Someone in the Bay Area just posted a 24-shaft AVL Workshop Dobby Loom for sale on the weaving mailing lists! I’ve been hoping to find a used one for ages, so I pounced on it and am going to go see it this evening. If it works well, I’ll buy it and pick it up probably the 2nd week of August, which will give me time (if I hurry) to get my current project woven off before the AVL arrives.
It’ll be nice to have 24 shafts, and AVLs are reportedly the Cadillac of looms. The Workshop Dobby Loom is notorious for problems in setup – I have one friend who is just about ready to send hers back to AVL – but this one seems to be OK. At least, the owner says she’s woven several things successfully on it.
Anyway, I’m really excited about this – I’ve wanted an AVL WDL for awhile, and 24 shafts will have more room for playing around than 16 (weave letters, imagery, etc.) – so I really hope this works out.
In other news, I have almost finished writing the pseudocode for the PHP/MySQL project, which means soon it’ll be time to start coding. I nearly gave up in frustration and despair last night – I know so little about PHP and MySQL that every line required going to look four or five things up – but woke up this morning with renewed determination. Now that I have (almost completely) worked out the logic, I can start looking up syntax. Moral of the story: if a problem seems overwhelming, break it down until it makes more sense.
Mike has also been instrumental in helping, having pointed out that linked lists make more sense than using an absolute position for my queue items.