My sanity

Ok, so this is my new weaving. It may be hard to see, but in the bottom part are what are called pinwheels.  

There are several problems.

1. I don't think my yarn contrasts enough to really see them. Of course you can only really see this after the loom is warped and you start weaving. I was NOT going to waste the yarn (Periwinkle Sheep in Goth Girl and 11 Ways to Dry a Chili Pepper- that's the lighter orangey one)

2. There are 8 row to a repeat. Nothing really hard but 6 of those rows I have to sit there and go under and over individually with the yarn. It takes time a lot of time. which leads to...

3. Its taken me 4 days to just get 21 repeats done!

4. The pinwheels don't even look that great because I am pushing down to hard and it seems the more I try not to I wind up squishing them even more. ( Here is to hoping a nice blocking helps)

So, to save what little sanity I have left, I have switched to plain old weave. That's the top part of the weaving. Still keeping 8 row repeat just plain weave and just changing colors every 8 rows. Took about 5 minutes to do 4 repeats. Much quicker. Now I may throw in a pinwheel row here and there or I may just wait until the end and end with 21 pinwheel repeats. Well That I most likely will do. At least that way the ends are the same and it looks like I designed it to look like that.

The reason why it takes so long long is my loom only has 2 positions - Up and Down (or more technically open and closed) The pinwheel pattern was originally made for what is called 8 harnessed looms.  Basically instead of me weaving those 6 rows each time those warps are attached to a bar and you just lift that one bar depending on the row. 

For example The first pattern row goes over 4 under 4 across 104 warp threads on my loom.  An 8 harness loom you just have to lift one bar and boom the threads are up that you need and weave.

I don't know why I thought this would be a quick weave.