Crow At The Loom

Day 30: Substantial progress is being made! My little helper was content yesterday to relax in his box (a USPS medium flat-rate into which he barely fits now) while I completed the fifth of seven colours on the last of three 68" tablecloth panels. Each colour consists of 9.5 small motifs, and Merry allowed me to work almost a full colour before my shoulders gave out. Sometimes he watched as the jacks rose and fell, intrigued by the motion but knowing he'd be exiled if he got too curious, but mostly, he was lulled to sleep by the gentle sounds of loom operation. Max (a countermarch) is so much quieter than my old loom! Weaving for me in any event is akin to meditation, especially when I get a good rhythm going. Likewise, Merry seemed to find it hypnotic. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier and his chin slid off the edge of the box, and then he curled up in a ball and began to snore, the very epitome of the weaver's cat in historic art. My next warp is already measured out, stretched on the warping board and ready to mount when the tablecloth is done. I don't know how much extra I'll have at the end of these panels (I always warp more than I need for a particular project), but it won't go to waste.

Her Last Project

Day 147: I am a bit ashamed to admit that I never named this loom, and now with the red crackle-weave Scandinavian tablecloth and green centerpiece off the rollers, she is naked before me for the last time. I did not know that looms asked for names when she came into my life some twenty or so years ago, a gift from a stranger who knew me solely from having come to one of my yard sales. I brought her home in pieces, many pieces, with no clear knowledge of how they went together, but by the end of the following day and after several trips to the hardware store, she was ready for her first warp. I do not recall what I wove first on this grand old lady, but she has served me well, never empty for more than 48 hours. She has her foibles, as do we all, but nothing major, nothing to impinge on our relationship. I know I will miss her when she leaves, because soon she is slated to take up residence with a friend and his husband. I sincerely hope they amend my dereliction of duty by giving her a proper name.

Comparative Working Distance

Day 141: Someone asked how Max's effective working distance compared to my old loom, so this morning, I did a test. I knew Max gave me more space, but I wasn't sure how much, although I did feel that it was a little bit more than my repaired shoulder could handle easily. Still, in the name of science, I thought (with a snicker) that I could "take it to the max" just this once. Normally, I wouldn't have pushed quite so far. As you can see, Max could feasibly give me ten inches before I had to advance the warp as compared to six inches on the old loom, but I am more comfortable with nine inches. Even at that, it represents substantially fewer times that I have to get up from the bench. And yes, I have to get up. My arms aren't long enough to control the brake and the roller at the same time.

Belly Of The Beast

Day 58: I'm not as young as I used to be, and nothing drives that home quite as firmly as having to crawl around on my hands and knees in a tight space. However, it was time a postponed task was taken in hand, to wit, changing out the stretched and fraying tie-up cords on my big loom. I had only recently become aware of Texsolv cords and heddles and decided to upgrade, but while I was at it, I also wanted to balance the treadle/jack/harness setup so that all sheds lifted equally. Hindsight being ever so much clearer than foresight, I should have taken care of that twenty-five years ago when I first assembled the loom, but I was anxious to get started with weaving and did a "close enough for gov'mint work" job of it. It never really bothered me that the #2 harness raised an inch more than #1, #3 and #4 until working on the summer-and-winter coverlet. It didn't cause any mistakes, but it was bothersome and I swore I'd fix it once the piece was done. The "bonker loom" (Swedish band loom, my newest aquisition and Christmas-present-to-self) was rigged with Texsolv cord. "Hmmm," said I. "This looks like a good idea." Yesterday evening, I spent an hour under the loom, getting cramps in places I didn't know you could get cramps, pinching my fingers in the jacks, breaking my nails on old chain, fiddling and fussing until I had it just right. And if some minor tweaks need to be made, it's ever so much easier to do with the Texsolv peg system. Scratch one resolution, and it's not even the New Year yet!

Give Me A Fulcrum

Day 132: "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world" (or as I learned it as a child, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"). Archimedes was speaking in reference to the simplest of mechanical devices, a beam of some sort which pivots on a fixed point. And that is all you need to know about the operation of a loom.

Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. The mechanics of loom construction actually involves compound levers, i.e., those which operate other levers which may in turn operate yet another set of levers. In a rising-shed loom, a treadle (foot pedal) is depressed, pulling down on one end of a jack (B), causing the opposite end (C, raised) to lift. The jack raises a frame (harness) holding a series of heddles (E). The tops of the metal bars on which the heddles are mounted in the harness is shown in (D). This creates a triangular gap between two layers of threads (the shed). The shuttle bearing the weft thread passes through the shed, the treadle is released to lower the jack, and the harness resumes its resting position. More than one harness can be raised at once or, depending on the tie-up (the way the treadles are attached to the jacks), a single treadle may operate a pair of harnesses. Unwoven warp is supplied from the back beam (A), and the finished fabric is wound onto the cloth beam (F), both of which are operated by yet another type of lever, the ratchet. Leverage. Pretty simple when you think about it.

Tabula Rasa

Day 74: Tabula rasa, a clean slate. That's what you see here, or close. Having taken two projects off the floor loom on the day of Christmas Eve and with a measured warp waiting in the wings, I spent much of Christmas Day dressing the loom while a ham sizzled in the oven. My back gave out before I completed threading the warp, so I finished it up this morning. The potential here is enormous. First of all, it is hung for a traditional bird's-eye treadling, giving many options as far as loom-controlled patterns are concerned. Then, there's a cupboard full of cones of cotton in a wide assortment of colours. Just changing up patterns and colours, the combinations are myriad. However, I've been wanting to fiddle with hand-controlled weaves with these particular fibers, and because the bird's-eye threading also gives me a tabby (binder) shed, that option is open to me here. Looks pretty boring, that plain cream warp, but wait until you see how it livens up and dances when the colours are introduced!

Winding Up Projects

Day 27: I'm winding up several projects, both in the figurative and literal senses of the phrase. The blue and white shawl is done, right down to the last twisted fringe, ready to be sent off to the Nisqually Land Trust for auction at a later date. The black slub yardage is also done, although it will remain on the loom until I've finished the multicoloured table runner which uses most of the same warp threads. I wasn't sure how far the slub would extend, so I wound on extra warp, thinking I might make a couple of twill towels using cottons as the weft. As it turned out, I might have been able to squeeze two towels out of the remaining warp, but it would have been tight. I decided it was best to make a runner instead and...oh, hey, look at this! I have just enough of that "Mexicali" perle cotton left! I'd been wondering how I was going to use it up, and bingo, question answered. This is the benefit of isolation. It is compelling me to make use of what I have in my stash (and believe me, my stash is considerable!), so I'm trying to utilize the tag ends of weaving cones and yarn skeins without making it obvious that I've done so. Towels, runners, throw pillows, scarves and shawls are a good way to do that. A stripe here, a wide band there, and Bob's your uncle. It takes a bit more creativity and planning than simply winding a plain warp, but that's the fun of weaving.

The Weaver At The Loom

Day 178: I know. I said there weren't going to be any more weaving posts for a while, but I forgot the most important one: the weaver at the loom. I was done with the daily goal of another full colour sequence on the tablecloth by early afternoon yesterday, and thus was faced with a dilemma. I am really enjoying this project because it takes a fair bit of concentration to repeat four treadling steps over fifteen throws. In other words, I'm counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 at the same time I'm counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3...and so on. You get a step off if you're not paying attention. And paying attention is good right now because it keeps my mind off people dying and bastards lying. That said, because I am enjoying the weaving of this particular project so much, I am debating whether to ration myself to one sequence per day, working on any of my other dozen projects to fill the remaining hours, or to sit at the loom, happily weaving away. I'm inclined to go with rationing because that's the kind of person I am, half-lifing the chocolate or cookie supply as the days wear on. Should the weaving compulsion be with me, I also have a project on the rigid heddle currently, a rather boring tabby in Lily's "Sugar & Cream," far from my favourite fiber in any event. It needs to be done; therefore, I should be working on it. Likewise, it's become painfully obvious that my sisters-of-the-heart are not going to be visiting any time soon to work on Mousie's grandmother's quilt, so I wish to devote a portion of the day to completing as much of it as I can (and it's coming along famously). Still, there is something about the music (and I use the term quite loosely) of the floor loom's operation and the demand upon my brain which makes weaving the tablecloth ever so much more appealing. My next project might not call to me in the same way. "Choices, choices!" thinks the weaver at the loom as her shuttle passes back and forth through the rainbow web.

