A Day in the Life of Looms 2015

Meg of Unravelling blog is co-ordinating A Day in the Life of Looms once again, the New Year's day look at looms around the world through the blogs of handweavers.

This took me hours and hours. Firstly choosing the yarns, I had other choices at first but there was a weft yarn I couldn't match a warp to and a lovely potential warp that turned out to be nowhere near long enough. Then I could only work slowly because my hands are not strong, they are slow and need rest breaks.

Both yarns are handspun from fleece I have washed, hand carded, and spun long draw from rolags. The dark warp yarn is from a coloured Merino fleece bought from Yvonne Hoskins (business name Woolaston Wooly Wonders, a member of the British Coloured Sheep Breeders Association, contact details in this list of wool producers). The weft is a grey Shetland shearling found through the Murmuring Wheel group run by Diane Fisher; it was shorn by her brother Phillip, the Singing Shearer. The Shetland was spun on my Haldane Shetland spinning wheel - it seemed appropriate - and the Merino on my Schacht Matchless. This loom is my 10" Cricket rigid heddle loom.

I wanted to use the direct warping method, I thought it would be easier for my hands than using the warping board. There's an Ashford video demonstrating the method if you haven't seen it before. Warp length is limited by how far you can put your warp post from the back of the loom. I have a 3 foot square table, but that isn't long enough to make a scarf, so looked around and found the ever useful G-clamps (every weaver should have some, in various sizes, so many uses!) and clamped an extra board to the table to achieve the length I wanted.

Happy New Year! I hope you will enjoy your weaving and other crafts in 2015.