Currently the things I've been working on:
Painting Ceramics. I've got a whole bunch of pre-made bisque that I bought, but it's really not my favorite to work with. It's not bad, but just not quite the quality I would prefer. I think I can do better. I currently have blanks of: 5 teacups and saucers, 11 round teacups, 2 mugs, 1 cup and pot stacker and 5 teapots. I'm trying to do one every day, but I'm running out of ideas! I feel like it would be bad to paint them all with leopard print.
Weaving. I got a loom for Christmas and have been using it a lot since then! I'm on my sixth project on it right now, but am waiting on a new reed. I thought I could get away with using the 12 dent one it came with, but I broke down and had to buy a 6 dent one. I can't even start working on my newest weaving until I have it, boo!
I need to get back into sculpting things too! I'm going to try once all the bisque is gone I think.
Here's some photos of my loom! I'm trying to decide if naming it would land me in the looney bin. What if I put horns on it and made it the homestuck loom.
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| Too much stuff in the background, ack! |
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| Original delivery information. |
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| All strung up. |
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| You can see some of the shiny new bolts I put in. |
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| The warping beam, with all the pegs. |
It has a warp of some alpaca synthetic mix that I got on sale, but I'll need to take it all out of the reed and redo it on a thinner one when it comes in the mail.
I got the loom for a good deal on ebay. You can sometimes get really great deals on there if you're willing to wait (or drive a long distance). I got this one for $400 and went and picked it up. Unfortunately when I picked it up it was a little worse for the wear. The photos that the seller had posted in the auction were clearly very out of date. She had taken it apart to store it in her outdoor garage, but neglected to mention that in the auction, so I went into it thinking it would be as pictured. It looked okay when we got it in the car, and thankfully it fit (I was worried about having to rent a truck), but when we got a good look at it later at home we realized how much work was needed. The entire castle had been taken down and twisted around, many of the pegs were broken on the warp beam, it was missing several bolts to put it together with, the reed was terribly rusty as well is the rest of the hardware.
I was a little upset, but I had already taken it home, and really $400 was a good price so I didn't complain. The seller had bought it for herself years and years ago thinking she was going to teach herself to use it, and never did. When she didn't use it she eventually disassembled it and left it in her garage for years, which led to an awful lot of rust unfortunately. The hardest part was just trying to get it together! All I had were a few low resolution auction photos to go by, and one time putting the castle on backwards, but it finally all came together in one piece. Unfortunately that was only half of the battle, since there were repairs to be made.
Several of the rusted bolts had to be cut off before they could be replaced, and replacements had to be made since they were not standard lengths. We drilled the broken pegs out (about a quarter of them were snapped off) and glued new ones in. I managed to get almost all of the rust off of the reed with naval jelly, sandpaper and despair, so although it doesn't look pretty it definitely works now. Last I gave the whole thing a good scrub and it was absolutely covered in black nasty filth, I was pretty appalled. But now after all that work it's presentable, and functional!
It's a four harness six pedal counterbalance floor loom by Newcomb Loom company, which is no longer in business. I think it wasn't originally made for smaller weaving, according to the type of warp beam it has, but I've had no trouble making it work for my own purposes. It's still a little wobbly, and clearly has been around for a while, but works just fine! I think we will have a long history together.
I'll be back tomorrow with YARN!
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