Rainbow Tablecloth - Sneak Peek

Day 176: The vision is coming to life! Yesterday, I wove one full colour sequence, fifteen throws of each of seven colours shading from red to purple. This sequence will repeat ten times for each half of the tablecloth, i.e., I will weave a total of twenty repeats broken into two panels of ten each. In other words, this will be the last weaving post you see from me for a while because there won't be anything different going on. For now, though, I'd like to explain a couple tricks of the trade I'm using during the process.

First of all, you may notice a white section in the photo on the left (it's less apparent in the photo on the right). This is the header. It will be turned under when the tablecloth is ready to hem. It helps space out the warp threads uniformly. A similar band will be added at the end of each panel. Second, that short white thread isn't something I dropped there accidentally. It gives me a handy reference point for measuring the colour band currently in progress. Because I am striving for a 50/50 weave, each weft stripe needs to be made with fifteen throws of the shuttle and to measure exactly one inch to match the warp measurements. At the end of each colour, I pull the white thread from the beginning of the stripe and reinsert it at the end. If I've beaten the weft irregularly, I may need to pick back several throws and re-do them, although minor spacing deviations will be unnoticeable once the fabric is fulled.

When weaving a twill, special care must be taken with the selvedges (the outer edges of the fabric web). It is all too easy to wind up with a "floating" warp thread which never gets caught into the weft. At the selvedges, the weaver must be sure that the weft goes under or over the outer thread in the manner of a tabby (plain) weave. As I have learned to do over the years, I've added an extra thread of black cotton carpet warp on each side to minimize draw-in, spaced one dent apart from the actual fabric. These threads pass through heddles numbered identically with the first and last threads of the cloth. To identify these two strands of carpet warp and their adjacent coloured threads, I've tied a small, loose loop of string around them. By taking up the loop with one hand, I can easily raise or lower the two selvedge threads together in a tabby pattern while throwing the shuttle with my opposite hand. The carpet warp thread will be carefully drawn out of the fabric when the weaving is completed. It all sounds very complicated, but in practice, it is fairly simple and not overly "fiddly." A rhythmic pattern emerges as the weaver works which, accompanied by the soft clatter of heddles and repetitive footwork on the treadles, is almost meditational. Weaving is an enormously satisfying craft.

Dressing The Loom 2

Day 175: With the hardest part behind me, yesterday I settled in to finish dressing the loom. Because my 15-dent reed was too short to accommodate a 36-inch width, I used a longer 10-dent, drawing two threads through every other slot. While in a plain tabby weave (over-and-under), this might create a "tracking" pattern in the fabric, weaving a twill will make it less obvious. It will be even less apparent when the fabric is fulled, i.e., washed to expand the fibers of the soft 8/2 cotton. Once the ends were through the reed, I tied them to the front apron, keeping the tension even. The photo on the right illustrates a "shed," the space between threads when the harnesses are raised or lowered. The diagonal twill pattern consists of four sheds, created by raising harnesses 1/4, 1/2, 2/3 and 3/4 in strict sequence. This is where any mistakes in threading the heddles will make themselves known. If one should be found, the weaver has no choice but to unthread the reed and heddles if s/he wants to weave a flawless piece. Today, the weaving begins.

