Lost in the Land of Saori

Yup.....that is exactly where I've been since my last post.....lost in the Land of  Saori!

I'd like to say it's been a peaceful journey, but my path has been fraught with ups and downs.  In the beginning.....Excitement! 

Borrowed a warping board from my friend Terri (in to much of a hurry to wait for hubby to make me one) and blindily plunged in.  Thought it couldn't have gone better. 

Next step "dressing the loom" (taking what I'd just measured on the warping board and actually putting it on the loom).....still in "Excitement" but quickly came to a screeching halt.

Not really understanding the process of measuring a warp, I found I had doubled the amount of ends....yikes!  I couldn't even get them all on my loom.  From "Excitement" to "Confusion" in the blink of an eye.

After much research, and whining,........messaging to Terri and Ms. Wonder Why, and whining,...... being just short of depressed and whining,........not sleeping and whining.......notice a recurring theme here?  I was no longer feeling "Excitement or "Confusion", now I had traveled into the land of  "Frustration"!.  What in the world was I going to do?  How was I ever going to get back to the "Excitement" part of this journey?

Not knowing what to do, I finally just sucked it up, unwound everything I had done, removed all the extra warp threads and started over.  Now I had hit the "Determined" part of my journey. 

Not sure of what I would find at journey's end, I slowly moved on. Tried some fun techniques and the "Excitement" started to return.

 

In a surprising short period of time I found myself at my journeys end.  Not only had "Excitement"  returned but I had also found "Accomplishment".

When I started, I thought I'd be more than up for the journey.  I was quickly brought back to earth with the fact that even though "weaving" can be exciting, knowledge about the technical parts of "measuring a wrap" and "dressing the loom" is an invaluable skill.  On the advice of more experienced weavers, I purchased Floor Loom Weaving by Janet Dawson from Crafty.  It is amazing.

Now I'm working on my second Saori yardage and am happy to report it's going pretty well.  I'm still having problems understanding "measuring the warp" since this time I didn't have the amount I was hoping for. Way better than having twice the amount though......LOL.

Next up......a little non fiber related project I started this week.  I took a class on painting furniture on Wednesday using CeCe Caldwell chalk paint from Shizzle Designs in Byron Center.   It also was an amazing class.  I picked my colors with Ms. Wonder Why in mind....Kissimmee Orange and Traverse City Cherry.

My piece before painting...

 Two coats of Kissimmee Orange....

 

Painting on the top coat using Traverse City Cherry....

You can really see the difference at this stage between the Cherry and Orange but once the table was completely covered, I couldn't believe how pink it looked.  Almost Pepto Bismol pink!

This was a 5 hours class and by the end I was getting really tired.  I still had to distress the piece and try out the final step which is waxing.  Hurried along but realized I was not going to get it completed by days end.  I decided to just put some wax on the center section of the back.  Couldn't believe the difference in the final color.  My
red was back!  A nice deep Cherry red.....sweet.

                          

There was another person in the class who used these same colors except she put the Traverse City Red on first and Kissimmee Orange for the top coat.  What a difference...

You can see little pops of the Kissimmee Orange showing on my table on the front leg next to her stool and on the picture above showing the back.  I'll have to take some close up pictures once I've done more distressing and have the wax applied.  So glad I was able to take this class and learn some different painting techniques.  It was a welcome break after being Lost in the Land of Saori!

Happy Fiber Arts Friday!!