I have some dear friends who made the monumental decision to have a baby. There were medical complications but eventually, the little tyke was conceived and he arrived in the world a month and a half ago now. I love to make things for babies. Cute, soft things that I usually knit. I know that they’re mostly impractical and I assume, though I’m not a mom myself, that frazzled parents really like stuff they can throw in the washing machine.
I was going to knit a beautiful blanket for this kid. I could imagine myself choosing the yarn, casting on, working away. And then I looked at my fall schedule and thought about how I was going to disappoint myself because there was no way I was going to finish the blanket I had in my head before the kid was born.
Then it occurred to me. “I’m a weaver! I could absolutely weave a blanket. I’m sure it would go faster and it would be more baby-friendly.”
I’m not sure why it took me so long to think of that. And in a moment of serendipity, my friends at GIST Yarn happened to send an email about a kit for a baby blanket that same day saving me the trouble of researching yarns and patterns. Bingo, it was ordered in a heartbeat. It arrived a few days later and my head was filled with visions of what a gorgeous blanket I was going to turn out. Because, after all, I’m a weaver and how hard could a plain weave blanket be? (It is the Echo baby blanket kit and the yarn is lovely.)
Setting up the loom
You know, warping for tapestry is a lot easier and faster than making fabric with thin threads. Respect to my fine fabric weaving colleagues. I actually did this kind of weaving myself for many years before I learned tapestry. So my belief in my abilities seemed well founded.
I had my Macomber set up for tapestry which means there were only enough heddles for 10 ends per inch at approximately 24 inches wide. I needed 18 epi for the whole width of the loom for this blanket. So I rummaged around in the basement for awhile until I found my grandmother’s box of heddles. This loom was hers and many things were woven on it over perhaps 40 years of her ownership. My grandmother liked to have her materials prepared and organized and so I give you this.
Grandma Mezoff’s heddle box. The top vs. bottom note is actually extremely helpful!
Is that enough heddles grandma?
This loom is a 16-harness Mac but grandma only ever had 10 harnesses on it. I think this is clearly enough heddles to warp all 10 harnesses all the way across at a pretty high epi. Grandma was prepared when it came to her tools. She also labeled EVERYTHING like this. I wish I knew if these notes ever helped her later on or if it was just a habit to make the thing her own. At any rate, I’m grateful for the large stash of excellent heddles. (There is a piece of tape on the end of a treadle of my baby Mac, also grandma’s, which says, “dog chewed”. The tape is covering the mangled end of the treadle. I can’t bear to take it off.)
I spent some time with each shaft on the floor counting and moving heddles. I wanted four shafts for this project and rather than take the heddles off the other shafts, I removed them from the loom. I believe this led to the sticking problem I had with the sheds later and wish I had just removed the heddles instead. They’re such a pain to put back on, but realistically, when I am I going to use shafts 5 through 10?
Warping the loom
I’m a good warper. I weave tapestry on a floor loom, so this part was no problem.
Warping on the warping board—short warp but lots of ends!
Warp ends tied and ready for the loom.
Winding the 720-end warp made me a little suspicious that the threading would not go as fast as it does for tapestry.
Boy was I right.
I stalled out after threading about half the loom. It just took SO long! Eventually the child was born and the blanket was still half-threaded. I had to either consider that I wasn’t going to finish or just sit down and thread the thing.
I warp front to back. Reed gets sleyed first.
Threading the heddles, all 720 of them.
I finished threading eventually and started weaving.
This is where I felt like a beginner again
Oh boy. I learned to weave patterned fabric on a floor loom in about 1998 from the amazing ladies at Reno Fiber Guild and from lots of books. I was fairly successful at it and enjoyed my experiments. Some of those textiles I still use today.
But I hadn’t banked on the fact that 15 years of NOT weaving these kinds of textiles rendered me rather rusty. In fact, I had to google how to do a few things like how to switch colors at the selvedge without cutting the yarn. Throwing the shuttle instead of weaving tapestry felt like such a foreign thing. And getting the beating just right… and my goodness but there was a threading error that I didn’t see until the whole thing was threaded and I’d put in the waste and the header of the actual blanket.
Threading error… that I was unfortunately too lazy to fix.
Argh!!!! The error was simple but it is still haunting me. Looking at the photo below I realize that what I did was miss a dent when sleying the reed. So instead of resleying it which a good weaver would have done, I just moved one of the doubled threads over. This created a big gap in the middle of the weaving. The threading was correct. Sure, I would have had to untie the front of the loom and resley half the warp, but that isn’t the worst thing in the world and it would have taught me to check the sley before starting the threading.
I was sure it would not show once the blanket was finished and washed.
I was completely wrong. It shows a lot.
Weaving that blanket. Stripe pattern taped to the loom.
The blanket is plain weave which I felt would be simple and easy to complete. Partway through the weaving I complained to a friend who has just completed a Master Weaver certification. “I can’t even weave plain weave anymore!!” I whined. She replied that didn’t I know that plain weave was the HARDEST? Whether that is true or not, it made me feel better.
I finished the blanket and I’m pretty sure the recipient does not care at all that there is a glaring error in the center of it. It washed up beautifully thanks to the fantastic yarn from GIST and I’m sure that it will get many years of hard use.
I still have the thrums from that blanket on the loom. I look at it every day and think, “I should order more of that yarn and just tie on and weave a few more blankets. Certainly practice would be good for me and tying on is WAY faster than threading.” I haven’t done it yet, but I’m building my courage.
I am a weaver. I make a living as a weaver. But heck if a plain weave baby blanket didn’t just about take me down.
Of course the moral of the story is that we all are beginners at times and sometimes we’re beginners again. It isn’t a bad place to be actually. Beginners mind allows for possibilities that a well-practiced, set-in-your-ways mind does not. So embrace being a beginner of whatever you’re learning right now and don’t get too attached to the results.
After all, an infant only cares if he is warm and safe, not that his new blanket is not as perfect as the weaver might have wished.