Gatorade Warping Method

Day 173: When one lives alone as I do (and have done for over thirty years), the old saying "necessity is the mother of invention" chimes at least weekly, if not daily. Warping a floor loom is a project which normally takes two people, one to crank the warp onto the beam, the other to stretch and manipulate the threads to maintain uniform tension and prevent tangling. I developed the "solitaire" Gatorade Method after much experimentation with fishing weights, canned goods, rubber bands and assorted other household items until at last I came up with a workable system. Each water-filled bottle has a yarn tie around the neck, knotted in such a fashion that there is a loop through which I can insert my index finger and thumb to grasp a bundle of warp threads and draw them through. The bundle is then secured with an easy-to-remove spring clothespin and the bottle is suspended at a height just clearing the floor. Bundles of threads are kept relatively small as another means of maintaining even tension; here, ten bottles hold a total of 527 ends across a 36" width. Once the full width has been weighted, I move to the rear of the loom and start cranking the warp onto the back beam. When the lids of the Gatorade bottles reach the bottom of the front breast beam, I then return to the front to rehang the weights. Progress is slow. At best, I can wind about two feet of warp before having to change the weights, carefully adjusting the leash sticks (those rods which temporarily hold the warp crossings until the threads are pulled through the heddles), cranking slowly to prevent any thread breakage. Once the full warp is wound onto the back beam (yesterday's goal), I can then thread the heddles and the reed. The heddles govern the texture of the weave. In this case, I will be using a four-shaft twill, a simple, mindless pattern to keep me occupied during the next month of lockdown.

Hairpin Crochet

Day 112: Here's a craft not often seen nowadays: hairpin crochet. Done on a smaller scale, it's known as hairpin lace, but you'd be hard put to find a staple (aka "loom" or "fork") of a size suitable for anything finer than sport yarn on today's market. Originally made on real hairpins using fine-gauge threads, the modern version generally uses an adjustable staple and yarn. I own two set-width staples (1" and 1.5", the latter in use here) as well as an adjustable model which makes strips up to 4" wide. Work begins with a loop of yarn knotted in the open center of the fork. The fork is then given a half turn and a single crochet is made through the top loop on the left side (opposite for left-handers). The fork is given another half turn, another single crochet is made, and the work continues in the same manner until the desired number of loops has been achieved. When the strip is complete, it is secured and removed from the staple. A second strip is made, and can be joined to the first in a number of different ways depending on the desired effect. For a simple scarf in sport-weight yarn, draw loops through each other three at a time for a "braided" look (photo). Hairpin can be used for afghans, doilies, edgings or even garments. Different crochet stitches can be used to achieve a more textured appearance to the centers of the strips, or beads can be added if desired.

Weaving The Years

Day 68: The years have flown by at warp speed from the time I bought my first loom. It was a table loom, operated by jacks (hand levers), and as a deteriorating shoulder became more and more painful, I did less weaving than I would have liked. During the same period of time, my two favourite fiber suppliers closed up shop and it became difficult to find the threads and yarns common to the craft. Eventually, I put the table loom aside, sad that something I had so greatly enjoyed was possibly lost to me forever. Some years later, a knock sounded at my front door. The woman standing at the bottom of my steps was unfamiliar to me, but she explained that she'd talked to me at length about weaving and spinning during a yard sale I'd hosted a decade earlier. Then she asked, "Would you be interested in my four-foot floor loom? I don't use it any more." Exciting as that sounded, I had reason to suspect it was out of my reach. I asked her, "How much do you want for it?" Her response left me flabbergasted: "I want to give it to you."

One thing led to another, and a week or so later, I met her at her storage unit and we dismantled the loom in order to get it in my car. I brought it home with only a vague idea of how to put it back together, so launched into the project while the memory was still fresh. There were a few mishaps, fortunately easily rectified, and a few missing bolts, but by the end of the following day, I had a fully functioning loom occupying roughly 40 percent of the floor space in my back bedroom. It has not set idle more than a week or two at a time since that day.

These are just a few of the fabrics I've woven over the decades. I didn't keep samples at first, and many others required every inch of thread I had available. Most of the finished pieces are long gone, given as gifts. The only large piece I've retained for myself is the double-bed sized overshot coverlet which provides the background for the sample cards.

