First Creations

I was generously blessed with a $5000 grant in 2012 to purchase a floor loom, related tools and materials.  I purchased a Schacht 8 shaft Baby Wolf loom as well as a laptop computer and PixeLoom Weaving software.  Thank you MRAC! and McKnight!  For any artist in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area interested in the grant, it's called the Next Step Fun and is offered to 30 people every year.
http://www.mrac.org/grants/NextStepGrant.asp

I had some bumps in actually getting the loom and setting it up.  The delivery folks tried to deliver it to a house a few blocks away.  Eventually it ended up at my house.  I installed the heddles (inserted eye), rollers, and the beater assembly.  The beater was off kilter and after e-mailing and calling back and forth with Schacht, I was sent a replacement one that works MUCH BETTER!

My first project was two scarves from a warp (mid-weight cotton?) that I acquired through a round-about way.  It was already measured.  I warped my loom with it and used a lovely cotton yarn for the weft purchased from my local yarn shop.  I started with a design from a weaving book (don't recall which one) but altered it a bit to fit my warp count using PixeLoom.  It was 8 epi and probably about 8-9 ppi.  Here is the result:

Both scarves (identical) were sold at our annual Weavers Guild sale "Fiber Fair" which was held in November at the Northrup King Building in Minneapolis.

My second project was a set of 5 towels in green and yellow 8/2 cotton for my Wisconsin relations.  I picked a pinwheel pattern (24 epi) and altered it with Pixeloom and here is the result:

I've warped again with a natural color (8/2 cotton) and will be using blue as weft.  Results to come...