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pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Pips’ Left Paw
@pips-left-paw.bsky.social
210 followers 230 following 310 posts
Weaver. Reader. Cat roommate.
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pips-left-paw.bsky.social
It is really hard to draft line flax AND take a picture AND treadle all at once. #handspinning #handspun
A right hand pinches a linen thread. To the left the thread is twisted into a fine yarn. To the right of the pinch there are only untwisted individual flax fibers.
November 8, 2025 at 8:40 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Harder to describe than to do. Here is a photo.
A cat-eye view of the back and warp beams on a large floor loom. A 15 pound kayak anchor is proving the warp beam tension. A rope is wrapped twice around the warp beam to support the anchor. A small bag full of nuts and bolts is a counterweight. The friction of the rope keeps the anchor from falling to the floor. The tension on the warp is more-or-less constant* - no adjustment is needed when advancing the warp. Please ignore the little loop of rope over the bottom rail of the loom frame - it’s just extra rope. *for a very long warp where the circumference of the beam changes during the weaving, the tension varies slowly. Down, pedants!
October 29, 2025 at 10:53 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Inspecting and repairing the stashbuster Ms and Ws before washing. The loom-state hand and texture is pretty wierd and off putting, so the next steps should be exciting. And it will be done when I have to go back to my day job next week so that’s a victory. #weaving #handweaving #fibersky
A close view of multicolored green and blue cloth draped in a pile.
October 24, 2025 at 9:10 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Ms and Ws or now maybe Ws and Ms.

#weaving #handweaving #fibersky
A wooden loom with a multicolored fabric in progress. The cloth has diagonal zigzags of dark green and blue and light green and blue, looking very like the letters WM. A close up view of the Jin interlacement with a fine olive green weft on the multicolored warp.
October 23, 2025 at 7:32 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Stash busting (Jin on an echo threading of an Ms and Ws line). Helpfully self-labeled at this point in the draft #weaving #handweaving #fibersky
A wooden 24shaft loom with a multicolored cloth in progress. The left side of the cloth has angled stripes that read as a large letter M. The right side of the cloth reads as an elongated letter W. The cloth has stripes of dark and light blue and dark and light green, but this choice of weave structure makes the stripes diagonal.
October 22, 2025 at 10:02 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
How about a freestanding distaff? Most of the design details are woodturner’s choice. As long as it has finials to tie into, the segments break down, and it can stand up, anything goes.
An assembled distaff. It’s a low stool with three legs and a three segment vertical pole. It doesn’t need to be so dildo-y as this example, but it does need to have narrow spots to tie the fiber onto. It could be a threaded rod, really, so long as it is not smooth (not snagging the fiber). Most disassembled. The legs also come off the stool to make it really compact for travel but that is a nice-to-have. The top absolutely must come off and come apart.
October 22, 2025 at 1:09 AM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
So. Much. Pressing.

I’d rather thread the loom in the wrong direction than hard press freshly-made handwoven fabric but it needs done. #weaving #handweaving #fibersky
An iron sitting on visibly damp linen cloth. Damp linen fabric with very strong contrast between areas of plain weave and areas of huck lace.
October 16, 2025 at 3:41 AM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
The end of the warp - a record-keeping sampler of all the 11 towel drafts- got a little exciting. The knots were at the back shafts and the sheds were terrible for the final 6 inches or so. But it’s all cut off now and on to cut up and soak. #weaving #handweaving #fibersky #warpchicken
A wooden loom after the weaving is completed. The 20 yards woven cloth is cut free from the final inches of warp yarns and is draped over the breast beam about to be unwound for the next steps (sewing temporary stitches to secure the ends, cutting apart,and then wet finishing).
October 14, 2025 at 11:35 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
There’s only about 4 yards left of this warp so this two-by-two of neutral neutral linen huck lace won’t go on forever. But here are the latest two. #weaving #handweaving #fibersky
Linen cloth on a loom. The pattern is circle-ish truncated diamonds of huck lace on a plain weave ground. The motifs might look circular when the cloth is wet finished. A wide view of the approximately circular pattern. A different pattern in progress on the loom, with a large motif of diagonal rice-grain shapes, with an effect like a chain link fence. In the diamond-shaped negative spaces there are speckles or sprinkles of individual huck spots. A wide view of the chain-link motif on the loom showing the beater and breast beam.