Weaver At Work

Day 339: Weaving with standard knitting worsted may present an issue I call "grabbiness" when the warp is set close together, even moreso when two strands are brought through each dent of the reed in order to weave a double width of cloth as I am doing here. Yarns specifically designed for weaving are generally spun harder than those available in craft stores and therefore have fewer hairs to tangle with adjacent threads. Garden-variety worsted tends to be rather fuzzy, and the hairs like to "hold hands," making it a little harder to open the sheds for the shuttle even when weaving a single layer of fabric. In weaving double-wide cloth, two of the sheds are fairly easy to open because only one harness is raised; the other two sheds require three harnesses to be raised simultaneously, and "grabby" yarns catch on each other, raising those threads which were supposed to stay down. When weaving the two problematic sheds, I first raise the single harness and manipulate the warp with my fingers to separate the strands, and then verify that the shed is clear by passing a yardstick through it. If any strands need to be worked free, I do so before depressing the second treadle which raises two additional harnesses. The process is as follows: treadle 1 (upper layer), pass the shuttle, beat in place; treadle 2 (upper layer), pass the shuttle, beat in place; treadle 3 (lower layer), "play the harp" to free up binding threads, verify with the yardstick, treadle 5 (raising harnesses 1 and 2), pass the shuttle, beat in place; treadle 4 (lower layer), "play the harp," verify, treadle 5 (again raising harnesses 1 and 2), pass the shuttle, beat in place. Although it takes longer, verifying the difficult sheds each time prevents having accidental floats which would have to be repaired later. Although my loom is only 48" wide, this worsted-weight throw will measure 58" x  80" when finished (not counting fringe).

Using A Nuke To Kill A Spider

Day 308: Fresh off the loom, three 40" lengths of cloth are destined to be shoulder-bags. Both warp and weft are standard knitting worsted and when sewn up, will make bags roughly 11 inches square. Each one will be lined with heavy twill and will have a button-down flap, perfect for a knitting tote or even for Morris bells and hankies. Weaving them went even more quickly than I'd imagined, and now I'm tasked with creating the straps. It would be much easier if I had a small rigid heddle loom or even a 10 dent-per-inch reed to use with a backstrap, but as we all know, this is not a perfect world. No, instead I've warped up 17 ends to make a strap 1.5" wide on my four-foot floor loom. This is what I call "using a nuke to kill a spider." It gets the job done, but constitutes a classic example of employing way too much resource to effect a solution.

Repaired On The Fly

Day 173: A moment of utter panic occurred this morning when I went to wind my weaving project onto the cloth beam and couldn't get tension on the warp threads. The gear had seemed a bit loose to me as I was finishing up a table runner a few nights ago, but this morning, it just spun 'round and 'round. With warp for another six-foot runner still on the loom, I had no choice but to remove the bolt from the frame with the beam resting on a stack of books and a box. Much to my dismay, I discovered that the two wood screws holding the gear to the beam had stripped a groove in the wood to their full depth. I was able to effect a repair with longer screws, but having let down my work, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get the tension even when I re-mounted the beam. Fortunately, the Weaving Gods smiled on my efforts and I'm now back in business. Once this project is finished, I'll replace the screws with even longer ones.

Cloth On The Beam

Day 93: It has been several days since I felt like sitting at the loom and I'm not there yet. I'm still running a fever, coughing, find it a great effort of both physical and mental strength to knit a whole row, and the only thing I feel like eating is homemade bread. Fortunately, I made two different kinds before this bug took hold of me. As a consequence of my lack of vitality, you may be getting some rather mundane photos and superficial descriptions until I recover. That said, I wish I felt like weaving. The table-runner project has been moving along much more quickly than anticipated. Here you see the finished cloth being wound onto the appropriately-named "cloth beam" at the front of the loom. I have one six-foot runner completed, and two feet on the second. I warped for three, and I hope to put one of them in the Washington State Fair this year along with some bobbin lace. I've never entered anything in Home Arts before.

Weaving Mechanics

Day 76: I realize some of you are having trouble following the specialized terminology inherent with weaving, so I've put together a handy-dandy guide to the mechanics of a loom and how the warp is slung. I realize now that I should have lettered it from right to left because that's the direction warping proceeds, but I think we can work with this.

As you saw in yesterday's post, the first part of the process is stretching the warp. Here, we are picking up the method with the warp wound onto the warp beam (J). This consists of a large roller on which is mounted a canvas "apron." The apron serves to keep the warp threads from stacking up on themselves as the roller is turned. As the warp is wound beyond the apron, posterboard or some other separator is used to cushion the threads. (H) shows the warp on the roller.

