Mmm, I love me some warping. If you think knitting or spinning is meditative, well, you have to try winding warps.

To speed up counting and re-counting the number of ends, I’m using a little bit of scrap yarn to finger-crochet bundles of 10 ends together. Of course, I’m terrible at math and forgot that for every ten ends that appear on top of the cross, there are another ten that are underneath — so I accidentally wound twice as many warp ends as needed! Yep. That’s how much I love warping.

This new scarf/shawl is going to be all 20/2 bombyx silk that I’ve dyed various shades of turquoise. There are two 50g skeins that were dyed in a stock pot along with about 50g of dark beige tussah silk — with 150g of silk in the pot, I used about 50 mL of a 1% DOS Lanaset Turquoise dye stock… So each skein is about a 0.3% DOS… Light, pale, shimmery. Kind of like the glassy surface of a swimming pool in the summertime.

One half of the 4-yard warps were chained and then dyed a slightly darker solid turquoise. But of course, the chain “links” form their own natural resist sections — so these gave little light/white spots at semi-regular intervals. The other half of the warps were roughly painted with dark and light turquoise and navy — there are much more distinct light and dark sections.

Now, to figure out a way to combine them all together to make a light, fluttery, and watery scarf…

I’ve been listening to Syne Mitchell’s new podcast, [WeaveCast](http://www.weavecast.com) — a podcast for hand weavers. So very well done! She’s done interviews with several weavers including [Judith MacKenzie](http://www.purlwise.com/judith_mackenzie_mccuin/index.html) (who is also spinner-extraordinaire) and Mollie Freeman (who teaches warp painting with [the ever fabulous Sara Lamb](http://saralamb.blogspot.com)). The podcast is very professionally put together, Syne’s voice is lovely and she’s overflowing with enthusiasm. It’s a wonderful listen.

In contrast, visit Sara Lamb’s site for today’s post on ["The Future of Weaving"](http://saralamb.blogspot.com/2006/05/future-of-weaving.html) — interesting thoughts about the factors that are contributing to the decline of weaving. Factors like the high cost of weaving equipment, space requirements, mid-week or mid-day guild meetings, and the disconnect between “high art” vs. traditional craft…

It paints a very bleak picture, but I am undaunted.

Maybe because it’s new to me, a novelty to me, but weaving seems full of endless potential and possibilities. Arm yourself with the necessary traditional, technical skills and use that knowledge to create something new. Concerned about the cost of weaving equipment? Take a class at [Place des Arts](http://www.placedesarts.ca/visualadult.html) and you can borrow a loom. Join a guild and you can probably rent or borrow some equipment. Maybe get together with friends and pool your equipment / space / resources into a studio? Cost of classes? I’m a big advocate about dedicated self-study… Even this blog, for me, is a form of documentation of what I’m learning and trying to learn in knitting, spinning, dyeing, weaving, and photography. I don’t know. I just want there to be opportunities for people to express and indulge their creativity. It’s essential.

_Phew._ Well, if you can’t get weaving yourself, you can get yourself down to the [Crafthouse Gallery](http://www.cabc.net/mem_sect/ChGall.html) on Granville Island and take a look at the gorgeous silk weaving by [Chisako Hisamatsu](http://www.silkweavingstudio.com/Chisako/Chisako.htm). Her show, ["Kasuri"](http://www.explorasian.org/eventdocs/Chisako_Hisamatsu.html), is on until May 28 and features superfine silk dyed with natural dyes using ikat technique. Beautiful, ethereal stuff.

Or visit [FibreEssence](http://www.fibreessence.ca) in Dunbar where they have two exhibitions going on until May 14. “Motherhood… A complicated labour” is a show of local artists who interpret motherhood (sometimes happy, oftentime really really depressing) in their weaving. And “Waistcoats – Wastecoats” features Angelika Werth’s incredible felted coats and one felted ballgown!