Some days are better than others....

Last Thursday was Fantastic!

We cut Museum Quality Rug # 11 off the loom, finishing off the same sectional warp we wound on nearly 11 months ago.

Fred & Louise work "closely" to tie off the fringe knots on our latest creation.

And, we were blessed with the presence of two new apprentice weavers, Tracy and Sandy. Both recently retired educators - both enthusiastic learners.

And, they couldn't have shown up at a more opportune time. The "lesson" of the day involved winding on the sectional warp for our next series of projects, threading the heddles and sleying the reed - pretty much the whole nine yards.

I did not expect to complete the entire set up in one day, and clearly couldn't have without the able and enthusiastic support of our growing group of weaving friends.

The new sectional warp will give us 25 yards (and many months) of easy weaving - that's a lot of placemats and table runners.

Rug # 11, Work in Progress

You start with a pile of rags. Cut or rip them into strips and randomly connect the individual strips together into long multicolor strips.....

Wind the strips onto shuttles....

And then unwind them in the loom to see what they look like when they are all lined up.

Pretty neat eh?

Faculty Show

It's hard to believe that I signed out a couple of weaving books from the county library two years ago to see what I could learn. Time really does fly when you're having fun.

If you're passing through Aiken, check out the Faculty Show in the Brooks Gallery upstairs at the Aiken Center for the Arts. I have a few weavings on display there. One of my personal favorites is Dori’s Place, the colorful rug on the left. When we finally said goodbye to Dori, her favorite doggie bed beach towels were too tattered for further use and too full of memories to be discarded casually. I cut the towels into strips and wove the memories into a cushy rug that will always remind us of Dori’s Place in our lives. "Go to your place, Dori. Good Girl!"

Great Horned Owl

We went birding at Tybee Island and the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge a couple of weeks ago with some of the local Audubon folks. We added a purple sandpiper to our life list at Tybee and Helen was able to get a pretty reasonable picture of Mrs. Owl sitting on her nest at SNWR.