On Saturday I took my weaving to Nathan and Catherine's house, and tackled it for a couple of hours. First of all I wound a fresh shuttle from one of my other balls of leftover black cotton. Then I dug out the end of my snapped weft, and went to tie on my new shuttle. Because I'm very clever, I put the new shuttle on the floor right next to the old one and couldn't tell which was which. I clearly picked the wrong one because it snapped straight away. So I threw it far away so it wouldn't get confused, dug out the end again and tied on the new shuttle. I was doing ok for a while, until the weft snapped yet again. That's now two different balls of cotton that I've snapped, so I pouted for a bit. Then Catherine offered me some spools of various black threads that I might want to use instead, and I decided to give the poly top stitch thread a try. This is the same weft I was using for my belt, and the thickness is roughly the same as the #12 cotton. I tied it on and was going pretty well until my knots decided they didn't want to hold anymore, and went all slack again. UGH. That was my cue to give up for the day, before I sent the loom flying from frustration. I'd managed to weave a grand total of 20 picks, about 3.5cm.
Since then my string has been behaving remarkably well. My tension is perfect and I've woven a good 15cm, almost double what I'd done up to on Saturday. BUT THEN I snapped my weft again. I SNAPPED MY WEFT AGAIN. I snapped the poly top stitch thread. Now I'm thinking it's something I'm doing that's snapping the thread, rather than my choice of thread or a flaw. I've been so conscious not to pull too hard, but it's been getting harder to tighten the weft, it's just not sliding through the shed easily. Maybe this particular cotton is just rough or something, and the constant friction is weakening it.
I'm just over half way through this band, so I can't give up now, but I really wanted to finish it soon because THIS:
CHRISTMAS BANDS! I found them over at the Malarky Crafts blog, and I want to make one! They're just so cute! They're simple threaded in patterns with a 4F 4B turning sequence, so it'd be really quite quick and easy to make one. Mum said if I made one we'd hang it up somewhere as decoration, but I'd like to have a specific use for it. I'd have to make metres of it to wrap it around the tree, although if I make a short one and we wrap it around the top of the tree, then the cat won't be able to reach it. I suppose I'll go buy myself some milford satin and just figure out what we'll do with it later.
In other news, look at this:
It's the end of my belt. AND the end of my wefts. Poking out. Visible. WTF? I used this technique to finish the band, and it has never failed me before. This time it seems it has been slowly unravelling and now the end of my belt is a bit of a mess. I wore it to an event on Sunday and that's all it took for it to end up like this. I showed it to some people and I think my options are to unthread the wefts to the neat bit, then stick them on a needle and thread them back through the band. Then I can whipstitch the end to hold everything in place. OR I could divide the threads back into their cards and tie some knots. Either way the whole thing seems way too tedious for me to tackle right now.
It's getting a little bit ridiculous how much trouble I'm encountering with my weaving. At the moment I just have to laugh at my weft snapping all over the place and my belt coming undone, because it's like everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong, just because it can. I'm past being frustrated at it because of the ridiculousness of the situation. I should rename this blog THE DISASTER ZONE or something :P
Since then my string has been behaving remarkably well. My tension is perfect and I've woven a good 15cm, almost double what I'd done up to on Saturday. BUT THEN I snapped my weft again. I SNAPPED MY WEFT AGAIN. I snapped the poly top stitch thread. Now I'm thinking it's something I'm doing that's snapping the thread, rather than my choice of thread or a flaw. I've been so conscious not to pull too hard, but it's been getting harder to tighten the weft, it's just not sliding through the shed easily. Maybe this particular cotton is just rough or something, and the constant friction is weakening it.
I'm just over half way through this band, so I can't give up now, but I really wanted to finish it soon because THIS:
CHRISTMAS BANDS! I found them over at the Malarky Crafts blog, and I want to make one! They're just so cute! They're simple threaded in patterns with a 4F 4B turning sequence, so it'd be really quite quick and easy to make one. Mum said if I made one we'd hang it up somewhere as decoration, but I'd like to have a specific use for it. I'd have to make metres of it to wrap it around the tree, although if I make a short one and we wrap it around the top of the tree, then the cat won't be able to reach it. I suppose I'll go buy myself some milford satin and just figure out what we'll do with it later.
In other news, look at this:
It's the end of my belt. AND the end of my wefts. Poking out. Visible. WTF? I used this technique to finish the band, and it has never failed me before. This time it seems it has been slowly unravelling and now the end of my belt is a bit of a mess. I wore it to an event on Sunday and that's all it took for it to end up like this. I showed it to some people and I think my options are to unthread the wefts to the neat bit, then stick them on a needle and thread them back through the band. Then I can whipstitch the end to hold everything in place. OR I could divide the threads back into their cards and tie some knots. Either way the whole thing seems way too tedious for me to tackle right now.
It's getting a little bit ridiculous how much trouble I'm encountering with my weaving. At the moment I just have to laugh at my weft snapping all over the place and my belt coming undone, because it's like everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong, just because it can. I'm past being frustrated at it because of the ridiculousness of the situation. I should rename this blog THE DISASTER ZONE or something :P
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