Progress up the sides of the box. This is the FUN part! I am having a blast, and it is hard to tear myself away from it.

About the yarns: most of these yarns were given to me by a weaving teacher. Apparently what happened was that a student had wound the warp for a large rug, and then had abandoned the project. Once a warp is measured off, you can’t really wind it up again because it will become a terrible tangle. Since she knew that I weave tapestry and can use cut lengths of yarn, she gave it to me. I cut off the ends and wound the lengths into balls. I can’t remember how long this took, but I must’ve had the patience of Jesus to do it. The wool is very coarse and must have been hand dyed, because there are undyed or lightly dyed places where the ties on the yarn were too tight. This wool would probably have been thrown out had I not taken it.

One of the yarns is leftover from an old tapestry that I wove many years ago. I remember that I dyed it on the porch at Lake Waccamaw, during a week when I was at the lake without a car, phone, or TV, with only the company of our dog, Janet Planet. It rained buckets non-stop for days, to the point that the rainwater rose up through the kitchen floor, the house having been built directly on top of a cement slab. It was one of the best weeks of my life.

This is an example of Slow Cloth, which I’ve been thinking about a lot, and will eventually post about. I’m thrilled that fiber artists are extending the philosophy from the Slow Movement to cloth. Of course, many of us always have, but I never thought of it in those words. How perfect!

The bottom is almost finished! I’m only stopping because it’s bedtime and I’ve sat in the same spot too long.

Since this is weaving in the round, like a basket with spokes, you need to put in an extra warp so that you have an odd number of warp ends. Here I ran it down through the edge of the woven part, turned it around, and pulled it back up through the cloth so that it would hold the tension and not pull out later under stress.

Those bottom corners are going to be tough. The top corners are already taking a beating because they were already worn before I started. I’ll put some T-pins in them and hope that will help. Next time I’ll be a little more careful when I choose my box.

Where I am starting this morning. You weave a little at the top edge because it is easier to finish a side weaving in the middle than at the top. When it relaxes off the loom and you full the weaving in hot soapy water, any spaces should fill in. This was a new tip for me.

A view of the bottom and sides in process. For the bottom weaving, there aren’t a lot of design choices. Solid or stripes, that’s it, because you need a stable firm structure.

In tapestry, the weft should cover the warp completely. For this reason, you “bubble” in the weft, and then tamp it down densely. Some people use forks or tapestry combs. I think that the best tools are your fingertips.

Just below the brown wool, you can see where I wove the warp that goes around the other two sides. Unlike the wool, it is woven tight and in the same shed as the previous weft.

This is why I can’t weave around the cats. (That’s Miss Lucy.)