Woolfest for Weavers

YarnMaker, spinners, and spinning supplies were my reasons for being at Woolfest in Cockermouth in June. However, I took a little time here and there to look at weaving supplies.

One of my friends ordered a new Saori loom at the show. She's been doing Saori weaving for sometime now on rigid heddle looms so knows that the two-shaft Saori loom with the benefit of foot treadles is ideal for the weaving she does. We now have a Saori agent in the UK and The Saori Shed had a large stand where I happily sat and wove a few inches of cloth.

I was very interested to see a beautiful range of Estonian wool yarns spun for weaving now offered by Jane Flanagan Textiles alongside her dyed wool batts for feltmakers. Jane is a weaver herself although spends much of her time running textile workshops for schools.

I enjoyed meeting one of my weaving blog friends, Dorothy Stewart, who was helping out on the Ripples Crafts stand. Dorothy has been weaving beautiful silk scarves and I was delighted to see them for real and talk with her about weaving. Helen of Ripples Crafts custom dyes silk yarns for Dorothy so she can work with whatever colours she chooses.

The yarns I fell for however were from the range stocked by Helen Brotherton My Fine Weaving Yarn. She seems to be constantly extending the yarns offered and it is wonderful to visit one of her stands and have a choice of modern yarns all spun for handweavers in a range of colours like I have never seen before in the UK. I know other people do stock a large range but selection is normally from shade cards or samples that arrive in the post. It is rather different to be surrounded by yarns of different fibres that you can see and touch! And pick up and buy... here are the yarns I brought home, all silk. I made two colour selections of four cones for scarf weaving, each including one varigated yarn. However, having got them home I think that the green I chose could belong to either group.

Linen yarns

The message has been passed around weavers in the UK that a company called GTM Sales Ltd. in Stalybridge had bought up the end of stock from an Irish firm, William Ross, which closed recently.

A couple of weeks ago I enjoyed an afternoon out, I drove over to Stalybridge (not far from my home) and found their office on the ground floor of a wonderful old mill (note: this is not the building pictured on the web site). It's one of those superb, grand Victorian mills where you enter via a brick archway into a cobbled yard. Nowadays the mill is home to a number of small businesses, one of which is GTM Sales who have an office on one side of the yard and large storeroom on the other. If you follow the link above then you can see a rack of shelves in the storeroom. They are selling pure linen two ply yarns and two ply yarns of linen plied with yarns of other fibre.

The yarns I bought are two ply linen/linen, linen/cotton, linen/wool, enough to keep me happy weaving for a year or two I should think, unless I want more of a particular colour. The colours are lovely, see for yourself:

I had a great time choosing these and enjoyed a good chat and a cup of tea with Sandra, who has the task of marketing these yarns. Hi Sandra! Sandra's not a yarn expert, if you look at the company web site you'll see they used to refurbish spinning mill machinery, however, she's learning from her customers - and commented how friendly weavers are. She's happy to send out samples for anyone who can't go along in person. They are selling per cone (mostly weighing at least 1 kg) prices from £5-£10. (Sandra, I hope your boss is impressed by the advertising space you get for one cup of tea and a friendly chat!!)

Here I am surrounded by cones of yarn and thinking, right, what shall I weave? I have put away the mixed yarns for now, and am looking at using the two ply linens. I think all the yarns are eminently suitable for fabric to be used for clothing. They may be less suitable for upholstery or towels because the yarn is not tight twist, but I suppose that depends on the length of the flax used in spinning this yarn. I haven't pulled a thread apart to find out the length yet. I know another of Sandra's customers is a machine knitter. I also like the idea of trying these out for inkle weaving.

The next day I asked my boyfriend - the keen woodworker who often says "what shall I do with all these odd left over bits of wood" - to make a nifty gadget like the one I saw on Amelia's blog for trying out yarn sett. If you're in the U.S. you could buy one from Halcyon Yarns.

Coincidently, this is left over syacamore wood from building of the stairs you saw the yarns sitting on above! What a craftsman!

