Anniversary and Another Loom?

Happy Anniversary to us! Carlos actually had to remind me this morning, how lame am I? (Work has been completely insane for him and I'm stressed about finding time to weave and take care of the kids, and the date just completely slipped my mind...)

We were married on October 6, 2000 - although we were together for so long before we got around to getting married (nearly six years) (good grief, we're going on 14 years together!), the wedding was almost an afterthought. We were all about the honeymoon, anyway (three weeks in Spain!), the wedding was more for our families than for us.

There he is, our very own Big Papi. (This was taken outside of the Palais du Papes in Avignon, France, just about two years ago on the nose - Ms. B certainly has gotten bigger since then!)

And there he is on our honeymoon in Segovia, Spain, in October 2000. Fewer grey hairs then! (Kids will do that to you, won't they?)

And, in weaving news, I think I may have stumbled across a new (to me) loom... Uh-oh. A used 40" AVL 16-shaft compu-dobby with two sectional warp beams, six reeds, spool rack/tension box (no idea how to use these, lol, but I'll learn, I'm sure!), electric bobbin winder, ball winder and a very good price... Oh my. I'm hoping to go see it in action when the work craziness dies down for Carlos after this weekend.

Monks Belt

Hooray for Ginga (my Mum) - she's in the living room playing with the kids, so I'm stealing a minute to post a picture of my current-ish project on the little loom:


Monks' Belt! Haven't messed around with it at all in quite a while, but I always like the idea of overshot-type weaving, just because you really don't find it in commercial fabrics. As the pattern weft in this portion, I used some hand-dyed rayon boucle that I picked up almost two years ago at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival. I've got some more hand-dyed variegated yarns lying around that I'm going to give a whirl as well. The idea is to weave either soft scarflettes (the warp and tabby weft is black 8/2 tencel) or yardage to make little zipper pouches. Though my sewing machine and I area not exactly the best of friends...

The big loom *still* isn't in my studio. But at least now it's disassembled and just waiting to be moved over and re-assembled. Hopefully tonight! Knock on wood!

On a personal front - Carlos finally straightened out the non-compete nonsense with his last company and has officially started at a new start-up, Cambridge Analog Technologies (CAT), whoo-hoo!

How to Build a (Tapestry) Loom!

Well, how neat is this?

Archie Brennan's Copper Loom Design

How-to build your own tapestry loom!

And, while you're at it, check out some of his tapestries. Wow.


(This is one of his designs.) I am in awe of tapestry artists. I have a little tapestry loom. My efforts on it are laughable, at best! (Eeks.)

I probably need to read a bit more about tapestry technique and give it another try... Uh-oh. Now this has me thinking about design possibilities.