October 13, 2025 at 6:10 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Another linen motif started, but then abandoned in favor of pizza and Pinot noir. #weaving #handweaving #fibersky
Weaving in progress on a wooden loom. A close view of huck lace texture on a plain weave ground. The huck spots each have two floats (threads that run over multiple other threads) always alternating direction with their nearest neighbors. Each spot looks like a little hashtag. The cloth also shows streaks of uneven spacing between the warp threads - these are reed marks and they will probably disappear when the fabric is soaked and then aggressively washed. A wider view of the linen fabric on the loom, with the cloth curving over the breast beam in the foreground and the reed carried in the hanging beater in the background. The lace motifs have an ambiguous shape - leaves? Slumping triangles? Swoops with elbows? A wide view of the loom. In the top/background the shafts are visible, then the shuttle resting on the beater. The cloth, with probably-unnecessary clip temples to stretch it width-wise at the growing edge of the fabric (the fell). In the foreground the cloth wraps over the breast beam, behind a strip of wood to protect the cloth from abrasion by the weaver. The cloth then travels over another turn - the knee beam- which isn’t visible, and then down to wind around the cloth beam. The cloth beam has a bunch of sticks around it from the early layers of cloth, smoothing any bumps from the knots that tied on the end of the warp.
October 12, 2025 at 2:06 AM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Two more variations. #weaving #handweaving
A large wooden loom with linen weaving in progress. The cloth has a texture of tiled swoop shapes in huck lace on a plain weave ground. The pattern was created using handweaving.net draft 40808 as a profile. The towel-before-the-current-one on the same loom and linen warp. This pattern looks a little bit like heart shapes in the photo but is a trefoil of oval plain weave blobs on an all over huck lace background. The weaving draft was adapted, with a bunch of modification, from a profile in hw.net draft 4863.
October 11, 2025 at 7:56 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
I like this one (tieup 27).

#weaving #handweaving
A top-down view of a table loom with a green cloth. An end feed shuttle rests on the cloth with a bright orange pirn and curry-powder-colored weft yarn in shiny 20/2 cotton.
October 9, 2025 at 6:44 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Nearly halfway through the planned tie-up variations on the turned Bateman study. #weaving #handweaving
An eight-shaft table loom with a two-toned green warp. The cloth has three distinct sections visible, separated by two picks of blue weft. Each section uses a different tie up (or rather each section uses a liftplan based on a common treadling with different tie up).
October 8, 2025 at 4:05 AM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
The Studio Staycation continues, with mornings on the big loom and the ongoing 40/2 huck lace linen warp. #Weaving #handweaving
A loom with natural-color linen cloth in progress. The pattern is outlined diamonds separated by thin lines of huck spots. Each line is all weft spots or all warp spots so they have distinct textures. A detail of the two different textures in the lines of warp spots vs the lines of weft spots. The same loom later on, with a different huck draft. This one has tilted trapezoids or not-quite-linked thick line segments. The effect is like a herringbone pavement (but not very much like a herringbone twill, oddly.) The photo is taken at a low angle so the wove cloth winding onto the cloth beam is visible in the background at the bottom. A different angle that more clearly shows the trapezoids of huck lace on the plain weave ground cloth.
October 8, 2025 at 1:06 AM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Another installment of a profile draft interpreted in huck lace/linen. #weaving #handweaving
A loom with natural-gray linen cloth in progress, viewed from a fingers-width about the breast beam. The cloth has wide zigzags of huck lace on a plain weave ground. A wider shot of the same cloth with the beater and modified end feed shuttle in the background. Looking down on the cloth, beater, and first few of the loom’s shafts from above. The warp and developing cloth are linen-gray, the wooden parts of the loom are honey-colored, and the Texsolv heddles on the shafts are brilliant white.
October 6, 2025 at 11:30 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Some Saturday morning #weaving with more linen huck. This uses handweaving.net draft 7783 (originally recorded by Ralph Griswold) as a profile draft. #handweaving
An elevated view down onto a loom showing a linen cloth with a hexagonal/honeycomb (in the bee sense, not the weaving sense) pattern in huck lace. An end feed shuttle with linen weft sits atop the hanging beater crossing the middle of the picture. The right side of the image is many wooden shaft bars revealing the threading pattern (18 blocks of huck in a straight draw) where most of the ends are on shafts 1 and 2 close to the front the loom, and the others are in pairs from 3-20. Not all the shafts are in frame (including the final four shafts - it is a 24 shaft loom).