The sett tool indicates that 30 epi will be good for plain weave. I could calculate the thread twill density for twill from that, but as I was having fun I decided to weave another little sample. This time I used a couple of lollysticks tucked in the warp on the back of the sett tool to take out as the warp tightens up.

I found I'm not a very neat weaver like this, the plain weave was easier than a pattern. however, it's a useful indication of sett and appearance.

Other details - the weaving shuttle was a tapestry needle and I used the tips of 2 or 3 sock knitting needles as a comb to push the threads in tight.

Storytime: Why I am a weaver - and colours for rugs

I had no knowledge of handweaving until 2005. It didn't exist in my world. I suppose I'd heard of it, I think I'd seen an odd loom in a museum, and I have a vague memory of visiting a village of artisans in France on a french exchange trip as a schoolchild where a handweaver sat at a loom weaving a rug.

I'd also only once seen a spinning wheel, in a museum at Ironbridge but what I remember most of that was that the lady in Welsh costume got up from her spinning wheel and gave us hot Welsh cakes to taste, straight from the griddle. Oh, so tasty!

Then in 2005 I was unexpectedly unemployed at then end of a University course. As I left University (first time) in a recession in the late 1980's I have previous experience of unemployment. The most remarkable thing about being unemployed is finding out how many hours there are in a day and in a week and then understanding that with no routine anymore you have to find your own way to organise your life. Looking for work and collecting unemployment benefit takes up a some of the hours. There are enough hours left to go out of your mind with boredom and anxiety - if you want to. I knew from the past that I needed to create some sort of structure and purpose for days / weeks in order to stay sane.

Then came an opportunity. We went to the Manifold Show - one of the traditional country / farming shows there are every summer in rural England. It poured with rain, everything was sodden, everyone wet through. Typical English summer. I remember admiring a few sheep in pens, admiring prize winning chickens and a slow tractor race. The rain came down in sheets. As it was being announced that the afternoon's show events were to be cancelled and the rain got heavier, we nipped into the nearest marquee. The rain thundered on to the canvas and wind whipped at the tent edges. Shelter from the weather was most welcome. We were wondering whether to go home. But in the farmost corner of the tent three very cheerful ladies were busy at spinning wheels. We wandered over. They had a display that taught me that these spinning wheels did not just look pretty, they produced yarn. The yarn could be dyed (yellow, from onion skins) and knitted into garments. O.K., you read this and it's just logical because you know about these things. I did not know about these things. I was virtually speechless with amazement.

I sat at a spinning wheel but was too nervous to try spinning the wool offered. I learnt that the spinners were members of a "Guild".

We went home. When I was warm and dry again I looked on the internet to find out about spinning and Guilds and spinning wheels. This was a Saturday evening. I found Chris's Spinndizzy resources page, and then the Loom Exchange. There were wheels advertised that looked like the one's we'd seen, it was called "Ashford Traditional". There was a wheel advertised that had the same phone code as us. That means it was within about 10 miles, and the next day, Sunday, was my birthday. What did I want for my birthday? That spinning wheel. We collected it next day. £90 for a wheel, handcarders, and a small bag of washed fleece.

The handcarders had a label on them saying "Wingham Woolworks" and a phone number. On Monday I phoned up and said, who are you, what do you do? They sold wool for spinners, and were just the other side of the Pennine hills, shop open Sundays and Mondays. The next Sunday I was there, in a barn full of amazing sights - all kinds of wool and other fibres, spinning wheels, etc. I bought some Jacob's wool and a booklet "Essentials of Handspinning" by Mabel Ross.

I had a useful talk with Ruth Gough (proprietor) who gave me some basic instruction and signed up to come back the next Tuesday for a day's lesson. This was the point where weaving came into my life. We were talking about uses for spun yarn. I hadn't knitted for years, obviously I needed to re-learn to use my yarn - but Ruth mentioned weaving. Being in South Yorkshire, which has a strong textile trade and tradition, she had learnt spinning and weaving at school. She picked up a copy of Marguerite Porter Davison's "A Handweaver's Pattern Book" and flicked through, saying you could weave these on a loom - and here's the one I wove for my A Level (a complicated overshot design). Again, I was amazed, too much to take in.

