Sheep Shots

For the past week or so, following the inspiration of Mariella, I've been playing with my rigid heddle loom.

Problems cropped up. The warp yarn was catching and sticking and there really was no Zen-like calm coming over me as I struggled to finish my practice piece.

So I did what any neophite fiber worker does. I screamed for help.

Mariella pointed out that even though the middle-size 10-dent heddle is what came with my Flip, it wasn't necessarily the best heddle for the this job. She was using an 8!

Head slapping moment!

I quickly jumped onto the Internet and sought out the vendor where my Flip was secured. Out Of Stock (saddest words ever sent to an impatient fiber worker).


So, I started scouting around for an in-stock heddle.

Mind you, there was no rush, since I had no intention of cutting the warp (all 500 miles yards of it) off the loom until I finished weaving the current piece.

I located the correct-for-worsted-weight 8-dent at another vendor's website and plunked down my card for it and another heddle (12-dent--I might also want to work lighter someday).

And then, I waited.

UPS notification arrived, and I dragged it into my "pending orders" folder without reading carefully. (Shoot me now, why don't you?)

The next day, another UPS notification arrived in my In box.


This time, it looked ominous (something about supplying the name of my company so that delivery could be completed), so I read it.

::eep::

My heddles are traveling somewhere in Illinois! (Kentucky to Pennsylvania by way of Chicago?)

The vendor is tracking them down and re-routing and they should be here early in the week.

In the meantime, I continued to struggle with the Wrong Size Heddle and completed this practice piece in shades of blue which I give a "satisfactory" rating on a scale of Why Did I Bother? to Drop Dead Gorgeous.

Finished size is about 21" X about 6.5'. It weighs about 300 g (10 oz.), so it's lightweight but remarkably warm. I used up a lot of stash, which was the goal, after all.

Update on Weekend Off: A trip to the dentist this morning revealed that my teeth are in good shape despite a raging jaw ache that is not TMJ, not an abscess, not an advanced form of any disfiguring and debilitating disease (okay, I tend toward drama in the middle of the night, I admit it!), but likely a hypersensitivity to anything that might be lodged under a crown in that area. The dentist compared it to pregnancy gingivitis. All things considered, I'm really glad it isn't that! But it's always something.

I continue to be exhausted, and avoided taking a nap because I really want to get some uninterrupted sleep tonight.

And as long as we're all friends here, what happened in that game? I mean, is it the Iowa Curse or something?

Labels: current events, weaving