TRAUCHLED!!!

Trauchled mean being bothered, flustered - and that is me. Apart from dealing with the workshop of a bookbinder who has just died, I had the plumber round replacing radiators. this week. The best part of a bookbinder's workshop is now in my garage along with a whole lot of builder's materials. He starts on Monday to insulate a bit of the house - along with the gasman who is installing a new boiler. 

And I desperately need to get at least one of the 12 shaft looms warped up. When I started on that job on Wednesday, I realised that I changed all the heddles round last January because it was set up for Diversified Plain Weave this time last year. DPW needs lots of extra heddles on Shafts 1 and 2. The current warp needs equal numbers on each shaft - about 60 and several shafts have less than 50 so I have to have a major change round. A job I hate. I did have the brains to inspect my own 12-shaft loom  (which is the other loom I have to warp up) and discovered it was kitted out with 50 on every shaft. I was at Handweavers Studio on  Thursday and took the opportunity to buy 600 Tex-Solv heddles so that there will be 100 per shaft.

On Wednesday evening I drove down to Ruth's, stayed over night  and went up to Handweavers Studio for 1030 on Thursday. Complex Weavers ran a one-day course given by Jette VanderMeiden. It was called 'Up Tied Up' and it was about how to weave anything on a straight draw by altering the Tie-up. She is a very good tutor and had us  doing examples the whole day. I drove home that evening because of Bournville classes starting up today. 

In amongst all this, two of my computers are on the blink. I settled down to trying to sort out things this afternoon. I started on the Sony  laptop, went on  to talk to Sony and decided that I would use PC Callout because  it would cost about the same and, more important, PC Callout will come here while Sony wanted me to send them the laptop.  Now to deal with the other one. The two which have gone down are the Internet/email ones. The laptop is functioning nicely - except for Internet/email which does not function at all. The other one is functioning sort of but badly and it does not like photos in my blog so there will not be any today. I am told there are four copies of one photo from earlier in the week. I cannot see any of them and so cannot remove the extra.

I have finished a sample on the Megado. It is for Michael's enamels. I printed out a picture of each enamel on stiff paper and inserted them into the weaving. All very fine and good - but it will not work with enamels because I can bend the paper but I can't bend an enamel. So I cut off the sample and finished off the hems properly. I was so fed-up that I nearly cut the warp off  and threw it out but decided 'No, I'll think about it'. One solution would be rewarp completely and insert the enamels sideways. That has several disadvantages not least that I think the current way is stronger. But driving to London brought the solution and I can see how to make it work. I have decided to make another sample though - just to be sure.

So the jobs for the weekend are

- reorganise the heddles on the Guild loom

- wind on the warp and warp up

- weave some samples

Well I can always be optimistic. I think it may be Monday evening before I get round to weaving samples on the Megado.