Gettin' the shaft...switching

 Working on clasped wefts...try saying that 10 times fast. Clasped wefts, clasped wets, claspt wets, clast sets, cla#&*///

I was having a bit of trouble with them at first in that I was either pulling the clasped bit too far over or not far enough. It takes some practice, but eventually I got the gist of it. Not that you could tell from this picture. You can see where I jacked it up in the black and white verticle stripes to the right.

And here I've finally made it to the shaft switching part of the Collingwood DVD. Yeah, I know, mine looks nothing like his. And the colors are hideous but I figure it's a sampler...let me use up some unwanted yarns.  The black areas just below where the red and green starts were done with clasped wefts. I like the way the little tiny blocks came out in the bigger red and green middle blocks, which I did by simply switching one shaft in each block unit. This gave me an idea for a design. 

I'm now trying to figure the whole design thing out, like how to set up the block units, etc.  I've drawn a rough draft out on graph paper of the design I've got in my head, but I have to figure out how to make the warp and lifts do what I want. 

Now check this nifty contraption out...is this cool or what!?! Ok, I'm not even going to try to describe what this is...it's too complicated and I don't want to infringe on anyone's copyright, if ya know what I mean. Just watch the Jason Collingwood DVD. Basically, you use this little clothes line thingy to hold up your string thingys which are attached to the heddles and floating warps, and with the help of little constrictor knots, controls your shaft switching. You don't have to crawl into your heddles every 5 min. snipping floating warps and retying them. And it works and it's so so COOL! The Nifty Boss-o-matic Constrictor Clothesline!

Here is a closer picture of the constrictor knots. You color code them so you know whether you're tying the floating warp to shaft 3 or shaft 4. Of course I got my colors backward, but it's ok. This is amazing. You can also read about this method in The Techniques of Rug Weaving, P. Collingwood, ch. 8. 

Just a couple of pics for fun. This is a small tapestry I did a while back. It's hanging in my office at work.

Here is one of the orchids I tied in my backyard tree about a year ago. It has finally bloomed. I read in an article that orchids love to be in trees and being as I live in a place where it doesn't get cold very often, it's ok to just leave them out in the treetops and visit them a few times a week. I want them to be happy :)

 

And here is young Mr. Levon, trying to look cute so I don't toss him out of the loom room on his butt. He just won't leave things alone. My new nick name for my loom is the Kitty Guillotine.