Pickup Sticks

Day 72: This little weaving is actually a fiber test, but it will serve to explain the use of pickup sticks with a rigid heddle loom. You see, a rigid heddle is not as versatile as a shaft loom because with a single heddle (the bit which raises or lowers each warp thread), the weaver is restricted to two sheds (the triangular gap the shuttle passes through). These are called "up" and "down," appropriately. The threads pass through slots or holes alternately and the heddle is lifted or dropped, a process which only affects the warps in the small holes. The slot threads remain in one position as the heddle is moved from one resting position on the block to another. Some rigid heddle looms such as mine are equipped to handle two heddles, but the slot threads still ride in the slots as the hole threads rise above or drop below them. In other words, there are only three possible sheds which can be created with the warp using two heddles. That doesn't leave you with many options for weaving designs. The way you get around this limitation is to use pickup sticks to create a shed impossible to make with the heddles alone. Threads are manually lifted along the length of the pickup stick which, when it is turned on edge, forms a new shed. Complex patterns can be made using pickup sticks, including figures and geometric designs. As I mentioned at the top, this was a fiber test. I wanted to see if single-thread points would show up at the apices of triangles when using worsted yarn for both the floats (white) and the tabby (aqua) with a 7.5 epi reed. They did not. Rather than throw the experiment away, I decided to weave a different pattern. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the resultant four-inch wide, two-foot long sample, but it's fun to weave.