Previously…

My last post had some serious color mixing and warp winding and I couldn’t wait to get everything on the loom and see how it would turn out. Just a reminder, here is the inspiration for the latest warp based on the insert/poster from a Magic Puzzle we had just completed.

I sleyed the reed…

And because everyone wants to know about the levels in the reed… I warp front to back, for many many reasons, but the trick to working from the front, through the reed, and then the heddles, before beaming the warp, is to have multiple ends in a dent stacked in levels, so they can’t jamb up in front of the heddles. Cay Garrett wrote a lovely book on the subject, somewhere in the late 70’s, just as I was becoming a serious weaver, and I have never looked back. The book was called Warping All By Yourself, and almost every weaving guild library has a copy. Anyway, I tie horizontal cord around the reed, creating as many levels as I need for the threads that occupy the same dent. I grouped them based on size of yarn and structure, so I knew what went in which dent.

That makes threading a piece of cake, since I’ve already gone through and checked my original draft, and made sure there were no mistakes when sleying the reed. As it turns out, I had made two errors, I was short a thread in one of the groupings, easy to add before the warp was threaded and beamed, and I wound one too many of a different grouping. So I just dropped it.

The order in the reed keeps the order in which I wound the warp, so everything was just waiting for a heddle, and I was through this very complicated warp in no time.

I use a tensioning device from Harrisville Designs, which allows the threads to tension individually when beaming. Previously I used just a series of lease sticks, but I like the size of these smooth hardwood dowels.

And suddenly I was ready to tie on!

I selected a fine lambswool weft, which helps keep the rayon under control once the fabric is off the loom and washed, This is definitely a warp faced series of structures, and there is a lot of slippery rayon. The draft is based on the 12 shaft version from my lengthy article in Heddlecraft Magazine, issue #38, but I was able to convert the draft to 8 shafts, and maintain the integrity of the original.

I’m really happy with this so far, it is exactly what I envisioned. Which is always fun when things work out!

Meanwhile, I apparently am on a quest to warp all the looms. I have 49, have I mentioned that? 15 are always reserved for beginning weaving classes, but the rest, many of them little Structos or Leclerc sample looms, I have been setting up with explorations of various structures, for my entertainment, but also because it might be fun to have people come and play. And there is always the hope that one day I’ll carry a little loom outside and sit in the garden and weave…

One of the looms I got from that stash from a school in California still had to be refurbished, so I set out to do that yesterday.

I needed a different reed, obviously a new front apron, and I won’t even discuss the heddle situation. I did a previous blog post on heddle etiquette. Obviously this loom had not been exposed to that.

And so I replaced the apron, fresh and white. And I changed out the reed, I needed a 12 dent reed, which fortunately I had. I have five of this particular loom, and I’m fortunate that two of them had hex warp beams, that fit Structo spools.

So I swapped out the warp beams and added the spools, and though I’m running low on Leclerc heddles, which are a different length than the thousands I have for the Tools of the Trade Looms, and the Macomber, which is different from all those, I did manage to find enough to put on this little Leclerc, with all of them canting in the same direction.

For those who aren’t weavers, skip this section, just look at the pictures at the end. I’m including a little tutorial here because I’m going to be asked, and I might as well include it in the post. How do you warp the spools? I use many different methods, but the easiest is just to make the chain warp, and warp from Front to Back.

Once the ends come through to the back, they have to be attached to the spools, using a strip of paper tape, the kind you wet, and that little tab then slips into the metal flange in the spool.

The next step involves a bunch of zip ties. I buy these by the gross. I put a pair around the hex beam on either side of the spools so they don’t travel left or right as I beam.

Then I put a pair on either side of each of the warp bundles that will load onto a spool, across the back beam. This channels the warp into the spools. It is important as you wind that you keep an eye that there isn’t any uneven build up, and that you hold the warp tight from the front as you are beaming.

And there you have it. I put six yards on this loom, of 10/2 perle cotton, and probably didn’t even fill the spools half way. No packing needed!

A couple of years ago, I saw a fabulous social media post from Elizabeth Tritthart, historicweaving.com called 100 Horizontal Stripes. They were just beautiful, and Elizabeth figured out how to take old cross stitch and needlework patterns and convert them to drafts for pick-up. Typically, she works on a draw loom, but this book had information on how to work with just four shafts, which my little Leclerc had. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. And I also have old needlework books and leaflets…

And so I started weaving. Yes, this is painstakingly slow, but slow cloth is a thing, and I’m not in any hurry. Each design is separated by a “ribbon separator” as she calls it, a three pick basket structure that looks like a little chain. I ended up using doubled embroidery floss for the pattern threads, as I have tons of it in many different colors.

