Weaving halted for a while on the golden-winged warbler tapestry; I merely looked at the loom from my desk while finishing up the new issue of the Norwegian Textile Letter.
Two more warblers will appear in the leaves above this one. It’s about half done.
People always ask, “How long did that take you to weave?” I always have big plans to answer the question, like, “I’ll put this little notebook by the loom and record every time I weave.” That works for approximately two days. But recently I recorded the time it took me to fix a mistake. I originally planned to include a few leaves in a blue-green shade. After I wove the first one, I moved across the room to my desk. When I glanced back, I thought that wasn’t such a good idea.
I timed how long it took me to take out the small blue blobby leaf — nine minutes. It took longer than I anticipated because of the nicely “sticky” warp and weft (Rauma aklegarn for the warp and Frid yarn from Norsk Fjord Fiber for the weft). The yarn is perfect for the open warp technique, to hold the woven sections in place. But it’s harder to unweave the weft than it would be with a smooth cotton warp yarn.
I then timed how long it took to weave the leaf again — 22 minutes.
Frida Hansen’s transparent tapestries often had beautiful variegated warps. I intentionally dyed the warp for this tapestry unevenly, and I think it will add a subtlety to the background. It’s hard to understand the full effect of the open warps – the “transparency” – while the cartoon is still in back of the weaving. It creates an impetus to keep weaving!