This is how my three floor looms looked at the beginning of the year.
Stark naked. After an intense flurry of holiday gift weaving, it was time for a bit of a break and my annual preventive maintenance on the looms. However, I can’t stand to be without weaving in my head so you can be sure my head was full of drafts, plans, and some actual progress with finishing my samples from my third visit to Madelyn van der Hoogt’s The Weavers’ School on Whidbey Island.
My head was also full of drafting samples to weave for my own further understanding of treadling and tie-up of profile drafts.
A couple of samples have been completed and the class samples are completed. So, it really wasn’t much of a pause. Fine with me!
Another benefit of working on the class samples was remembering my time at weaving school. Every time I go, I learn so much! 
I realized my dream of getting experience on a drawloom and I’m hooked!
Too bad we do not have the real estate for such a loom. Not even a possibility. My next dream is to get a community drawloom. Wouldn’t it be great to have a studio space and a few other folks to share such an investment?! Well, I’m not holding my breath but it sure was meditative and so much fun.
I’m very grateful for my experiences at The Weavers’ School and all that I have learned from Madelyn and Suzie. They are weaving wizards, great teachers, and lots of fun. While I’m posting links, check out Suzie’s Eugene Textile Center, too.
Meanwhile, the beginning of the year found me spinning and knitting more. DH lovingly gifted me with a Hansen minispinner 
for the holidays and I made my way through a couple of skeins. I spun a few mini-skeins to get started, including some very fine merino (bottom) and Shetland (top) to sample with. 
I also managed to finish some Polwarth from allonsyfiberarts.com 
and some BFL from lisaknits.com
before embarking on another combospin project, this time in blues. 
I’m calling it Blue Note and plan to listen to some jazz while spinning. I’m spinning Blue Note on my beloved Lendrum as I don’t yet have a Woolee Winder for the Hansen.
I finished knitting my first combospin sweater which I themed after the garden throughout the year. 
I’m pleased with how it turned out and how the sweater fits. 
This is especially good news as I have not knit a sweater in a couple of years.
As soon as I finished my Garden Sweater of Many Colors, I cast on for a sweater I’ve been planning to knit for nearly a decade. My current knitting project is St. Brigid by Alice Starmore. The yarn has been in my stash since an annual sale at Meadowfarm Yarn Studio, which has been closed for more than five years, so you know this project has been sitting around for longer than that! I’m now close to completing the back panel of these amazing cables. 
True, I did not keep my promise of not casting on until other projects came out of hibernation, but at least I only started one project! Of course, with having visited the Stitches West marketplace, I have several skeins sitting out with one big project planned. 
My dear daughter moved to brighter and bigger housing in January and said something about needing new towels for her kitchen. Music to the ears of a weaver! My initial visit before she moved clued me in to the theme of the towels: Sky. She has many windows and a great view of land, trees, and sky so I broke out the colors that had been sitting together on my shelf for two years.
After some sketching 
(I’m liking the app Paper) and moving tubes of cotton around, I settled on plain weave and stripes to complement her many windows with view of sky. It was fun, taught me a great deal, and I’m sure to repeat the experiment with better results next time. My daughter was pleased, so that’s all that counts for this run of sky towels.
As the world came to a crashing halt due to this horrible pandemic, I had more time on my hands at home and took to weaving scarves and some towels. I may be helpless in so many ways right now but I can weave and so that is what I have been doing. A bit compulsively, I suppose, but I also call it “creating inventory.” Three scarves and four towels came off the Baby Wolf and Mighty Wolf in the last week and two scarves came off the week before.
It has actually been fun working from stash. For the scarves I used some old knitting yarns that have been in stash for many years thanks to a friend’s major destash about 10 years ago. I also used some yarns that have been in my stash for about one year. I love A Hundred Ravens yarn! https://ahundredravens.com It is lusciously soft, and the colorways are beautiful.
The towels gave me an opportunity to use some partial tubes of cotton but, strangely, nothing was entirely used up. I will admit this has been a detour from my profile draft samples but I will get back to it. It just feels so darn good to sit at a loom and complete something. 
And the project planning involved takes me out of any fears or dark thoughts that loom on the edge.