I went home and practiced starting and stopping the wheel for a few days, to the puzzlement of my boyfriend who thought the purpose was producing yarn. Then I got my Jacob's wool and Mabel Ross's instructions, and after several false starts produced some thick grey yarn. By the end of a day's lesson with Ruth, I had plied yarns in all sorts of wools and colours and a big glow of satisfaction. They said I was "a natural" and I was hooked. I was soon spending several hours a day at the wheel. I span every type of wool I could find, and put together a sample book with fleece and yarn and notes about the wool type and possible uses.

Weaving came a few months later. The nearest Guild to where I live was over an hour's drive away, that may not seem far if you are in the U.S., but the roads are narrow, hilly, and very twisty here and an hour's drive is hard work. At some times of year ice, wind and rain make the evening travel more difficult and even dangerous. Instead, I found the Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers, and after thinking about it for a few weeks, signed up. Oh happy day - I was among friends. They taught me to spin other fibres (cotton and silk) and gave lots of advice and encouragement. I tentatively asked for advice about getting a loom. I fancied one of those little rigid heddle looms, or a table loom. Boyfriend advised I'd soon be bored and should think bigger. I asked the Guild, they agreed with him, and so it was that my first loom was to be a 2nd hand 8 shaft, 10 treadle Toika Norjanna.

And - yes, pictures at last - here is my very first piece of weaving:

The warp was kindly prepared ready to go on the loom by it's previous owner, who also gave me a plan for tying up the treadles and threading the heddles. I was using plain weave, diagonal 2-2 twill and 3-1, 1-3 blocks. The coloured rug wools came from Texere Yarns at Bradford, mill ends from the carpet industry, 80% wool and 20% nylon.

The sample was on the loom a few weeks, as I wove a bit, thought a bit, selected different colours.

This is the finish of it, I show if here just below the start so you can see how much I'd learnt about controlling the weaving, it's so very tidy at this end, compared to the start.


Here's some shots of the bits in between. I had a lot of fun mixing colours in alternate rows, or three row repeats, to make speckled or graduated effects.


Colour influences? Below strawberries, raseberries, billberries, water, sky...


Moorland and grassland...

Random "what if?" stuff...

My mother came to stay, and I showed her, and she asked "so what is it for?" That's a good question, it's an odd sort of rug, six feet long and about 14" wide. It's my sampler. I roll it up and unroll it. I look at it in different places in different lights. I fold it in different places, to put different sections next to each other and see how they work or compare different effects. It is a design tool. And, rolled up, it's very comfortable to sit on on the stone steps at the front of our house, when the spring sunshine is warm but the stone slabs cold.

Here she is... the new loom!

Are you ready? Here are the boxes:

part unwrapped:

and after a couple of hours unwrapping and putting bits together... it's a Leclerc Voyageur, 24" and 8 shafts. Note it was very well wrapped indeed - many thanks to Frank Herring & Sons of Dorset, they were very helpful in answering questions, delivery was prompt and their packing left nothing to chance. Of course I was rather tempted to buy the loom that has my name, the Leclerc "Dorothy"! But I wanted a folding loom for convenience of storing and occasional travel, and I like the shaft operation levers being in the middle (the Dorothy loom has them on the right hand side). See how she folds:

