Let's Twist Again

Day 12: When is a gadget not a gadget? When it becomes an important tool! And a tool is exactly what this fringe-twister is. It has saved me an enormous amount of time and aggravation, and I no longer dread finishing woven pieces with fringe. It's actually a pretty amazing piece of engineering. A crank handle operates three bent rods which go through a triangular shaped piece, then through a paddle, where they terminate in alligator clips. The crank is rotated manually, and the motion imparted by the bent rods causes each clip to spin in place, subsequently twisting the strands caught in its grip. Some models have only two clips, but the principle is the same. With a few turns of the handle, the fringe bundles are ready to knot, and a job which once took hours can now be completed in a quarter of the time or less. My bonus project for the October Weave-Along is almost done and with plenty of time to spare. Let's twist again!

Yarn Waffles

Day 8: It's been over fifty years since I bought my first loom, a Schacht table model operated with hand-manipulated jacks as opposed to treadles. With it, I purchased two reeds, 12 and 15 dent respectively, knowing that I'd be working primarily with smaller threads. Later, I fell heir to a floor loom with an assortment of reeds, among them a 10-dent. Given a full range, I thought I was home free, able to weave at almost any sett on one loom or the other. However, the Fates don't always cooperate, and it seemed that whenever the floor loom was occupied with a project using the 10-dent reed, I'd come up with another project for the table loom which wanted the same sett. It's possible to achieve 10 epi with a 15-dent reed by skipping every third slot if and only if your yarn fits through the gap. While I was content to work under these constraints for years, another factor convinced me to finally purchase a 10-dent reed for the table loom. Whether I want to admit it or not, the time is coming when I'm going to have to move into smaller digs, and the floor loom will have to be passed along to someone with space for it. I needed to expand the versatility of the table loom with the eventuality hanging over my head. The new reed arrived yesterday, and despite the fact that it was supposed to fit my old Schacht, it was almost too long for the beater. A few swear-words later, we reached an agreement, and I finished warping some baby yarn I've been trying to use up for years, once again with the waffle-weave threading. I don't know any babies, don't want to know any babies (they belong to the same class of objects as clowns and monkeys in my book), so this little blanket will be destined for auction by the Nisqually Land Trust at some point in the future.