The warp comes from the roller and may pass through a raddle (I) mounted on the back beam. This optional device divides the warp threads into bundles and helps keep the tension even. A loose warp thread can cause all sorts of problems in the cloth! From the raddle, the warp threads come forward horizontally (G) and each passes through a heddle in a specific order. This is what determines the pattern of the weave. The heddles are held in harnesses (D), frames which are raised in sequence by means of treadles. At (E), the loose warp is hanging at the front of the heddles, ready for the next step; at (C), the warp is through the heddles and reed (A).

Now the warp threads must pass through the reed (A) which is held in the beater bar (B). The beater bar is the portion of the loom which beats the weft threads into place. It is operated by the weaver's free hand, the other being occupied with the shuttle. From the reed, the warp is then brought over the breast beam (not shown) and tied to the front apron. As weaving progresses, the finished fabric is wound onto the cloth beam (F), a roller similar to that at the back of the loom.

There are other methods of sleying a loom (the term used for this whole procedure), and will vary according to the weaver's preference and the type of loom being employed. Mine is a four-foot, four-harness rising-shed loom, i.e., the treadles cause the harnesses to rise rather than sink. I also have a three-foot, four-harness table loom which is operated with jacks (hand levers) rather than treadles. Since my shoulder reconstruction, I have found the jack loom difficult to use. That said, the rhythm of weaving is almost meditative, and once I'm in the swing of passing the shuttle back and forth, I can relax into it, knowing that the hard work of threading is behind me.

Warp Solo

Day 75: The rose-path scarf/table runner is off the loom, although I still have the fringes to tie, so today I started warping for another throw-rug project. I measured the warp yesterday, left it on the board to stretch overnight, and this afternoon, I mounted it preparatory to winding it onto the back beam. This is the part where I always wish for an assistant. It was so much easier when my husband was around to handle the chain, shaking out any tangles which might have been created in the process of transferring it. The job of the assistant is to maintain uniform tension on the warp as the weaver winds it onto the warp beam, a task better suited to an octopus. When done solo, the challenge is even greater. "Uniform tension," I say to myself. "What have I got six or eight of around here?" I've used an assortment of things over the years, but today all I had on hand were six bottles of Gatorade. Since only about a foot of warp can be wound before the weights hit the front beam, this requires being able to move the weights down the length of warp easily. I am tempted here to use that well-known "double positive" which becomes a negative: Yeah, right. Two hours later, I was done with the full twelve feet, although the ends still have to be drawn through the heddles and the reed before I can begin weaving.

Weaving Rose Path

Day 60: The weaver's talent is put to the test before the cloth is begun. The warp is measured first, then gathered in a chain or some other fashion to keep it from tangling, and then it is mounted on the back or front beam, depending on the weaver's preference. I like to wind it onto the back beam, and in doing so, I space the threads out over the approximate width of the projected cloth by running them through a set of dividers known as a raddle. From the raddle, each strand is taken through a heddle (a metal or string upright held in the harnesses), and this must be done in careful order depending on what pattern I've chosen to weave. My loom has four harnesses. To weave Rose Path following this particular threading, the strands of warp pass through heddles held in harnesses 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1, 4, repeated across the width. This is the most critical part of the manufacture of the cloth. A mistake will become apparent as soon as the weaving is begun. After the warp is strung through the heddles, it passes through yet another separator known as the reed. This device is mounted in the beater bar. Then the strands are tied to the front apron and weaving may commence.

The actual weaving is repetitive. The sheds (separations of the warp through which the shuttle passes) are raised by means of  four foot pedals (one per harness). The treadling sequence for this particular pattern is 1,4; 1,2; 2,3; 3,4; 2,3; 1,2; 1,4; 3,4. A good treadling rhythm is similar to hiking up the trail, i.e., step, step, step, step. The shuttle is passed left to right, right to left, back and forth, back and forth. The sound of the heddles in the harnesses is also soothing, a sussurating timbre I can only equate to that of a polite rattlesnake shaking its tail to let you know you know that the sunny rocks on this slope are already taken: "Please don't step to the right. This is my spot and I'm comfortable here." In other words, the work is done. Now just relax and weave!