Thursday, April 16, 2009

Not stirring that up...

While it would be very tempting to say things like "Just because I drink tea and live in Texas doesn't mean I attended a tea party." I'm not going to go political in this blog post... much. That's as close as I'll get. However it does remind me of Tim Curry's character in Clue: "My wife and I had friends who were... socialists! Well, we all make mistakes."


If you ask me, if the industry in this country is going to continue to urge the American public to spend beyond its means via commercials and its attitudes, then we're going to need socialized medicine and other programs to help them out when the crapola hits the fan.

See what I did there? Went political anyway. Done now.

I'm in the midst of an experiment. I know I said I was ordering a rigid-heddle weaving loom for my birthday gift tomorrow, but I keep looking at the shopping cart total and thinking that it's an awful lot of money. It's not like last year with my purchase of my spinning wheel... which I have not regretted for a single instant. No, I know I will LOVE weaving. My problem is with the fact that while the loom itself is a specialized piece of equipment that is not easily duplicated, I am balking at the expense of making it fully functional. An extra heddle is $45! The *stand* to make it freestanding (basically seven sticks held together by bolts) is $110 fricken dollars! For sticks! So if I want any extras, my $250 loom becomes a $700 purchase. That's an extra heddle in the other two available sizes, the stand, extra shuttle (another stick), and two cheap cones of yarn. And two cheap instruction books from Amazon. I can't spend that.

So the experiment is fashioning my own backstrap loom. Pictures and how-to may follow. It depends on how it turns out later today.

5 comments:

  1. So, is the materials for your loom your birthday present?

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  2. Oh, no... the experimental thing I'm doing today is made from cheap stuff I already have.

    But for my birthday I may settle for dinner and the Star Trek movie, which I hear kicks ass. ;)

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  3. Will there be You Tube videos on the creation of this thing? Sounds interesting!

    Nothing wrong with movie and dinner, nothing at all. I cannot wait to finally see it. I'm tired of hiding my eyes during the many trailers/commercials!

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  4. I'm doing my first run with this gadget I made now... interesting, to be sure, but not something to replace a real loom, unfortunately.

    There's not a lot to video on it, you'll see why when I reveal it in the blog tomorrow.

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