The literature says you can do this with the warp on, I haven't tried that yet. Of course as soon as I have a warp on I shall! This loom took a lot of choosing, and I am very grateful to friends in the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers who helped very much by telling me about their table looms and likes / dislikes. It's not easy to have to buy a loom without being able to see it. It did reassure me to discover that everyone with a modern folding table loom seems to be very happy with their loom. The options in the U.K. for new folding table looms are only Leclerc, Ashford and Louet (anything else would be a special import). If I'd wanted something more portable and just for samples I'd have gone for the Louet W30 which is only 12" / 30 cm wide but very nicely made and weighs a mere 12 lbs (5.5 kg) and a bargain at £250. Several owners of this loom got in touch to tell me how they love it. I'm sure the 40cm Louet Jane is also very good, but it's a bit bigger and heavier and costs significantly more, and the smallest Leclerc Voyageur (9 1/2") is also beautiful but 16lb in weight and costs nearly twice the price of the W30. If I'd not been interested in porting it about I'd have chosen one of the small folding 8 shaft looms, there's a Harris countermarch, or two jack looms - the Schacht Wolf pup or Leclerc Compact. I even gave some thought to one of the compact computer dobby looms, but they are not quite compact enough for me to find the space easily and I'm not sure I want a computerised loom. I get fed up with computers, they have dominated my working life. I wasn't sure about whether to get my loom with texsolv heddles or wire. I'm used to texsolv on my floor loom, so was biased towards the familar, but then I had a helpful chat to David Herring who said that the wire heddles move more easily along the shafts. I chose wire and I'm delighted. I'm including the next photo because I wanted to show the clever way the shafts are held in place by the heddle bars and they slide out of the bottom of the loom when you need to remove or add heddles to the shafts. The loom is lying on its side for this photo and you can see the little round feet it stands on.

I think I should add here that the loom comes with 600 heddles and I ordered an extra 300 in case I want to weave fine cotton or silk. I also ordered the second warp and back beam and a couple of extra shuttles.

I can't give you a full review of these shuttles yet. One came with the loom, and I ordered two extra. They are special shallow shuttles as the Voyageur has a small shed. The finish on them is the most beautiful and smooth of any of my shuttles, and with the curved ends they are good to hold. They are closed at the bottom so a reasonable weight and balance.

Designing Woven Fabrics - the sample blanket

From this box of yarns I ordered from William Hall & Co.:


(not the yellow, that's for another project)

I have woven this:




With a determined effort, weaving 8 different patterns each evening for the last couple of days, I finished my sample blanket before going on holiday last week. This is the blanket designed by Janet Phillips. Her book, Designing Woven Fabrics, gives the instructions for weaving this blanket and then directions for how to use it in designing your own fabrics.

I was able to take my blanket when I went to stay with my Aunt, an artist who enjoys beautiful textiles, and I also to it to show a fellow member of the Online Guild (from whom I was buying a second hand knitting machine - more on that another time!). I think they were both nearly as impressed with the blanket as I am. I don't think it's big headed to say that! So much of the achievement is the work of Janet Phillips, who came up with the idea of writing the book and designed and wove the blanket (more than once) before writing her instructions.

After finishing, the blanket is 274 cm long and 50 cm wide. There are 10 warp patterns across the width, and 50 different treadling patterns, giving no less than 500 different weaves! Wow! I can loose myself trying to choose a favourite square. All the rows are photographed in the book alongside the treadle patterns (very useful for spotting errors as you weave).

It's not easy for me to photograph such a large blanket, I tried several times before I realised that hanging it on the back of the loom would give an idea of scale. I took a few more pictures to indicate just how varied the patterns are:













An important question is - what will I do next? The instructions for weaving this blanket are only part of Janet's book. I've been reading on to learn about other aspects of design, including colour and yarn choices, and see examples that Janet gives of items she wove using some of the sample blanket weaves.

I think I need a better understanding of yarn and colour before I proceed. I went back to Ann Sutton's book "Colour and Weave Design" and to Janet's earlier book, "The Weaver's Book of Fabric Design".
Chapter 8 of Janet's book describes a colour and weave sampler, and Ann Sutton's book is an illustration of a 500 square colour and weave sampler. Ann suggests that if you have her book you don't need to weave the sampler for yourself. I think I do. I enjoyed the pictures in Janet's book of the sample blanket, but weaving it made it real for me and gave me something I can examine closely and feel for myself. The feel of a weave is important, and the way it looks from different angles, and also, if you weave it yourself, you have seen what it happens as it comes into being.

I also want to weave a different colour sample, using several colours across the warp and the same colours in bands in the weft. I want to see how they interact in plain and simple twill weaves.

Maybe I'm being ambitious, again, but I think that these will be invaluable to weave and have for myself.

Before I move on, I have several little collections of photos from various stages in the process of weaving this blanket, so, if you're interested you may learn from my mistakes!

