Empty Loom
I imagine I am not alone in this:
The great euphoria of finishing a weaving project is over, and now I am staring at an empty loom.
On the one hand, there is all the fiber potential in the world — right there. I can warp fiber in my studio onto the loom. I can make the double weave waffle weave blanket I’ve been promising Michael. I can start the awesome lunch-bag-and-napkin project that’s been rattling around in my head. I’ve got silk and cotton and wool, alpaca and tencel and mystery poly-fibers — it’s all right there. And then, there it is again: an empty loom.
An. Empty. Loom.
This is where it’s appropriate to use the word “looming” in a conversation about weaving. There it sits, looming in the corner, reminding me that I’m not weaving anything right now. It’s like that ream of blank paper that looms in the future of writers . . . all potential, no work. I’ve started skulking past it, hoping that I can just ignore it. But I can’t get to my bed (or out of my bed and to the bathroom, or out of my room and to the kitchen) without passing it.
And my post-project euphoria shrank with the last project — over-washed.
You may recall it, almost 33 inches wide when it came off the loom:
It spent just a few minutes too long in the rinse cycle. Alas. It is no longer very big, and it is sadly, sadly, very thick.
I like what happened with the colour mixing:
But now I have to figure out what to do with this thick (think “boiled wool”) cloth . . .
. . . and what to do with that empty loom.