A Gift to Myself

The horoscope shawl was a present to myself for my 50^th Birthday. I somehow thought that it would help me understand myself at a deeper level and provide closure to a period of ill health. At the same time I am not in the habit of giving to myself. It proved to be quite an experience. I am a novice weaver and had never worked with such a draft as my experience of weaving had been limited to some scarves in tabby and twill. However, I like a challenge and undaunted got to work on the draft which Bonnie had sent me . Warping was interesting and a beautiful experience. I decided on 3 warps of 120 each and labelled them as such as I had only ever worked with 1 warp on my Ashford Table loom. Then there were simply not enough heddles on the loom so had to order some more and master that process. Putting on the warps proved tricky as I had inverted one of them so it had to come off and be repositioned. Next I wound on the warp with the help of my husband and it simply looked too slippery and slack on the loom so rewound it and rewound it again. I had put it under the beam at the back instead above and the same in the front so had to untie and restart. 3 attempts followed to put it through the heddles as I had not centred it well enough and 2 attempts at sleying the warp. I am not one to give up easily but when I wound the warp up again back and forth the threads started to break at the sides and I was close to tears. My weaving teacher offered to come and have a look and told me I had made a classic beginners mistake of not having my piece of paper wide enough so that the threads on the outside were under more tension than those on the paper and thus the threads would break. After some reassurance and winding the warp through the reed and tying the ends on each end, it looked about ready to weave. I had spun red tussah silk for the weft and was finally ready to weave. Weaving can be a reflection of life and weaving my horoscope shawl had many similarities to how my life had played out up until that point. The shawl is a bit shorter than I had planned and has a few frayed ends but that is a fair reflection of me. I love wearing my shawl and what it has brought me so far. Something I learned over the years: happiness is within, so take care of yourself and find peace within. The rest will take care of itself. If you address the outside before the inside, the outside will only reflect the imbalance within. People comment so much on the beauty of the shawl that the whole experience and its challenges has definitely been worth it.

Anne Howe

A Gift from Shelley to Winston

Hi Bonnie....Well, here is a picture of my husband, Winston Quan's scarf. I am wearing it as he takes better pictures than I do. I will eventually send you a picture of him wearing it , as he is an interesting character being partly Chinese and partly Cree Indian. I would not let him model the scarf as he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt which clashed with the scarf. He is of the opinion that men do not wear enough color and has made it his mission to wear as much color as possible. I , for one, am sick of his Hawaiian shirts and like to confiscate them whenever they get too worn and then weave them into placemats.

Well, here it is....

All the best to you!,

Shelley

NOTE FROM BONNIE: above is the complementary draft that Shelley received after completing her own horoscope weaving.

May Inspiration

The one thing I had trouble with in warping was bending down to the floor to change colors. I just read in Handwoven a suggestion that you put Velcro tape in a place to conveniently hold the thread while you are using another cone. I think I'll try that for my sister's scarf. Another thing I had trouble with was when I went to wind on the warp, the planets were looser than the rest of the warp. Not sure why, but I'll be more aware as I wind on next time. Finally I wanted to wind more than 1 thread at a time and had never done it in a way that I needed to keep the sequence. That was a challenge! I only had one miss at the cross. But luckily your thread by thread color pattern helped.

On the edges I put 2 black floating warp threads per side. I think 1 would have been plenty. That helped a lot to keep my edges straight. The weaving went smoothly. I could advance the warp every 3 to 5 inches (I hate advancing the warp!). It didn't take me long. I used a weft color that I love the name of as much as I love the color - UKI's Quarry. I liked it better than the Black. I tried several warp colors, Quarry worked best. You can see on the loom picture I wanted to use up black at the end. There are 2 colors of weft in that picture - black and Quarry.

Thanks!
Dornan

Colorful Maggie

Hi Bonnie,

After receiving the horoscope instructions, I looked at the warping order and groaned. Winding off warp is my least favorite task. but the little sample you included was motivation. I ordered my bamboo from jane stafford in BC.I also enlarged the width by adding about 8 ends in each of the color groupings to make a shawl.

After getting it all beamed, I wasn't sure I liked it. As much as I love color, it was overwhelming. I had put on extra yardage to experiment with weft colors. tried out black, both a dull and shiny. sampled with a grey thinking it would tone the whole thing down. looked dead. even tried a cream. that was way wrong! In your paper work you had commented that I had a lot of orange and red. I had a cone of red cotton the right size. bingo! I love it.

Only have about a yard woven at this point but it will be finished hopefully by Christmas so I can wear it to the family dinner. Will send you a finished photo after the holiday.

It's done. I love it. but. . . . I'll never wear it. Way too bright. I should have used pastels of my colors. Am thinking I'll use it for a table cover.

I had taken a front view photo but the picture had the dog's butt and tail in it but it also didn't show the stripes as well. My weaving space is also my quilting space so the floor does get really trashy.

I think I had promised you a finished photo by Christmas. didn't happen. It was off the loom but not cleaned up. twisting the fringe took almost as long as the actual weaving.

Thanks so much, Bonnie.
Maggie