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Stubborn to a Fault

I'm gonna win at this scarf-making thing if it kills me.

A small, natural wood rigid heddle loom with grey warp threads and three uneven stripes of deep teal at the left edge wound on the back beam. The warp threads are knotted onto a pale wooden dowel at the near edge, with six rows of scrunched toilet paper woven in just above the knots, and a small piece of mostly grey weft-faced fabric showing folded underneath the dowel. Two narrow teal stripes show across the fabric as well, and one cake each of grey and teal yarn peep through the warp threads at far left.
I should write a review praising this yarn's unexpected sturdiness in the face of having knots tied and untied and retied and untied and retied and untied and retied and untied and retied.
Having attempted to make my little rigid heddle loom into something more closely resembling a big-kid toy, and subsequently discovered that instead I made it impossible for the silly thing to maintain tension, I'm now resorting to transferring the project to a backstrap setup. I picked the knots on the cloth beam free first, and retied them on a spare dowel (what, like everyone doesn't have random dowels stashed behind their bookshelves?).

A small rigid heddle table loom on a wood floor, with the heddle resting horizontally on top of the warp beam and the warp stretched to a small piece of grey-and-teal horizontally striped cloth, tied to a pale wooden dowel suspended from a white pillar emerging from a white half-wall with an orange-and-turquoise strap. There's a red rose in a vase on the kitchen counter in the background, next to the silver sink and a variety of small ceramic cups and turquoise hot pads. An oval crocheted denim rug is on the floor in front of the sink, and the corners of two small Oriental rugs show at the left of the photo.
A deceptively clean-looking portrait of my kitchen.
I used a spare inkle band to tie the new cloth beam to the structural (or not, I don't actually know, but it stayed put) post in my kitchen, and started scooting the loom away from the anchor, unrolling the warp as I went.

A small rigid heddle table loom, seen from just behind the cloth beam, with grey and a few teal warp threads stretching from the beam, through the heddle, and away into another room through a doorway, where they're tied to a pale wooden dowel suspended from a pillar on a white half-wall by an orange-and-turquoise strap. It's a long way.
This warp is longer than I remember.
So much scooting. I was leaning against the couch at this point, so it's a good thing the warp wasn't any longer. I moved the loom to take tension off the warp, and transferred the back beam knots to another dowel—only half-knotted at first, so I could even up the warp before finishing the knots.

A pale wooden dowel with grey and a few teal warp threads tied to it, held under the photographer's knees and suspending a heddle on the threads as they run over a small rigid heddle table loom away into another room through a doorway, where they're tied to a pale wooden dowel suspended from a pillar on a white half-wall by an orange-and-turquoise strap. It's a long way.
One advantage of being terminally stubborn is that you get really good at figuring out how to rescue yourself from situations that were 100% avoidable.
Okay, so backstrap looms are often set up with continuous warps, or in places where the work can be stretched out comfortably. I have neither of these options. Instead, I scooted forward, rolling up the warp (with spacers, I have at last learned my lesson [mostly] about not winding yarn right on top of itself and expecting everything to go well) as I went, until I reached the other end.

A white hand holding a pair of dowels with a frankly alarming amount of yarn wrapped around them and hanging down from them, suspending a rigid heddle and showing a horizontally striped grey and teal piece of cloth behind the threads, against a bright patchwork curtain.
I won.
I added a second dowel to give me something to brace the anchoring cord against and keep the back beam from unrolling itself when I applied tension. I also scrounged yet a fourth dowel (look it's not hoarding unless you aren't using the stuff and I am emphatically making use of my stuff) to serve the same purpose on the cloth beam.

A short length of grey and teal warp threads stretched between a pair of pale wooden dowels with thread wrapped thickly around them, suspended by white cords at the ends that disappear out of frame at the top of the photo, and horizontally striped grey and teal cloth beginning to wrap around something at the photographer's lap. The heddle hangs in the middle of the warp threads, and a stick shuttle filled with grey yarn rests on the woven cloth.
Glory glory hallelujah, it works.
Lo and behold, I can weave! A bit slowly at the moment—there's a lot to manage that I'm not used to, and my brief experiences with continuous-feed shuttles (those are the kind you put a bobbin into) have utterly spoiled me for the process of using a stick shuttle. I'm also going to need to figure out a better anchor than the bathroom doorknob—or I'll need to move some furniture so I can sit on the floor and weave from there. The anchor cord is prone to slipping free when I'm level with the knob.

A pile of roughly rectangular bright yellow crackers collected on a black, slightly shiny pizza stone.
YELLOW. It's still a thing.
I also made crackers! With my rapidly-becoming-favorite recipe, because it's simple and low-energy, and very forgiving of not rolling the dough quite as thin as it could be. This time I added a teaspoon of turmeric, which was enough to make the crackers Brilliant Screaming Yellow without actually altering the taste (at least to me). I also used a bit of the super fancy pink salt I keep hoarding, and proceeded to snarf half the batch (and a tin of hummus) as soon as they were cool enough to touch.

A small tree with three curving branches upheld like dancers' arms and large, pointed oval leaves in a tall terracotta pot. Bright sunlight streams through the leaves, turning them fiery green; in the background, a board is heavily covered with overlapping notes, cards, papers of stamps, and small trinkets, and below is a wooden folding chair holds ironed yellow print fabrics draped over the back and down the seat. In the near left corner of the photo, a blue plastic pot holds potting soil and a few very short pea shoots, looking straggly.
Just...pretend the sad peas aren't in the picture. Sorry, peas.
And in case you're not following my instagram (which you should totally do, it's got all the behind-the-scenes stuff, plus #snark), my little lemon tree is two-and-a-half feet tall and dreaming of Marrakesh, where they understand the importance of 70-degree winters and sunlight. I've been rotating it a fraction of a turn every two or three days, hoping to keep it fairly upright.

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