I finished weaving off the painted-warp shawl today (photos in a bit) and am preparing to embark on a set of weaving exercises. Weaving the painted-warp shawl was an exercise in frustration – I continued to have problems with skipping threads, and the right selvage decided to go loose on me in the last few turns of the warp beam. Also, shaft #1 wasn’t firing consistently, and I occasionally had problems with no shafts or only half the shafts lifting. This wasn’t a huge issue except when I failed to remember that I had reversed the order of the picks to get back to the correct shed, and continued weaving “backwards”, so then I had to re-reverse and unweave an inch or so to get back to where I had been, and…
Well, you get the idea. At any rate, I finished it, and am glad I did. I had to finish up earlier than I had expected due to a warp thread breaking (like an idiot, I had not planned for this and didn’t have a spare space-dyed warp thread with which to repair it), but I think/hope it will come out a useful length. Meanwhile, at least it’s over.
I had planned to do some cotton/linen placemats next, but think I will work through Exploring Multishaft Design instead – that will let me work out the “bugs” and get used to Lady Di’s habits before trying for something more ambitious. I’ve also upgraded my weaving design software to work with Lady Di, so that’s another thing to learn before moving on to “real” stuff.