I like to post a photograph each time I have a weaving class.  I do it for me so I have a record.  I did receive a lot of comments on this the other day and thought I’d give just a little more information.  This is going to me a sampler for a draft called Summer and Winter.  I’m doing a sampler so I can better understand the structure of this weave.  My teacher tells me we are going to beat this pattern to death so with three yards on the warp I should have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on by the time I take it off of the loom.  While I’m weaving it I will be thinking of what kind of project I want to make with this pattern when the sampler is finished.

I was going to post some photographs of this woven from other sources but I think I will just post week to week with its progress and what is happening with it.  I’m such a novice weaver that I have a lot of “aha” moments in all aspects of these projects.  I’ve also found that I dream about aspects that I don’t understand and solve problems in my sleep.  I find weaving to be mentally challenging.  The warp and the weft all come together to make a pattern but I sometimes have difficulty visualizing it. There’s a lot of math involved initially so if your math is off so is everything else.

I think my instructor sometimes gives me more credit for knowing what’s going on than I deserve.  Last week she was explaining how this was all going to work and I could NOT wrap my head around what was going on.  She drew it out on graph paper with me and talked about how many “units” went into it so we could figure out what kind of warp to wind.  I just agreed and did what she told me to do.  It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning that I knew what she was talking about.  It’s nice to know that my brain can actually figure this stuff out.  I see it as exercise.  People that take up musical instruments or learn a foreign language as they get older are supposedly more likely to fend off dementia.  I’d put this in that category as well, I have to really work my brain while I’m awake and sleeping to get this to work.

Most of the women in my class come to weave things, they follow the pattern until what they want to make is finished.  I’m not dismissing that capability because you have to know a lot to make that all come together.  I am one of those people that has to know why things work the way they do.  I believe once you know the why you can do anything within the medium.  Yup, I’ll keep telling myself that and continue to dream about the mechanics of weaving.