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.

A small loom, for bands, samples, scarves.

I don't get much time for weaving at the moment, not enough that I feel I can go ahead and set up a large project on the floor loom. However, small projects are achievable: samples, scarves, bands.

I've been thinking for a while about getting a small loom for band weaving and samples. Criteria were: a solid frame, a good choice of extra heddles (for non-band projects), small adjustments possible on cloth beams and secure ratchet and pawl.

Candidates were Ashford SampleIt (8" wide), Ashford 12" knitters loom, 10" Schacht Cricket loom. Each has its own merits, but I chose the Schacht Cricket, because I wanted 10" width and also because they are beautifully designed and made.

Here is my Cricket:

and here is the rest of the loom. It came flat packed with assembly instructions (that was easy, put pieces together, use 6 cross head screws provided), weaving instructions, 2 shuttles, one 8 dpi heddle and two balls of yarn. Well I don't know what to do with two balls of yarn and a loom, except warp up and weave... so I did.

You may not be able to see the tape measure clearly in the photo, total length of the loom is 18". This loom doesn't take up much space!

I like the design, the heddle positions are good and the table clamps (for use when warping) slot into the back of the loom sides and hold it securely - I know this is important have had my 20" Ashford Knitters Loom escape its clamps once, midway through warping using the single post method.

This is the ratchet and pawl...

...and for more about band weaving on small looms, I refer you to YouTube and the latest video from Sue Foulkes which accompanies a book -

Five Ways of Weaving Narrow Bands, video

The book, The Art of Simple Band Weaving, is available from blurb.com and blurb.co.uk either as an e-book or print on demand hardback or softback. I haven't got a copy, yet (maybe after Christmas!) but I have Sue's other books, on Sami band weaving, and they are excellent. (Also available from blurb, search for Susan J Foulkes.)

Another loom...

Saved from the waste tip - last year I bought some spinning equipment from a man who was clearing out his mother's house, as an after thought he mentioned there was an old loom that he had been going to take to the tip, but could drop off at our house instead.

We think this was made to the plans in David Bryant's book, also available from his Craft Designs website. It is probably around 30 years old, same as the spinning wheels I bought at the same time. The owner had clearly been a keen spinner and weaver and taught the crafts - I also have yet to sort out a bag of homemade rigid heddles, stick shuttles and backstrap loom pieces.

We have had fun caring for this loom, it has been taken apart, all the wood and metal re-finished, got new supports for the beater and rubber stops for the beater on the castle, new aprons, new shaft springs. A couple of nights ago I rubbed the shafts with candlewax to help the heddles slide along them.

I like the metal ratchet and pawls and the way the shaft levers lock in position. I like the solid wooden frame, it's rather beautiful. However it has sat on our living room floor in the way of my piano for six months and it is about time I got a test warp on it to check the shaft action as there is now a weaver ready and waiting for a loom, so if she likes the look of it and I find that all is working well it can go on to a new home - and then I can play my piano again!

Postscript: two blog posts in the two days of 2013: I shan't keep it up, you know!

Mystery of twisted fabric solved?

I came to put a new warp on my little Greg Meyer loom, and discovered this:

The bar I'm tying my warp to is sitting crooked. It was the same both front and back of the loom, how careless of me! This may have been a factor that helped create curved cloth.

I replaced the string ties with texsolv so it is easy to get them exactly the same length.

It's also easy to do up / undo the texsolv by removing the little anchor peg.

My workshop

These pictures didn't come out as clearly as I'd hoped, I think there's just too much too see in each image.

They both show the part of my workshop where I have my handweaving loom. The loom is very compact. It's an eight shaft Toika Norjaana, countermarche with an overslung beater. It is 5' 1" tall (155 cm) (I am 156 cm tall!), 45 3/4" (116 cm) wide, and 4' (122 cm) front to back. This just fits in under the sloping ceiling, leaving a space where I can stand in front of it without banging my head on the roof beam - but I have to warn all my visitors to mind their heads!

Behind the loom you will see my latest purchase of 12/2 cottons from William Hall & Co.*, I haven't found anywhere else to put them yet. On the right of this picture there's a pile of plastic boxes with yarn stashed in them.

I get lovely daylight through the two roof windows, one behind my loom and the other over my work table (right), however, in these photos taken after dark, you can see the beautiful light from a special flourescent tube, chosen for it's wide spectrum light (Polylux XL F58W/835). I have a more "daylight" type flourescent (Polylux F36w/860) over the worktable, which gives a rather bluish light. Both give enough good quality light that I can use them for photography without additional flash.