So, now I am pausing again. Taking a deep breath, meditating, walking, knitting and spinning and I will pause a day or two before warping the loom again. I have two scarves planned (two very different warps, all stash yarns) and a shawl to make for my daughter’s wedding (which may or may not happen this July, depending on sheltering in place or not). All the necessary yarn is in the house. I have one more color card coming before I decide on the rug yarns for my first rug, to be woven on my 1973 Gilmore loom. 
The angle iron and weights are in place now and I have selected a draft. I’m not convinced rug weaving will be my “thing” but I’m certainly going to give it a try. I figure two rugs and then I will decide: be a rug weaver or move Gil along to a loving home. In any event, a slightly used Wolf Pup LT is coming my way from Oregon (via my youngest kiddo in Washington) once we can move about again. Dare I say “safely” move about?
At this moment, the sun is shining, I am most blessed, incredibly grateful, and can only hope a tiny bit of this positivity comes through to you, wherever you are. There is terrible suffering all over the globe and it may come right into this bright sunny room full of fiber and looms, to me, too. At any moment, the very fabric of our lives can be ripped and torn, leaving us nothing. That is something I learned at the tender age of 20, holding lives in my hands while working as an intensive care nurse. I’ve never forgotten the lessons and I also know the existence I so enjoy right now is tenuous on the best of days. But I will have had this moment, this love, this family, this passion, this life. I am grateful. May I knit, spin, and weave that into everything I make.
and was originally a dairy farm.
When the family understood my excitement as a spinner and newer weaver, they also became enthusiastic. Soon Annica, who makes everything so beautiful and welcoming, and Margaretha, the elder of the family, took me to the cabinet in the dining room and we were exploring table cloths, hand towels, and wall hangings that ancestors created in years past.
They could identify some of the items and who made them, some they knew came from other locations, and some of the textiles were made by family members but no one knows exactly who made them. Recently, Annica found some hand-woven curtains that had been stored for a long time. They now hang in the kitchen windows.
a fine linen finger towel woven by Annica’s mother, Ruth (niece to Michael’s grandfather), 
and a rep-weave table runner woven by Annica’s mother. 
I also have a very fine linen table square that came from somewhere else as it would require more shafts than available on the loom at the farm. 
Since currently no one in the family is weaving, I have gifted them with handwoven towels, table runners, and placemats. 
It is an honor to know that items I have woven are now in the house at the farm. It was a great feeling to see my handwoven cottolin towels in service when I arrived this year.
The exhibit was on a renovated campus of buildings that formerly were used for making furniture. There were beautiful gardens and several buildings. I could hardly contain myself when we pulled into the parking lot. The first building I saw displayed a large sign that read “Vävstuga.” 
That is one Swedish word I definitely know! As luck would have it, a woman was just about to leave and one of the relatives, speaking the Swedish I could not speak, engaged her.
They recently moved to this location and she showed us all the counterbalance, countermarche, and drawlooms. 
The guild has two floors, plenty of reeds, yarns, and other materials, as well as a book of obviously old drafts. 
It was fun to learn to communicate. The cousins did a fantastic job of translating and then eventually Anne-Charlotte and I found some common language in weaving and medicine as she is also a recently retired nurse practitioner and psychotherapist. An amazing and synchronous connection across the globe!
My plan is to ply two strands and weave a small table square of twill blocks. That is IF I can salvage enough to weave something. This will be a project requiring much patience, but I think I am ready for the challenge.
In 2017 we found parts of the four-shaft counterbalance loom that Michael’s great-great grandfather built in the late 1800s. 
Not really knowing that we would be able to return to the farm, it was more of a fantasy than a plan, but Michael was imagining restoring the loom, assuming we could find all the pieces.
and search the barns. And, amazingly, Michael found all the parts to the loom. I am familiar with Swedish counterbalance looms, but we could not quite figure out how to assemble all the parts and pieces. It just wasn’t fitting together. 
The warp beam didn’t fit where we thought it should go and neither did the treadles. A few days after putting the loom together as much as we could, Annica picked up Margaretha and brought her over. She came with an old text on weaving 
and some photos of a workshop on working with flax that she took in the 1970s. 
She quickly identified our error in putting together the loom. 
The treadles are hinged in front instead of in back and the warp beam fits in the front with the cloth beam in the back. After a brief group effort with hoisting and lifting, the loom was essentially put together. And Margaretha was delighted to be sitting at it, once again. 
