Walking around the Looms

We continued on our Damask in weaving class yesterday. Most of us have finished the first exercise and are now working on our own designs. We looked at the structure of satin weaves in our theory session and then it was time to walk around the looms.

"Walking around the looms" is a regular ritual and is accompanied by a degree of angst on the part of the students. Our teacher leads the group to each loom in turn and comments on the weaving. She finds and corrects mistakes and occasionally gives a much treasured compliment. This pic captures some of the intensity of the moment, You have to picture another nine students clustered around the loom to get the full effect. And remember that what is on the loom is the result of several weeks of work. On some dreadful occasions a fatal error is discovered and then Gerlinde calls for the scissors! Yesterday there was more than the usual ration of compliments and no scissors--we had a pretty good day.