Lambs On A Loom

Day 158: There will be more botany to come, I promise, but today I wanted to share with you a little project I've been doing as an exercise as I try to improve my skill at krokbragd. The sheep are a smaller version of the ones I have shown before as turned krokbragd, and since this is regular krokbragd (as opposed to turned), the execution is a little different. In any event, the motifs can be no more than three threads wide, so creating recognizable designs can be challenging. That said, I have struggled with getting neat selvedges when weaving regular krokbragd, and recently came across some helpful hints in that regard. I also wanted to try this weft-faced weaving technique on a frame loom similar to those many of us played with in primary school, and I find it to be ideally suited to krokbragd. Weaving is done with a long needle, picking up individual warp threads manually. Since each "line" of weaving is actually made in three passes, a single "row" may contain up to three colours. I have found that it is easier to design on the loom itself than to try to graph out a pattern, owing to the unique staggered construction of the krokbragd weave. Also, by incorporating additional wraps around the outer threads once per sequence of three passes, I am now obtaining neater selvedges as well.

The Tail Project

Day 246: One drawback to weaving is that there is always a certain amount...sometimes quite a bit...of "loom waste," the section of warp between the heddles and the back beam. When calculating yardage requirements for a project, the weaver factors in an amount appropriate to that distance and the loom being employed. Different types of loom will have more or less waste depending on their design, so sometimes it's possible to take the waste from one loom and use it on another, or to use it as weft for narrow stripes. Oh, hang on! I've gotten ahead of myself with this story. You're probably wondering where this loom came from, aren't you? Yes, it's "new" (to me, anyway), given to me by a member of our Morris-dance side, and looking very much like a pile of kindling at the time I picked it up. The brochure she gave me to go with it was rather unhelpful. It wasn't that it was written in German; I could stagger through that. It was that it didn't show any model which went together with the parts I had laid out all over my living room floor. Several visits to Mr. Google later, I had a handful of blurry photographs which showed at least some of the parts (not always in the same places) and a model number, Kircher-Rahmen WU80. Don't even ask. YouTube was no help at all.

As the afternoon wore on, I discovered that the "pile of kindling" actually contained two looms, the Kircher and a tapestry frame, the parts of which could not be made to relate to the tapestry adaptation for the WU80. So...I got two looms for the price of one (free!), and two smaller rigid heddle looms (one missing a handle) thrown into the bargain. I'm still not sure I have all the parts in the right places, but what the heck, it's a loom. The heddles go up, the heddles go down, threads can be secured to the beams. That's really all any loom needs to do.

And that brings us now to the Tail Project, i.e., what to do with all those five-foot long bits of warp from my floor loom. I had to pull in some other yarns from my stash, but was eventually able to formulate a plan for a striped lap throw which will be fringed on all four sides, substantially reducing the number of bags of loom waste occupying my crafts room. As my grandma used to say, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." Weavers, take note. Those tails are good for something. Save them until you have enough.