She is the last living person to have used this loom. Annica intends to learn to weave and use this loom, probably some 140 years after it was built.
Given the lack of available sandpaper when it was built, a draw knife would have been used. It features hand forged metal in the hand cut brake and hand forged metal holding the beater. 
It is amazing to see the hand cut brake and all the mortise and peg work on this work horse of a loom. 
The warp beam is of a hexagon shape, done with a draw knife, and the beam features a chiseled crevice. Initially we thought the bench to be broken, with only three legs remaining. However, as Margaretha quickly pointed out, it is a swing bench and is attached on the left side of the loom. Nothing broken about it!
Three generations studied the pencil marks on the loom, seemingly related to weaving drafts.
Margaretha was so pleased that the grandson of her mother’s brother was able to reassemble the loom.
There is much work to be done to restore this loom. The cousins plan to repair a barn roof and remodel the kitchen and we live on the other side of the world. So, how and when loom restoration happens is anyone’s guess right now but in my mind’s eye, I can already see Annica weaving on the loom that her mother, her mother’s mother, and her mother’s mother’s-mother once used.
Maybe my language skills will have progressed to the point I can converse, just a bit, with her on our next (hoped for) visit.
They are pink and were given to me by a neighbor who taught me to knit when I was in grade school. When I returned to knitting in the late 80s and early 90s, I complained about buying two sets of needles for one project. At that point I was buying the least expensive bamboo needles. Budget was always an issue in those days and the cost of needles was something to consider, especially given the cost of yarn, parking, housing, child care …
Also unfortunately, the concept of a needle exchange program has never appealed to LYS owners. I really think this is something to explore! If there ever is a needle exchange, you will not find my Signature Needle Arts double pointed stiletto needles. 
The offspring once needing child care are now wonderful adults who gifted me with a range of these double point needles over a couple of years. I’ll not be parting with these fine tools, thank you very much!
I keep them in my fiber closet. DH is required to sign a contract before he borrows anything. We joke about it, but he also knows I am dead serious about it. And he never goes to get a tool without asking.
It actually did result in less twist going into the linen as I wound the bobbins.
weaver, I’m using the ancient technique of backstrap weaving with my iPad and two apps: PatternGenius to create a chart and KnitCompanion to display that chart and track my progress with the pattern. I couldn’t be happier!
I’m surprised more weavers don’t know about this amazing tool! Strong magnets are attached to the bottom of each treadle. Below the treadles is a sensor array that senses the proximity of the magnet when a treadle is pressed. By way of a ribbon of wires connecting the sensor array to the CPU or brain, this sends a signal. The draft, in the form of a Weaving Information File (wif), is copied from a computer with weaving software to a micro SD card that is inserted into the CPU. So, when an incorrect treadle is pressed, as happens often in my many treadling errors, a tone (I have it set to a loud bleep) is emitted, announcing that I’ve pressed the incorrect treadle. For someone who always moved left when the yoga teacher said right, this is a miracle! It is a gift to be immediately informed you are about to make an error that you otherwise may not see for a few inches. If only I could calculate the amount of time, energy, and materials this has saved I could say that TT has paid for itself! TT performs many other functions, but this describes why I most love this little tool.
Dawne Wimbrow. Barry Duncan is the other maker. Each device is built upon ordering and a 3-D printer is involved. There is definitely software and hardware development involved, each device is built to the specifications of the type of loom being used, and TT is not available for every type of loom. One thing I can say for certain is that Dawne and Barry offer the very best customer service. I can send a question or problem via email on a Sunday evening and have an answer from one or both within minutes. They are thoughtful and helpful, problem solving whatever issues or questions I have had and to date, the issues have always been operator error. Well, there is a learning curve.
More tools. More to learn, more to do, and more assistance provided. I resisted weaving software for the first few years . . . and then I gave in. I am learning as I go but already, I see advantages over pencil and paper. As much as I loved studying Madelyn Van der Hoogt’s Complete Book of Drafting, 
and I truly did enjoy it, I disagree with those who say that weaving software takes away from learning weave structure. With software I’m not coloring in each square on graph paper, but I can learn plenty about a drawdown and I can also learn how to manipulate a draft and see the results fairly instantaneously. I have miles to go in this department and, in the meantime, I’m having an awfully good time of enjoying my tools.
