Uncategorized
Over The Hump with Hemp
Greetings Weaving Friends! I have had a difficult time with “re-entry” after my knee surgery. No matter what I did, I was very tired all the time. I tried resting, pushing myself, smiling a lot and pretending I was fine, letting myself feel everything and even crying too. I was the dreaded….”Unproductive”. It wouldn’t go away! I stopped in at my shop for an hour or two here and there and was simply overwhelmed. I wondered if I would ever feel “normal” again. Even as my knee improved…I got out of bed, then off crutches, then walking with a normal gait, then not in pain all the time…My life seemed to be more difficult to manage. But slowly, the real me has been re-emerging. My life seems to be coming back on track. I guess I am “over the hump”.
And guess what….I am back at the loom!
While I was on leave, we started carrying hemp cord at Poppyfield Bead Company (my bead shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico). I have never worked with it before and on one of my post-op visits to my shop it captured my attention. I like mixing opposing elements, and I wondered how the the natural organic texture could blend and contrast with elegant glass beads. In keeping with some skills I picked up during my last experiment (see post), I decided to warp with hemp cord and weave a combination of two-holed Czech beads, hexagonal delica seed beads, and fire polish beads.
Working with a variety of sizes of beads can be tricky. It took me several attempts to figure out how to keep the sections aligned. Two 3 mm fire polished beads should combine to take as much as space as a 6 mm bead. But there are other factors that come into play, and they don’t. So being flexible and willing to “undo” and make adjustments is key getting the “mosaic” look I wanted.
Finishing this will be the next challenge. Stay tuned!
Uncategorized
Jerry Rigged for a 16 Dent
Hi everyone! Sorry I have been MIA for a few weeks. I honestly had nothing new to share. I suddenly had requests for other things, paying customers I had to accommodate and new living room flooring to install. More juggling 🙂
I had every intention to be all done with this today. Making four of the same thing is a very grueling task. I do have the third panel started and working on it all day tomorrow. When I warped the loom this time, I used the 14 dent instead of the 18 dent I used last time. As I finished warping it all I could think was that the spaces looked fairly far apart and I started panicking. The last panel I made had a bit of a ruffle in it, so I thought I should use the next size down so that wouldn’t happen again. I started to bead it and asked Elena about a 16 dent. She gave me this link
http://blog.mirrixlooms.com/2013/02/25/ask-elena-warp-coil-woes/
I was too panicked and distracted to read it through until I understood what it said. So I figured ok, I have to make this come closer, how am I going to do that. So I loosened the warp so I could play with the spring. How was I going to bring the spring closer together? Then I spied my elastics LOL Perfect solution! So this is what I did. I had to loosen the warp about 4 times and adjust all 4 elastics in each corner before I got it right. I had the first row of Delicas on there to know exactly what space size was going to work.
So that is how I Jerry rigged the loom to work for me 🙂