Here is a side view of the loom, I stood on a chair behind my worktable to get this view. Weaving books are piled up this side of the loom on top of a structural beam. Beyond my loom bench you can see a very useful set of shelves on which I pile all the odds and ends I need to hand, shuttles, pirns, scissors, temples, sample folders, etc., and my reeds and raddle are leaning against the wall.

On the floor behind the loom is a tray of dyed wool waiting to be spun.

This loom was my first loom, and it has proved a very good purchase. I sometimes think it would be useful to have a table loom as well, because they are portable and work differently so you can use them for weave structures my countermarche loom isn't suited too. Then, I also have days when I dream of drawlooms, or more shafts. The truth is - there's no space for even a small second loom and no room for a loom that is any bigger than this one. Other work spaces that you can't see house my two Timbertops Leicester spinning wheels and stash of fibre for spinning, and a writing desk.

I have found out that I could (affordably) get more shafts and treadles for this loom, get a 2nd warp beam for it, and a "shaft switching device" to enable fancy patterned rug weaving. All these have their temptations - but I must weave more (and reduce the yarn stash) before I can justify to myself the spending money on extra weaving equipment.

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* William Hall & Co., 177 Stanley Road, Cheadle Hulme, Cheadle, Cheshire, SK8 6RF, England.
0161 437 3295 (no website).
Suppliers of handloom weaving and knitting yarns, plain & fancy, including their own plain and mercerised cottons, also suppliers of yarns from Holma-Helsinglands A.B. and Borgs Vavgarner A.B.

Toika Norjaana loom, bought 2nd hand, but originally supplied by the very helpful Don Porritt, of The Studio, Leathley Road, Menston, West Yorks, LS29 6DP, England (no website), tel: 01943 878329 and 874736, who has supplied me with reeds and other equipment.

Book on South & Central American textiles.

I'm writing about this book because I have it from the library and am reading it most evenings:

Textiles of Central and South America, by Angela Thompson. Published by: The Crowood Press Limited, England, 2006. ISBN 1 86126 826 2, £25.

The author of the book has been traveling the world to collect textiles for 20 years. She's written other books, they all seem to be about embroidery. I particularly like this book for reasons beautifully summed up on the inside cover of the book:

"In writing this book, Angela Thompson has drawn upon her many years of study, meticulous research and passion for the subject to offer the reader a fascinating insight into a people and a tradition that are inextricably linked with the wonder of handwoven cloth."

Mmm. I agree with every word of that. I love to read a book written by someone passionate about their subject that really knows their stuff. It's got lots of super photos and diagrams. The textiles are described in terms of who makes them and where they are made, so you feel you are getting to know the people and their stories and their culture. I like that. I don't think you can consider the tradition without knowing the people.

She starts with a general history chapter. I found this interesting, I studied very little history at school and all i know of central and southern Americas is about the first ships to reach there from Europe and how the natives were killed by the common cold virus. And I remember odd bits from Nancy Drew adventure books, and National Geographic magazines. Well, the bits and pieces fit in with a bigger picture now. It was a good chapter.

The next chapter, Designs and Symbolism, I found a bit boring. I think that's just me - I have a limited interest in the origin of the designs, but I thought it was a thorough and well written chapter. She is a helpful author for someone who doesn't want to read the book from page one to the end in one go - she breaks up what she has to say into reasonably short sections under a heading, so you can pick and choose the bits that most interest you.

I was much more interested in the 3rd chapter, about "Yarns and Fibres", and the next one was "Spinning and Dyeing" and after that "Weaving", "Costume and Accessories"... soon this book was traveling all around our house so that it was always to hand when I got spare time to read.

I've read books by other authors about other textile traditions that don't give you the full picture, the people, history, fibre, spinning, yarn, weaving, making up clothes, decorative finishes etc. I think it can come across as a bit disrespectful to look at the textiles without putting them in context - I like this author's attitude.

If anyone out there was wondering about what I'd like for a present sometime, I hope you've got the idea this book should be on the list!

Favourite bits of this book: illustrations of the animal and bird motifs used, descriptions of different loom types (backstrap, horizontal, upright, floor looms) and the way they are used, descriptions of basic garments made from the woven cloth, an amazing patchwork made of scraps of all sorts of woven cloths (p. 138), a section on "Embroidery as a Political Statement" (yes!), photo and description of the wonderful tradition of free-stitch machine embroidery to decorate bright red bowler hats, as worn by women in the Chivan area of Peru.