The first project that needs something is a colour and weave scarf in fine soft Merino wool, it’s in natural and peach about 70” long. What this scarf lacks is pizzazz, so I plan to do a beaded clasp or tassel or something to allow one side of the scarf to pass through on top of the other.
One of the projects from the GCW Senior test is an 8 shaft twill gamp. I chose 2/22 cottolin; the test requires contrasting warp and weft colours outlined by a different colour woven square. True to my love of blue, I chose navy, turquoise and hot pink. My first attempt worked perfectly, I did a Point Twill, Rosepath, M&W, Advancing Twill, Snowflake , Broken Twill, Dornik and Network. This piece looked wonderful on the right side, but the Network Twill caused some unacceptable floats on the reverse. I had to rethread and rearrange the sequence of blocks and replaced the Network with Straight Twill and promptly ran out of warp……so another lovely piece, but too short! Third time will be the charm and I tied on again, wove my sample and then tossed it in a box without ever inspecting it at all. I have never finished this piece and it is potentially a good test submission….Gotta get to that! The two other pieces will make nice tea towels for me.
My final problem child is this fine wool yardage. It is so soft and supple and has a wonderful sheen, but I really hate the orange stripe! I used 2/20 pure Scottish tartan wool in the Ancient line of blue, green and scarlet (read orange) and navy from a different supplier for the warp and navy for the weft. When I washed the yardage the navy completely puckered and waved! A commercial pressing fixed the problem, but it could not be used for my submission, now what? Guess a trip to Fabricland is in my future and maybe the catalogues will give me a garment idea.
As usual Louet really does a wonderful job of packing their products; no travelling bumps on wee Jane as far as I can see.
There are several amazing things about this 8 shaft table loom and one of them is that the weight is only about 17 pounds and she folds down to only 5-1/2” in height. It has this nifty carrying handle to make moving it around a breeze, and Louets’ signature mounted raddle.
When everything was out of the box, it was time to assemble – unfortunately it only came with 200 heddles which aren’t enough for an 8 shaft loom, and the warp rods had been forgotten in Toronto and one of my shaft holders had split. Jane Stafford who helped Louet develop this lovely wee girl, emailed me even before I had received the loom to let me know about the heddles, so that wasn't such a surprise, Jane would order more heddles for those of us who purchased the very first shipment of looms and sell them at a reasonable price; she also ensured me that the rods and my replacement part would be sent right away. Since I'm not in a real rush to get going I'm happy to wait.
So Michael – who was like any boy with a mechano set, mounted shafts 5-6-7-8 on the loom and got Lavender Louet ready to go. The overhead beater is a real treat and the fact that the beater can be secured out of the way when not in use is a nice touch. I even love the Velcro that hold the reed in place - a very neat idea. I can’t wait to discover more about this loom.
Thought I’d show you another photo of my snow load on the balcony rail, now it looks like a loaf of bread. We have had extremely cold nights, plummeting to -35C so most of the water has been evaporated from the early snow leaving the new snow to pile onto a diminishing base.
My poor kale looks like forlorn frozen mini palm trees now – I was hoping to get one final meal off of them before they froze completely, but a bit too late now. I’m going to leave them until the spring and see if they survive.
I have just put project number three on lily. This time it’s a fun weave so I put on 2 tencel scarves in undulating twill. The colours are not truly represented on my photo, but they are scarlet, red, ochre, gold, lemongrass, and silver – then reversed. Pretty loud for a colour fraidy cat like me.
I’m using 2/8 royal purple tencel for the weft on this scarf and am switching treadling after 7”, then 4” until near the centre of the 78” scarf when there will be a run of 12”. 
These are the cards I sent for 2008. I wove them at the end of an 8 shaft twill gamp. The warp is navy cottolin and the weft is white cottolin with silver thread. The cardstock is the last of some I purchase through the Ponderosa Weavers way back in 2002!
Over the past few years I have received some lovely cards from my friends and I trot them out every Christmas, both for the weaving and the sentiments written inside. These are a few that make me feel warm and fuzzy!
In 2007 the GCW did a card exchange that I took part in, and the next two photos are of the Christmas Cards I received, along with their draw downs and record sheets, an amazing resource... I sent a Valentine’s Card into the exchange; don’t know what I was thinking! 
I did threaten to share some of my favourite recipes with you, and so far have restrained myself; I am a complete foodie and could wax on about cooking constantly if I give in too frequently to the urge. I'm a creature who revels in tradition and have a tendency to save special things for only once a year; this easy dessert has ended our Christmas meal for the last decade.
I’m on the home run with the Overshot Name draft runners and have woven them with different wefts from the first 2/20 wool sample. The second sample was woven with 2/10 silk noil in a soft olive green colour which I doubled on the pirn. This photo doesn’t do the colours justice and I’m going to try and learn Photoshop better.
