… who found his one and only garment (or perhaps he had a spare one) was getting chewed up by rats. So he got himself a cat to take care of the rodents. Then he found he needed to feed the cat something other than its prey, so he bought a cow for milk. Then he found the cow needed husbanding, so…. he got himself a wife.

There ended his hermitism. (In my nonexistent Sanskrit, that would be kaupina samrakshinanaam ayam patatopaha – I’m guessing that phrase says what I mean, forgive me if I’ve got it wrong).

So I had a small hobby. Then I bought yarn for it. Then I bought tools for it. Then I joined a forum. Then I got even more tools for it and patterns, inspired by the forum. Then I made a whole load of unusable things. Then I got more yarn.

At this point, a sane person would have quietly disposed of their yarn and tool stash and taken up Yoga or something. Not me. I got bitten instead by a new bug. Weaving!

I agonised a whole year or more over which to get. Again, a sane person would have bought a small inexpensive one. But by now you’ve probably understood that sanity and I are but nodding acquaintances. Thus I bought this one.

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Lashed on.

Which is the Schacht Flip 25″ Rigid Heddle Loom. Which is actually about 30″ square all opened up. And I love it. I had to wait to get to Chennai to pick it up from my BIL who’d kindly brought it down for me so I spent the intervening weeks browsing through 620 pages of a thread on Ravelry where other people showcased their work. Lots of inspiration there. I also bought a Craftsy class, two books in paper, a video on Interweave and an ebook. (When I do obsession, I O B S E S S.) And many free videos on Youtube. The lashing technique in the photo above, for example, I learnt from a video put out by the Ashford company, and I like it so much I’ve left my synthetic cord attached to the apron rod so I won’t lose it.

There are lots of ways you can use this basic-ish loom to make advanced fabrics, but for now I’m happy to use up all the odd balls of my stash, the ones whose colours sing in the skein but are frightening when knitted or crochet, the single balls of luxury or fancy yarn, the why on earth did I buy this thorny thread kind of yarn and so on. When that palls, I think I will move on to maybe lace techniques or something.

In my next post or later I’ll show you pictures of what I’ve made so far. If you’re on Rav, chances are you’ve seen it already. Until then, breath just enough so you don’t turn blue.