And so I’ve had the most productive week, I walk into the garage/studio every morning smiling, and my looms smile back. I’m racking up good loom karma, each loom that gets refurbished and warped has a new lease on life and gets to play in my colorful sandbox of fiber. We are all happy campers. This is like a summer camp that goes year round.

There are a couple more looms I want to warp up, and then I’ll just weave away, for the rest of the year, always thinking of what I want to try next.

Stay tuned…

They just seem to find me…

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from someone on the west coast. This happens often believe it or not, or I’ll get an email from someone who Googled Tools of the Trade Looms, which I have a lot of, or Structo Looms, because not only do I have a lot of them, but they get mentioned frequently on my blog, so I’m apparently the “it” girl for looms of those brands.

Anyway, my friend on the west coast, and I say friend, because I recognized the name on the caller ID, she had taken a number of workshops with me in the past, works with a weaving school, with more looms than I can even count, and found a number of small looms and assorted parts, unused and unloved, in a closet, and called me to pick my brain. Again, not unusual.

Turns out, after sending photos back and forth, she had three Leclerc 10″ sample looms, from way back, like the little green ones I love and have two of. They don’t often some up for sale. And she had three little Structos, which I have a lot of, like I said, one was the standard four shaft, perfect condition, no rust, one an eight shaft (woo hoo!) and one was one of the original black ones with the wing nut tensioning devices, which I hate, and usually am not interested in. As a matter of fact, as I recall, there are a couple like that in my attic, which I stripped for parts, and actually, I wondered what’s up there…

Meanwhile, the discussion went back and forth, and after asking her to check out the cost of shipping (USPS was the cheapest by far, with 2 looms in a box for $147 each box), this happened.

They were packed and dropped at the airport last Friday, which is a holiday weekend, and were on my doorstep 9am Tuesday morning, in perfect condition, after a 3000 mile journey. Yeah USPS… The Post Office, go figure…

I paid a good amount with the shipping for these looms. When I posted the whole episode on Facebook, the comments were quite hilarious, including one person who really wanted to know why? Why did I need more? It is a legitimate question, and I thought about my answer for a long time. I don’t really need to explain, we all have our vices. I had 23 small looms already, between the Structos and the two Leclerc Sample Looms. And maybe like some people rescue stray animals, I have this thing about rescuing looms, rehabbing them, and bringing them back to life. A loom has a soul, and an aura, and there is definitely an energy, a really positive one, when it gets loved and used frequently.

But the real reason, sort of dates back to a time before Covid, when I was using my Structo collection as a traveling studio, along with my daughter, teaching for my guild an annual beginning workshop (we got a lot of new members that way) and regularly scheduled beginner classes at Silk City Yarns, part of Lion Brand in their Secaucus outlet. I was constantly asked after a participant had taken the class numerous times, for a Part 2. I kept thinking about when I took Madelyn van der Hoogt’s class on Whidbey Island back in something like 2018, where she had 32 looms, prewarped in a structure each, and participants went loom to loom and explored all kinds of different things, over the five days of classes. That will never happen in my studio, but I did have these Structo’s, just not enough of them and still be able to teach beginners.

Covid changed all that. Lion Brand closed its outlet and moved its warehouse to Georgia. And I swore I would not ever travel to teach again. I’m thinking though, that in service to my guild, I really should do another Learn to Weave class, because that’s how new weavers are born.

Meanwhile, I took about 10 of my Structos and started warping them with various structures, which I talked about earlier in the year. I was looking for gamps that would allow treadling exploration, and though it was for my own purposes, those little Structo spools hold a lot of 20/2 cotton warp, and those warps will probably outlive me…

I think about having a group of students come in for an evening weekly, or whatever, and I can fit a half dozen at my dining room table…

Anyway, as I think about these things, the looms to make that happen are showing up in unexpected ways. I had an alarm system contractor up in my attic upgrading my heat and smoke detectors, and while he was up there, I dragged out all the odd Structo parts I had stuffed up there. And I re-evaluated their status.

It took quite a few days to carefully unpack all 6 looms, which had their castles removed for easier shipping, and I started to assemble. The Leclerc looms were fairly straightforward. As was the four shaft Structo.