The final runner has a weft of 2/10 tussah silk, doubled, that was originally a dull dun colour. I over dyed it with crimson and came up with a lovely redwood colour. There are very subtle variations in the colour which make it interesting. There is a very nice play with sheen too as the warp has quite a bit of lustre and the silk has none. This is the only one of the three runners that is truly woven to square, so it will be my submission piece to the GCW.
I decided to leave them in front of the back beam and I still have what I consider a very ample shed, much larger than any I’ve achieved on my wee Minerva loom.
If you noticed the pillow on the ledge behind the loom, here is a better photo. This cushion was given to me by my friend Susan and celebrates our joint Spring Looms.
On of the things I forgot to mention on a previous post, is that when you are not weaving with all of the shafts on the loom, you should pin the extra shafts into the neutral position with the neat pick that Louet provides. It is so much easier than my previous countermarche loom, just thread the texsolv cord onto the pick and insert into the hole in the castle.
Lastly I purchased this lovely little Pine Needle Basket at the Ponderosa Spinners and Weavers Sale in Kelowna and am totally impressed as this is my fellow guild member Brenda Howe’s first attempt at this type of weaving , so I thought I'd share with you.
I make my warp on a standard warping board, but since I’m a bit of a shortie I hang my warping board on the wire shelves in my studio. The boxes of yarn on the shelves made it very hard to see my warp threads and kept boggeling my eyes, but I fixed the problem with a few clothespins and a towel, not pretty, but it worked. I know I'm a bit retentive about keeping my yarn in clear plastic bins, but, that's the way I am! This warp is 4 yards long, 2/10 Egyptian cotton in pale cream.
I moved the warp to the loom and inserted the thin metal rod through the loops and then put the lease sticks though the cross, pretty standard stuff so far. The lease sticks are tied to the sides of the loom with a half hitch knot and then firmly tied to the back beam. The half hitch becomes important later on.
I then lashed the thin metal rod to the 3/8” metal rod that I added to the loom, at about 1” intervals. I take time here to ensure that the distance between both ends of the rod is exactly the same.
Now we come to the different stuff. The Louet Spring has a built in raddle on the castle of the loom, so the warp goes over the top of the loom for sectioning between the notches. To keep the warp threads not yet in use from falling into the cracks I use a piece of plain paper to lay them on. 
Once the warp threads are raddled you need to secure it with a piece of twine to make sure that it doesn’t pop out of the raddle spaces. I thought about it, and never one to waste yarn, I thought that making a giant elastic band that I could use over and over again was the way to go. I found this thin round elastic in my sewing box and it worked pretty well. 
The warp threads are beamed with a paper separator on the back beam, and the care I take to start the paper off evenly and straight is rewarded later on with an evenly beamed warp. After winding on a turn or two, I pull down very firmly on the paper and this tightens it on the beam, then off to the front of the loom and a very hard pull snugs it up even more, it's really quite amazing. Repeat, repeat, repeat…..
As you can see, it beamed very evenly and so I only cut off an inch or two of loops, using the front of the shelf as a guide line.
Then on to threading the heddles; because the lease sticks were half hitched to the sides of the loom, you can move them up and down to be at the perfect height so you can easily pick the threads from the cross. This was one of the best things I learned, it was a real improvement on my previous style of threading. As you can see below it is sticky, sticky yarn and wants to clump! I have a print out of my threading taped to the loom shelf on the left and use a pin poked through the paper to keep my place in the threading sequence.
To tie to the front beam I take very small increments of warp and pull it under the bar then split it in two and under the warp bout and tie it in an overhand knot that you put through the loop a second time. Putting it through the loop a second time makes it a moveable knot. After going from right to left across the warp, I tighten the tension on the warp until some of the groups are quite firm. Now I have some groups slightly tighter than others; to even them out I lay my hand over the tightest bouts and rock back and forth on them to make them all the same tension, the knots will loosen just enough to achieve it. This really works! 
Now the final step, I start at the right side and pull up each bout as tight as I can and give it another overhand knot. Working from right to left without stopping you give the bouts a final knot. You will probably find that the right side is slightly looser by this time, but leave it alone and walk away from the loom for about 20 minutes and you will be rewarded by an evenly tensioned warp as the bouts most recently tied relax.
This warp will be a submission piece for the Guild of Canadian Weavers Senior test. It is an original Overshot namedraft bordered on four sides, minimum size must be 12" x 18" and I only have about 6" done so far. Not really my favourite thing to weave, but.... I’m using 4 strands of 2/20 wool for the pattern thread and the same 2/10 Egyptian cotton for the tabby. I set it at 24 epi and am aiming for 24 ppi. Although the photo looks black and white it is actually blue/olive and cream. I think that I'll change the pattern weft to be silk for the next one. I put on enough warp for 4 runners, thinking that I'd gift one to each of my children because the namedraft is our family name.