It was definitely my mother’s and I believe it had been her mother’s before. I found it in the round thread and button tin with the darning thread and the sock darning egg that had been my grandmother’s. In fact, that round tin was my grandmother’s, too. Recently I developed a nostalgic appreciation for the tape measure that is so often pinned to the new cloth I am weaving.
And so, when I look at the old cloth tape measure on my newly woven fabric, I am looking at much more than a simple tape measure. Even if cloth tape measures were more available today (and many of us do wish that), I am looking at so much more. It is something I feel in my heart and it fills me in a lovely way when I weave. I think I can best sum up that heart feeling as gratitude and appreciation. That would be for the past, distant and not so distant, and also very much for the present.
After a bit of searching and browsing, one can now find all sorts of comments about patterns, designers, and issues that come up in knitting a pattern. Now I have to trust myself to be careful, thorough, and to choose projects wisely. Of course, this initially may seem to contradict the principle of non-striving. If I am striving to complete a project, then I am not really being mindful. Fortunately, I am as much a process knitter as I am a product knitter. If I am enjoying what I am doing, then I can be patient and just enjoy the knitting.
and kc has a version of this pattern that is already set up. This is a wonderful thing because there were 11 different charts and within some of the charts, there were multiple components. For me, the few extra dollars for this version of the pattern is definitely worth the investment when it is available. It saved me many, many hours of set up and correction time. A wonderful opportunity to notice and practice appreciation.
Apparently, I love a good knitting challenge. Sometimes I would get through a chart with few problems but other times I had to backtrack and begin again. I slowly worked my way through about half of the charts and then had to set this project aside while I completed holiday gifts for family and friends. After hibernating for at least three months, I pulled out this project and, amazingly, was able to pick up where I left off. I thank kc for that. The app holds my place exactly.
The process of knit, unknit, knit again continued but it was more like a fun puzzle than any sort of problem. I enjoyed figuring out how to make the stitches look like they were supposed to and watching the shawl grow. It was timely that I was taking a brief break from my usual routines because this was not exactly social knitting; focused concentration was required. The brief break also yielded plenty of time at home so I could sit and knit. I was fortunate to have the time and space.
at our LYS but the store thought it would be bad for business.
a long time except for the company I was keeping. My partner is the number one co-dependent enabler. He’s so encouraging! If you want to know how bad it gets, here it is: when he thought he was going to be laid off from one of his jobs he told me to get that new spinning wheel right away before the money was gone! And recently, when I was saying no way to spending money on a Woolee Winder, what does he do?? He hung out with other fiber addicts and listened 
to how great the WW is and then bought me one!
too. So, yes, I was taking the substance in larger and larger amounts, spending lots of time procuring and using fiber and when I was stuck at work (the day job that pays for all this fiber activity), I did have cravings to play with fiber in one way or another. And daydreams of color and texture! I can’t (and don’t want to) get them out of my head. I did manage to fulfill my family and occupational activities, but sometimes not without a degree of resentment. Socially, well, I do best in groups of other fiber lovers. Otherwise, I am more likely to stay home and knit, spin, weave, or plan more projects.
hazardous. Ask my partner how I know this.
than 12 steps, I will rely on this book for a lifetime, and there is always more to learn from it. I think the group therapy is helping. I no longer search out yarns shops everywhere I go and I can say that I feel satiated for knitting yarns. I stopped acquiring looms and don’t feel any shaft envy at all, even though I only have eight shafts. It is too bad that with three looms having eight shafts each I still can’t weave 24 shaft drafts, but that’s ok. I can accept that.
NOTE: After more than 40 years in health care, with the last 20 in mental health, my current and former clients and patients know that I take addiction and associated struggles very seriously. This is written with great respect for the individuals I’ve worked with and learned from. Many have struggled valiantly to deal with all manner of addictions and I graciously bow to them. It is also written with a wink and a nod to those of us with SBLE (Stash Beyond Life Expectancy) and in honor of those trampled in the crazed stampede at Stitches West. The latter would include my dear fiber enabling spouse who has been run over by wheelchairs, tossed out of lunch chairs, and stepped on mercilessly when we attend the marketplace. And he keeps taking me back.