On silk yarn - what every weaver should know!

I was going to write about this very useful book a couple of months ago, I took the photo but didn't get much further than that. At the time, there had been a discussion on the Weavetech discussion list about identifying what type of fibre was used in a yarn by carrying out a burn test. This book includes burn test information.

It is:
Handbook of Textile Fibres, by J Gordon Cook B.Sc.,Ph.D.,
published by Merrow Publishing Co. Ltd, first published 1959, 2nd ed. 1960.


I found my copy at a secondhand book fair, and bought it because it looked useful, although I had not heard of it. My copy has parts 1 (natural fibres) and 2 (man made fibres) in a single volume, I just looked on the Abebooks web site and found that some of the copies offered are just part 1, or part 2, and that it seems to have gone on to a 5th edition (1984). Prices start low, at around £4.

This book is a superb reference book. It's a great book to dip into, or to look something up, but there's so much information in it that it's not the kind of book that it's easy to just sit down and read. Because of that, I'd had it a while before I really got to understanding and appreciating it's value. In fact, I do recall at one time wondering why I'd bought it! But I did buy it a few years back, some time before I started spinning and weaving. Now, I find it is invaluable.

Why? Well, for example, there are 35 pages about wool . There's a brief history of the wool trade in England then all you might want to know about wool production and processing, physical properties and behaviours, chemical structure and rather more besides.

For example, did you know that "Wool... can be curled by coiling it round a rod. If it is placed in boiling water and cooled it will remain in the form of a spring. It is acquired a permanent set."? This happens because water attacks wool keratin and can cause changes in the chemical structure. Did you know that as wool absorbs moisture it generates heat? And that it releases the water it has absorbed very slowly and gently, which means that you don't get sudden cooling?

There's also extensive information about insects that attack wool, about shrinkage and felting (what happens and why) about washing. Here's some information on washing wool - the ideal temperature is about 100 degrees fahrenheit / 38 degrees C, and the best technique for washing is a process of soaking and squeezing - avoid agitation, tumbling and stirring. And another notable fact - handknitted yarns benefit from a residual tendency to felt, helping the knitted garment to hold its shape.

There is similar information in the book about other fibres, so it's good to compare and contrast and for understanding the relative properties and uses of different fibres.

By now you will be wondering why on earth the title of this post is silk yarns!

Answer, it's because this is what I was looking up last week. I needed to find out about: the different types of silk yarn, how they are made, what their different properties are, what might make a good warp yarn.

I also referred to:
A Silk Worker's Notebook, by Cheryl Kolander, pub. Interweave Press 1979, revised edition 1985

Silk, Luther Hooper, Pitman's Common Commodities and Industries Series (1930's? no date given)

From Fibres to Fabrics, Elizabeth Gale, Mills & Boon Ltd., London, 1978 edition.

These are all good and useful books. Cheryl Kolander's book strikes me as rather a slim volume for everything she wants to include, and sometimes I wish she had taken more space and written more. It is a lovely guide book to have covering basic information of history and use, handspinning, caring for silk, and has appendices with notes on weaving and knitting.

Luther Hooper's book is about silk production, from the moth(s) that produce silk to factory processes, going through to weaving. It is a lovely and useful book, although I am writing more about the others today.

Elizabeth Gale's book is a text book, written by a textile designer, for use in schools and colleges, "to assist those who wish to know about textiles without going into the technology of the subject in great detail". It was this book sitting on my shelf that inspired my blog name!

From Cheryl Kolander, I learnt that there are two types of silk yarn, reeled and spun. The reeled yarns are "thrown". She says "throwing is the process of twisting the unspun filaments of reeled silk." Thrown silk produces fabrics "stronger and more durable than comparable fabrics of spun silk". She says the two most important types are organzine, a tightly twisted and plied yarn, and tram, which has only enough twist to hold it together and is used for weft.

She says that spun silk is comparatively modern, a means of making use of the waste from thrown silk, which had in former times been used as wadding to provide insulation. The machinery for spinning wool and cotton made possible the spinning of silk waste into yarn:

"Spun silk yarns go by many names, some refer to the fiber-length, some to the fiber's character, and some to the yarn's spin."

