Weaver

Here's Mom, working on her loom - preparing the warp for a blanket for yours truly! She's been spinning wool on and off for this project for a couple of years, and now it's time to weave. The actual weaving - once you are past the designing, the shopping and/or dying and spinning of the yarn, all the math, and the warping - goes rather quickly. Mom estimated it would take 2-3 hours to weave my blanket. But she didn't finish before I left town again, so I'll be watching the mail for it.

Notice the computer screen in the background? The loom may be a lovely piece of cherry-wood furniture - take up the whole of what was meant to be the living room - but it's also a computer-operated machine. You have to plug it in. The weaver still has to set everything up, throw the shuttle, and pull the beater. But the computer controls the design by telling the loom which threads to lift up. This makes it much easier to avoid mistakes. Cool, huh?