October 4, 2025 at 5:23 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
A “shaded satin” gradient interpreted in plain weave and huck lace, in 40/2 unbleached linen. #weaving #handweaving 🧶
A loom with an unbleached linen warp. The cloth in this view has small areas of huck lace on mostly plain weave as a ground. The huck spots get larger every three inches (really every 90 picks, but let’s assume I am doing a good job beating to square at 30min/30/epi). The arrangement of the spots is a 9-end satin with move number 5. A similar view of the loom from further along in the weaving. In the extreme foreground, the areas of huck lace are 8 units wide (40 ends) x 2units tall (10 picks) separated by 100 ends of plain weave. Nearer the fell (the emerging edge of the cloth above the middle of the image), the huck areas have merged so that the cloth appears to be a huck ground with horizontal rectangles of plain weave (about 20 ends wide x 10 picks high). A view showing the woven cloth traveling through the loom from the working area (the top of the image, the wood is the breast beam that is closest to the working weaver. The cloth in the top view is all over plain weave and all over huck lace (but both are out of focus). The cloth then crosses the middle of the image and the gradient from plain weave spots to huck spots is visible. This is the opposite face of the cloth from what the weaver sees while weaving. On the right side of the image the cloth wraps over the knee beam and then down onto and around the cloth beam (a roller with a brake where the cloth gets stored until the warp is finished and cut off the loom). The least dense part of the gradient is visible on the cloth beam.
October 4, 2025 at 2:01 AM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Fine-ish linen is forcing me to compensate for the fundamental asymmetry of my preferred end-feed shuttles in order to get both selvedges (plain weave this time) to behave at the same time. #weaving #handweaving
An end feed shuttle modified with a loop of red paper clip affixed midway along the side the shuttle. A linen yarn emerges from the shuttle then passes through the paperclip hoop. This is a tip I learned from Marg Coe when I asked her about a modified shuttle she’d posted somewhere, but I haven’t tried it until now.
October 1, 2025 at 8:12 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
The tubular double weave selvedges worked out fine - not as forgiving as with with elastic yarns, as expected - but I think I will re-sley denser for the next part of this warp. #weaving #handweaving
A tabby cat is in loaf posture atop a loosely folded length of handwoven linen cloth on a wooden table. The hems are folded up and have yellow pins. The cat is visibly interested in something close to the camera. The same cat after she has extended her right arm (with a white paw) to swipe at the interesting item (still offscreen). The cloth without the cat, showing the lace texture and the flattened tubes at the selvedge. The linen is starting to show some sheen after mangling, but it could certainly get shinier.
September 22, 2025 at 12:45 AM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Cut off the first bit to see how I feel about the sett and DW selvedges after wet finishing. #weaving #handweaving
A linen warp getting cut off the loom after a few yards of weaving to get a sample for wet finishing. Two flat sticks are interleaved in the last couple of woven inches - these will be used to tie on and keep weaving.
September 18, 2025 at 2:38 AM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Huck diamonds in linen. #handweaving #weaving
A low angle view of a loom with a linen warp. A diamond pattern is just visible as different levels of opacity. A shuttle rests on top of the beater in the back of the frame. A view of the laptop screen showing the pattern being woven. The pattern is shown in two tones of green and has various diamonds of huck lace warp and weft spots on a plain weave background. This is zoomed-out view on the Weavepoint loom control screen.
September 16, 2025 at 12:36 AM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Apparently it is a two-loom day. Wowee the big loom is 10000000000x more ergonomic than the wee one.
An eight shaft table loom fitted with a TempoTreadle device to help ensure the correct levers are lowered and thus the correct shafts are raised. It is a perfectly nice table loom but there is a lot of picking up and putting down vs using your feet (and a dobby, tbh) on the big floor loom. It seems unlikely that I’ll throw any picks on the basement rescue loom today but who knows. This is more of the second sample warp for those green turned-Bateman samples. #handweaving #weaving
September 14, 2025 at 1:56 AM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Weaving season is starting. Did a little bit on the big loom this morning. Details in alt text. #weaving #handweaving #indoorsy
A linen warp on a loom made of honey-colored wood. The 40/2 linen warp is undyed - the linen has a grayish-beige matte appearance. The foreground is plan weave but the 3-4 inches nearest the fell have irregular diamonds of huck spots. The pattern has 18 blocks and uses 20 shafts, with another four shafts dedicated to tubular double weave selvedges that might be a very bad idea.
September 13, 2025 at 11:05 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Concrete is the best for wallowing. #Caturday
A brown tabby with a white bib and paws lays on her right side on some mossy concrete steps.
September 13, 2025 at 8:09 PM
pips-left-paw.bsky.social
Back to the office and the commute, but the tiny spindle came with. #handspinning
A wooden cross-arm spindle with a blue and green silk top are resting in a maroon cardboard box (not coincidentally, of the size and shape to hold four chocolate truffles). A keyboard is in the background.
September 11, 2025 at 9:16 PM