I was getting out of my car at the library yesterday and I had the two dogs in the car. They like a ride sometime and I didn’t have to stop anywhere for long so they got to come along. Sal was barking at some unidentifiable thing and a woman walking down the sidewalk turned around and asked if those were dachshunds barking. She said she’d know that bark anywhere. She also said they’re great dogs. Which they are. They’re smart and they love to help, especially Sal. She is bright and learns fast and she gets into all kinds of trouble.
She has been helping me warp my Harrisville Rug Loom this month. One of her favorite things is the feeling of velcro in her teeth. She will, with great precision, remove velcro from any object she finds it on. I think warp feels quite like that because she loves to chew on warp whether it be wound tightly on the cone or in a pile on the floor waiting to be wound on the loom. I very quickly learned to either shut her out of the studio or move the warp bundles high enough she can’t reach them.*
PLEEEEEEASE let me help with that!
Sal loves to sit in the sunshine in the studio window in the morning.
Winding the warp on the loom a bit at a time. After the warp goes around the back beam a few times, the warp extender can start going up depending on how much warp I’m putting on. I think this is 5 yards (geez I hope I wrote that down somewhere!). It is enough for three tapestries.
Warp getting wound on the Harrisville rug loom
Warping my Harrisville Rug loom. The loom belonged to my grandfather. The lease sticks were my grandmothers from a different loom. She wrote on EVERYTHING and sometimes she wasn't a great speller.
So far the weaving has not begun. I have a bit of a shedding problem with this loom and I need to figure out how to tweak it so all the shafts are level again. I’ve been unable to adjust the tie-up to accommodate for the slight variation you’d only notice in tapestry weaving, so Harrisville’s recommendation is to try weighting some of the lamms. This is an old loom that has been used very hard so I’m giving it some slack in this case.
Sal will not be able to help with the weaving but I’m curious to see whether she still runs under the treadles when I am using them. She loves to fit her tiny body into little spaces. Can’t find Sal? Look behind the dryer where she is probably trying to find stray socks, the stinkier the better.
*She is a mini-dachshund after all and though she can jump quite high, things don’t have to be that far off the floor for them to be mostly out of her reach. Gone are the days where my big yellow lab Cassy would snatch an entire pizza off the dining room table or get a loaf of bread from the back of the counter. But I also came home once to find that one of the dogs had jumped from the rolling bar chairs onto the low bar and then onto the kitchen counter. I think we all know who is smart enough to do that. Plus Beau isn’t that agile.