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 Doubleweave.

 The words used to send shivers down my spine.

Well, at first when I had my very first rigid heddle loom I was really intrigued by the whole idea.  But I tried it and it was such a disaster!  I used the wrong yarn, and since I was such a new weaver I didn't think sampling was very important.  And I paid the price on that one!

After trashing the project, I didn't even speak the words "doubleweave" ever again.... until I bought my 4-shaft loom. I put a very small warp on it but decided it wasn't for me at the time mostly because I wanted to focus on things I couldn't do on my rigid heddle loom (and plain weave was not one of the focus points!).

I guess it must have been somewhere in the back of my mind to try, because during the last interweavepress.com sale, I decided to order myself the doubleweave book and both DVDs.  I figured it could be like an at-home study course!  

It sat on my shelf for a long time before I would touch it.  I kept it in the back of my mind and every time I came up looking for a next project, I would somehow avoid those library items altogether!  

My weaving friend Carma (the person who helped me fix my loom) suggested I make a blanket from doubleweave a few weeks ago.  It's not the first time she's made this suggestion to me, either.  Carma is also the judge at the county fair in the weaving department and when I made my P2P2 blanket, she suggested I try doubleweave on it so I wouldn't have the seam up the middle.

Finally, I feel motivated after producing the wool shawl.  Wouldn't a blanket be wonderful?  My loom isn't wide enough for a blanket, nor do I have room (or $$) for yet another loom.  The doubleweave is just the motivation I needed to pull out my materials and start to practice!

And guess what?  Everything is working out perfectly!  This is my THIRD try with doubleweave-- and maybe it's the loom, maybe it's my skills, or maybe it's the great reference materials-- but I feel like it's so much more successful than the other 2 tries!  I have a feeling a lot of it has to do with just being better prepared by the materials and the skills and weaving knowledge I've collected. 

My sample is very small at the moment, but at the bottom is a tube, the middle is some layers to possibly fulfill a friend's very old and repeated request for a Harry Potter-like scarf, and the top part of this sample is the one-layer blanket style.  I can't wait to get some of these pieces off and finish them in the washer and dryer to really see how they look and feel.