Weaving and Railways

Last weekend saw me, Molly and Mr S in Bedfordshire - me for a weaving workshop and Mr S was exhibiting his model railway - the new larger and improved layout that is.

 

The enlarged version takes up more room in the car and requires two large coffin shaped boxes to safely transport.

 

The enlarging of the layout required additional trees and the revamp of the existing which were looking the worse for wear, my job and I am pretty pleased with the new ones!  I discovered that with the camera on my phone that I could take photos from different angles - here is one looking down through the fields....... 

Must have be worth the effort, because he got an invite exhibit next year in Oxford...

And while all this was going on I was completely out of my depth on a Creative Weaving Workshop.  In the week leading up to the workshop I had attempted to warp my loom four times - complete disaster.  I now have a large bag of thrums - that is what the bits from the ends of the warps are called, I just had more than you would expect...............

I did finally manage to get something on the loom, but it was a poor attempt when I looked at the other looms .........

This is only photo of my pathetic efforts

And here are some of the beautiful fabrics being woven by the more experienced weavers..

Think you can see from this, just how much!

This stunning weave is in a variety of yarns, including cotton, silk and sock yarn - I just love the way the rust really pops out!

The inspiration for this piece was the foliage along side the canal near to where the weaver lives - she had dyed the yarn to reflect the colours in her photos.

An just to show that you don't need to have a complicated warp - this was done with just five colours.........

But one good thing came out of being the newbie - I got an individual lesson on warping - and the best bit was that everything didn't go right, a thread broke and in the end the tutor cut the warp, saying that it wasn't something she would recommend..........  Nice to know that even the experts get it wrong sometimes.

The outcome of this weekend is that I am today warping my loom, on my own and so far everything is fine - I have a two coloured warp ready to thread, pics will follow if it works..................