Perfecting my craft

I spent several hours weaving my frame for my next tapestry.  Because it will be white and gray, I want to weave a 2 inch frame of bright red that will reflect the red in the center of the flower.  I finally started, realized quite early on that I was pulling in the edges of my tapestry as I wove, so I took it out.  Next, I wrote a couple of people to ask their opinion (one thing I love about the internet is the connectivity that small isolated groups of people get who otherwise would be struggling on their own, e.g. tapestry weavers, Suffolk Punch owners--I bought one of these rare horses over the web, but that is a whole 'nother story), and decided to use many butterflies to weave across.  Voila, no longer was a pulling in the edges across my 20 inch tapestry, but now I had a different problem which I have encountered before....

I have use the meet and separate technique, but where they meet, no matter how carefully I try and get them even, I either end up with a "hole" in the weave or a bit of a bubble.  I had woven almost 2 1/2 inches and got so frustrated with the sloppy look, that I spent several hours unweaving it all.  I do know that when I use wool, this problem is not so noticeable.  However, I have used cotton because I really liked the sheen of the fiber.  I am going to try again, but now I have decided to work with my messiness to give the structure a diagonal look by being very deliberate in my placement of these joins.  

I guess I am putting in my hours to perfect my craft.  I tried to recruit my daughter as an apprentice and to get her to unweave it, but she didn't buy into it, so I  just finished unweaving it myself.

I will post the new pictures once I have rewoven this section.