Purple Ruanas: The beginning!

Each of my weaving projects starts something like this. I've got a spiral notebook, and each new project gets a fresh new page for me to do the planning on. I know a lot of folks have moved to using computerized forms for this, but my brain seems to like the old school method of thinking with a pencil in hand. You can see from the note I left myself on the right that my thought processes in planning end up captured on the page. Then, when I'm planning future projects, I can go back and use this as a foundation to build from.

This particular project? When I had posted pictures of my last blue-green ruana project on Facebook, a gentleman very enthusiastically requested that I make another batch in purple and black. I love that kind of enthusiasm! I love knowing that my work is going to go to someone who really wants and appreciates it. Purple it is!! I worked with him, and we chose black, grey, and four different purples in 3/2 cotton for the warp. I'll blend the colors across the width of the warp in a gradation from dark to light.

So, around and around the horizontal warping mill it goes! I do a lot of cutting and tying here as I change from one color to the next. My thread order is decided here. It takes some extra time (sometimes I'm making knots every third thread), but I like the result. I know some folks just measure out blocks of color in this step and mix it up when they put it on the loom, but I got awful tangles when I tried it that way. This slips onto the loom nice and smoothly, with each thread in its place.

And here's the warp all measured, and ready to go onto the loom!

This project is going to be tricky to photograph, it seems. Purple. Purple is a pain to get correctly in the camera and on the screen. The camera just doesn't want to capture it. My new camera seems to be better at it than my old one, though. My older one would have read this entirely as blue. Trust me though. This is purple, purple, purple! Nice and rich and royal.

Next up will be getting this onto the loom, but that is going to wait for a few days. My husband Eric & I are headed out of town this weekend for some two-time in the northern part of Arizona. I'm thinking of bringing my finished ruanas with me, and doing some product photography for the Etsy shop. Maybe in front of the Grand Canyon. Or in the pine woods up on the mountains. Or.... We'll see where we end up! It will be an adventure.