I’ve abandoned the woven cat food mats project. Slinky gets so enthusiastic about eating that he pushes his food bowl across the floor. I figured a woven mat might provide enough texture to stop it slipping. It was a project that ought to have been simple, but became ridiculously complicated.

(Alert! Technical weaving terms begin.) I thought I’d try warp-faced rep on the knitters loom using some Lion Brand cotton. The warp needs a small dpi – the strands are threaded closer together so only the warp shows in the fabric – but when I went to weave it the yarn stuck together and wouldn’t form a shed. I tried spraying it with hair de-tangling spray and using a pick up stick, which helped, but then I found the warp strands still weren’t close enough to form a completely warp-faced fabric.

So I re-threaded the warp to use plain weave, which caused a flare up of RSI. But because the weft in warp-faced rep doesn’t show, I’d used most of the yarn as warp – so most of it was now cut into lengths. I needed to buy more. (Alert! Technical weaving terms end.)

Well, it turned out there was only one shop in Australia that sold Lion Brand yarn. When I went to order it, they were going to charge me over $15 in postage, even when I reduced the order to one ball. So I went looking for similar yarns and found Sugar & Cream at Yarn Over. Two balls = $6 shipping & handling.

In the meantime, I decided that a non-slip rubber mat would do just as well for the cat. So I’m going to weave hand towels out of the warp on the loom, and concentrate on other projects on my list.

My ‘Books Read in 2011’ list just got longer. I finished two books, but I have to admit the one about bookplates was the shortest in my To Read List. Is that cheating? Well, I hadn’t read it and it was in the list, so I don’t reckon it was.