Nature abhors a vacuum; weavers abhor a naked loom. The Lotus remains idle, but for want of trying to get something on it.

I’d like it to be the rainbow flanellette rug, but there’s still a whole lot of sewing together and ironing of strips to do so I may as well put something else on the loom in the meantime. Recently, I planned out four projects for the Lotas…. and then I had to abandon all of them.

1.

The Little Fluffy Clouds top has been on my to-do list for a long time, and it had a twin: the Seta Soie Silk top. I had four balls of Dairing Yarns Seta Soie Silk in a brown shade and one ball of black leftover from the Comely Shawl. Five balls of the black had made that shawl, so I reckoned five should be enough to make a top. But when the first ball of brown only gave me me a fifth of the warp ends I needed, I knew I was in trouble. I did some mental calculations and realised I only had half the yarn I needed.

How could I be that far off? The answer came when I wound the black yarn. I got 1 1/5 times the ends I had from the brown. I think I bought the brown at a sale, so maybe it was cheap because of a winding error.

What to do? I looked up Dairing’s website and they had the yarn in stock in black but not brown. A quick look at the stash told me I had no good alternative, so I ordered black then hung the warp I’d wound up on the wall, not wanting to thread the loom in case order took a while to arrive.

2.

Next I turned to the curtains project. I’ve wanted to weave sheer curtains for the little window our walk-in-wardrobe since we had it built. Having just done lace for the weaving course, it seemed like a good time to be designing a lace project. Though I hadn’t yet come up with a design yet, I’d done all the calculations needed to wind a warp. But when I started winding, I found the linen I’d chosen felt a bit brittle. Not so much that I wouldn’t ever use it, but I’d definitely want to wait for more humid conditions. Which meant waiting until spring, as our heating system has a nasty side-effect of stripping moisture from the air.

3.

Two idea down, two left. Back at the Kay Plus Fun workshop, Kay had us wind a cotton warp and paint it with dyes. I’ve always wanted to use it in a deflected doubleweave project with a full-able wool. Finding a non-machine washable wool has been tricky, but I recently worked out that I have two small cones of it. But as I contemplated the tricky prospect of combining the painted warp with the new yarn it suddenly occurred to me that I’d be better off weaving this on the Katie or Jane.

4.

That left one last possibility. During my stash review and cull, I decided to keep the Navy Bendigo Luxury 3ply intended for machine knitting after I saw a navy shawl with multicolour stripes in a book. My calculations told me I had enough yarn to make a full size, wrist to wrist, ruanna. But as I considered the project notes I realised that this was going to be a time-consuming project, and I doubted I could get it done before the loom room was painted. While I intended to cover the Lotas and leave it in the room, it would be less of a worry doing so if there was no project on the loom to get splattered, and if I had to move the loom anyway it would be easier if it was naked.

At this point I decided the Lotas would just have to wait for a few weeks before it was clothed again. But at least I have a choice of projects I can start weaving once the room is painted and everything in back in place.