I'd Like Some Cheese With My Whine, Please

Ever wake up with a headache? I did this morning. It's likely muscular. Yesterday after Econ and a lunch break, I went to the art building and worked from 3:00 PM til 10:00 PM on my fibers projects. I bounced back and forth between the rooms. First I worked on the painting for surface design, then I let it dry for a bit while I worked on warping the loom for my wall hanging. Then I'd give my fingers a rest and go back to painting. Or, stamping, that is, because on this project we're recreating on a yard of fabric a famous Impressionist work of our choosing (I've chosen Pierre Bonnard's "Nude in Bathtub", below) but we are NOT allowed to use brushes—we are to find another way to apply the dye. Then we'll be whacking it up and embellishing it somehow (more to come on that once we're told what we'll be doing).



And on it went, until I finished the painting, hung it to set for steaming Monday, and got to the point of rolling back the warp in preparation for tying onto the front and discovered not one, but two, errors.

In between, there was a lot of bending over and hunching.

So my head hurts. It feels like someone took a baseball bat to the back of my neck. The Tylen*l is helping a bit. It sucks because I'd planned to warp my home loom for making scarves for the Market Day at the end of the month. I warped three separate warps for it—boy that sounds redundant, but how else do you say it? Warp is a noun AND a verb when referring to weaving. The point is, dare I hunch over another loom in this condition?

My friend wants to have dinner and SnB tonight. Can my fingers take it? For anyone who has yet to warp a loom, there is a considerable amount of tedium involved prior to the actual weaving part (hence ya gotta love it to do it) and much of it involves lining up the ends of the yarn nice and neat in little rows before tying knots just so and tying to the loom. The wider the piece, the more lining up and tying you do, and it gets to the fingers after awhile. Fingers, neck, head... I need a massage!!! SPA DAY! I call a spa day. Let's go. Where is there a spa around here?

Oh. The errors? Relatively minor. I somehow crossed two yarns while threading the heddles (Error #1). I've set up for doubleweave, which means I have two warps at once on the same loom, one on top of the other. Normally, each dent (hole) in the reed holds one warp thread. In doubleweave, each dent carries one warp thread from each warp, so there are two threads in one hole. My error caused one of the warp threads to be trapped under the crossed ones in the other warp. Argh. It's easy enough to fix, once I've rolled back. I can just rethread those yarns in the reed before tying to the front.

Error #2 is A-nnoying. I carefully warped two warps of different colors, both 15 inches wide and two yards long, individually (for my own sanity). Somehow, I mis-wrapped one go-round on one warp. I discovered this as I was combing the warp with my fingers to separate the yarns in preparation for winding back. My finger caught and I thought, HUH? Yeah. I looped it too soon. I have to make a mini-warp two yards long consisting of two whole threads to replace the two threads that are actually a short loop of yarn just long enough to fool me when I sleyed the reed and threaded the heddles. It's annoying for that reason and because I now have to untie a very firmly tied overhand knot to pull out the shorties and replace with the new ones. It also means lining up that chunk again (oh, the pain). Argh.

Oh, well. Could be worse. Could ALWAYS be worse.

Eh, apparently ranting and whining helps. I seem to feel a bit better now. Dinner and SnB is suddenly looking rather appealing. Good thing, since I'm supposed to meet her in a half hour. Better run (or jog, or limp...)!

Labels: college life, whines and rants

posted by Jeanne @ 6:11 PM