The list she gives includes tussah (wild silks), meche (soft, long staple, regular twist), shantung (slighty slubby), cord (twisted and plied), flourette (long staple, spun from combed fibres) bourette (short staple, spun from carded fibres of 1-2" length).

Elizabeth Gale says of spun yarn that "Long raw fibres are cut to a maximum length of about 30 cm and are spun as for worsted, and short lengths are spun like cotton."

I remembered Peg wrote recently about the behaviour of two different skeins of yarn she had dyed, one was oraganzine - so a high quality thrown yarn - and the other bombyx - possibly a spun yarn? This might explain very different behaviour, the two yarns are probably very different in construction and from very different fibre lengths.

I'd look after that organzine carefully, Peg. Cheryl's book tells me that "thrown silk yarns are rarely available to handweavers. This is partly due to their expense... partly due to the fact that thrown silk yarns are usually very fine, much finer than most of us are comfortable with."

Indeed, I have here my catalogue and price list from H.T.Gaddum & Co. Ltd, a specialist silk importer in Macclesfield, England, (tel: 01625 427666) generally regarded as the best source of silk yarns for handweavers in the U.K., and they offer only spun silks - which range from £40 to £64 (per kilo, excluding V.A.T. ) and textured silks.

(Another good source of interesting spun silk yarns is Texere Yarns, of Bradford, England.)

So, what about my little Handbook of Textile Fibres on the subject of silk? There's 20 pages, so it is not as easy to summarise as Cheryl Kolander's book. It even includes a short section on "spider silk"!

Looking at the types of silk yarn, however, thrown silk (the name coming from the Anglo Saxon word "thrawan" meaning to whirl or spin) is made from "multi-filament strands.. twisted together to form heavier threads", although sometimes weaving is done from the filaments as they are, without twisting them. I was interested to learn that the "natural gum, serecin, is normally left on the silk during reeling, throwing and weaving" because "it acts as a size which protects the fibres from mechanical injury". The weight of the woven fabric may reduce by a third when the serecin is washed out! The cloth before the serecin is washed out, which is dull in appearance, is known as "hard silk" and when dugummed as "soft silk".

The extra information about thrown silks in this book tells me that tram is made from two or three strands of silk, and could be low twist with 2-3 twists to the inch, or high twist with 12-20. It is of moderate strength. Oraganzine is very strong, 2-3 strands are twisted together and then the compound thread is twisted 9-30 times to the inch in the other direction. Very high twist yarns, 30-70 twists to the inch are known as crepe.

There's an interesting section on the spun silks:
"....the throwster is fortunate if he can make use of half of the available silk in filament form. The rest of the silk is unsuitable for reeling, and is know as 'waste silk".

"This waste silk is much too valuable to throw away, and it is used for making the yarns we know as "spun silk"......"
".....After dugumming... The silk is opened and loosened in a machine that delivers it in the form of a gauze-like blanket or lap. The fibres are then combed and sorted into length-groups, and then draw into rovings and spun by twisting so that the short fibres hold tightly together."

The section on silk ends, as with other fibres described in the book, by giving details of effects of sunlight, age, moisture, heat, chemical properties, electrical properties, effects of acids, alkalis and solvents.

Did you know...

- Silk can take up 1/3rd its weight in water without feeling wet to the touch,

- and wet strength is 75-85 per cent of the dry strength?

- It has less elastic recovery than wool, but better than that of cotton or rayon.

- Once stretched by 2% of original length, it will be permanently stretched.

- It will stand higher temperatures than wool, but decomposes quickly at 175 degrees C.

- It is a poor conductor of electricity, and gets a static charge in dry atmosphere.

- Silk is so costly that fabrics are often "weighted" with metallic salts to create artificial density, a moderately weighted silk could contain 25-50 per cent salt, heavily weighted 60 per cent. Weighted silks are not as strong and can deteriorate rapidly - e.g. perspiration will cause rot. But I don't think handweavers will be using this technique!!

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.