foryouthegays - Tumblr blog

[foryouthegays]

I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD BOB ROSS IS A GIFTED GOD I DREW ALONG TO HIS VIDEO IN MS PAINT AND

HOW

THE

FUCK

THIS MADE ME SO HAPPY I DONT EVEN KNOW HOW PLEASE I ADVISE YOU GUYS TO DRAW ALONG WITH BOB ROSS IN MS PAINT IT IS AN EXPERIENCE I AM SO CONFUSED BUT PLEASED FUCKING DO IT

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new rule: if you don't understand this you're not allowed to write superman

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Falin🐲🫶

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So I've been watching Water 7

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One Piece incorrect quotes 😋

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Alexa Demie in Fairy Tales (2020) Photography: Petra Collins

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y did they make ace white. also i so fully subscribe to ace being trans that when he was called a boy right after birth i /gen was confused for a few moments

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shame that no one puts bait under a box propped up by a stick anymore. because of woke

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as a british man, one of sabo’s favorite words is cunt, but he refuses to call a woman that out of respect so he screams “OH CUNTS!” while tripping over things

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wowonoa zowo

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An extraordinary Acheulean handaxe knapped around a fossil shell circa 500,000-300,000 years ago.

The maker appears to have deliberately flaked around the shell to preserve and place it in a central position. As a result this handaxe has been described as an early example of artistic thought.

From West Tofts, Norfolk.

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Courtesy Alison Fisk

[foryouthegays]

Today I am thinking about weaving.

I can knit and crochet, but those crafts didn't exist in Roman times. Any historically accurate Roman cloth must be woven. So when a little potholder loom jumped into my shopping basket for 50 cents, it felt like a sign I should learn.

One potholder that was 50% yarn and 50% weird gaps later, I looked up a tutorial, and realized why the damn thing was 50 cents. I needed a better, more adaptable loom. And, because I am a cheapskate and slightly loony, I decided to make one instead of buying it.

So, how does this thing work?

First, you string the warp threads up and down, around the pegs. Here, I made a zigzag shape. Then, you use a needle or shuttle to weave more yarn over and under the warp, horizontally, back and forth. This produces woven fabric.

Some looms weave from the top, some from the bottom. This Greek urn shows two weavers working from the top. The left weaver uses a rod to compact the woven fabric upward, keeping it even and sturdy. The right weaver is passing an oval-shaped shuttle through the warp threads to form another row.

Most Roman looms would have looked like this, with the finished cloth at the top. Unlike my looms, these are warp-weighted. That means you keep the warp yarns taut by hanging weights at the bottom, rather than through a bottom row of pegs.

Warp-weighted looms also have a big advantage over my little potholder loom: you can easily create multiple sheds.

A "shed" is a temporary gap between lifted strands and non-lifted strands. Instead of having to go over and under each strand individually, you raise the entire shed, then pull the shuttle or needle straight through. This saves lots of time! Then, to weave the next row, you close the shed, lift up a different set of threads to create a new shed, and send the shuttle/needle through the other direction.

On a warp-weighted loom, the sheds are opened by loops called heddles (H), which are attached to a heddle rod (G). When the rod is down, shed (1) is open (middle diagram). When you pull the rod up, shed (1) closes and shed (2) opens instead (right diagram). Most warp-weighted looms also have a pair of forks you can rest the heddle rod on, to free your hands.

Here, there are three heddle rods and sets of forks, the heddles are white, and the warp thread is red. This gives you four different sheds, and the potential to weave very complex patterns indeed. Not bad for a device invented over 6500 years ago!

I liked the multiple heddle-rod design so much, I tried incorporating it into my DIY loom, too. I've tested both yarn and paperclips as heddles:

I actually got both sheds and heddle-rods working, too. Which is pretty cool for a lap loom - every other lap loom I found only has one shed, so you have to go over-under the individual threads on alternate rows.* More time-consuming. However, the sheds here are narrow, and I'll need a smaller and smoother shuttle to pass through them smoothly. This wouldn't be an issue on a warp-weighted loom, where the warp hangs freely downward, and can move more flexibly with the heddles.

Anyway. I may get a "real" loom at some point, but I wanted to build one first, and I think it gave me more appreciation for just how resourceful ancient weavers were. They created technology, clothing, and artwork out of very basic materials, and civilization depended on these skills.

Now, I need to go finish the...whatever the hell it will be. Big thanks to Wikipedia and to the lovely Youtubers who make this craft easier to learn. I think it'll be a lot of fun.

(*Edit - found out a rotating heddle bar can make two sheds on a lap loom! Exciting!!)

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[ID: Four screencaps from Taskmaster. Greg Davies says cheerfully, "Because, if you ask Alex to eat anything, he always says yes." He points with his pen at Alex Horne, who's seated beside him looking thoughtful. Greg continues, "We were at a wedding together once, and I made him eat a whole pat of butter. It was weird. He just went, 'Yeah.'" End ID.]