I replaced some of the parts on the eight shaft, like the reed mechanism, which was not standard. I’ll still need to upgrade all the rusty heddles, which I’ll do when I decide what to put on each loom, depending how many heddles each structure needs, but the little black original Structo kept haunting me.

I looked at the parts from my attic, and I looked at the one that had been shipped from the west coast, with the wing nut tensioning devices and I started stripping them allowing me to create a perfect 8 shaft FrankenStructo with real cranks. And I can swap out the hex beam from one of the other four shaft ones I have and fit spools on it. I have lots of spools, and no, I’m not sharing.

And, though I wouldn’t use a loom with the wing nut tensioning system, I did manage to piece together a seventh loom from leftover parts. So, as expensive as this whole escapade was, I got a lot of looms, which will totally do the job should I really want to do both a level 1 Learn to Weave, and a level 2. I suspect the universe has this plan and is not allowing me to say no.

That leaves this poor little rusty 2 shaft Structo from my attic, which is so old that all the movable parts are riveted, so not easily changed out for more contemporary beams, cranks, beater, etc. Every time I walk by it sitting on the counter, it cries out, “Please don’t put me back up there…” I need my daughter, who has mad metal skills to take a look and see what we can do with it. She is in Idaho at the moment at a large animal sanctuary, finishing up her finals for her Vet Tech degree.

Meanwhile, my gardener, whom I can’t live without, brought me outside this morning to discover this.

How we missed this, is beyond us.

The activity in an out of this wasp nest was constant, and after a bit of research, we decided that this is a rarely used area of the property, only the lawn crew use that south side entrance, and that wasps are actually beneficial. They will all die out once winter sets in anyway, but it was remarkable. Then my gardener, who was pruning one of my Kousa Dogwoods found the remnants of a wasp nest, and I brought it in to dry it. What a remarkable piece of nature. The nest is actually chewed up wood pulp, built in layers. Wasp Spit! I don’t have the heart to have this nest removed.

Meanwhile, after sitting on a panel last week for Spinning and Weaving Week, that had to do with getting into juried shows, I thought a lot about my response to the question about one good piece of advice to anyone wanting to get into juried shows. I commented that it is all about having good images, because that’s usually what a juror sees first.

Back in 2006 for the Grand Rapids Michigan Convergence, I actually put together a seminar on Photographing your Work. I know my way around a camera, or rather a film camera, since that was my second concentration in art school. The first was of course fiber…

I gave that seminar to many guilds and conferences over the years, but stopped because technology changed so much in the last 10 years, that I really wasn’t in the mood to rework the whole thing. So I stopped offering the monograph as well. After sitting on that panel, and remembering how important good visuals are, I decided that as a public service, I’d dust off that monograph, because the main content is still very valid, and offer it in my eShop for free. So if you are interested, the link is here.

While I was at it, I’ve spent most of the last couple weeks, along with all my other adventures, updating all of my digital monographs, checking links, adding images when I have something better to show, and eliminating the print versions. Largely I’m tired of printing, shipping is getting ridiculous, and if any of the links or content changes, then the book is outdated. The digital version I can keep fresh, have an index, and include live links you can just click on in the PDF file. I’ve also posted in the description of each of the digital monographs the date of the last update. So if you’ve bought any of my digital monographs, and still have the email with the download information, you can get the updated version anytime. Many of the monographs that have to do with sewing with handwovens, all now have links to my YouTube videos that talk more extensively about that particular topic or technique. I’m always upgrading something…

And finally, one of the questions on my facebook page about the acquisition of 6 little looms was from a couple of different friends who know me and know my space, “Wherever are you going to put them…”

I thought about this as I assembled all the little looms, and wandered around my studio for a couple hours. I decided that one of the shelving units, that had some Ikea bins full of spinning fibers and equipment would be appropriate, if I could find someplace else for the spinning detritus. There was space under the work bench that had looms, a bobbin winder etc., across the studio. those are the square cubes on the floor.

The shelves weren’t high enough for the Green Leclerc Sample looms, so I could put them on top of the book cases, replacing Structos up there.

Then I was able to perfectly fit 8 more looms on the shelving unit in the corner. I still have to replace aprons, and some of the heddles, (fortunately I have a good supply and no, I’m not interested in selling any of the heddles, looms or assorted parts) but that can wait until I know what I’m actually doing with them.

And there are more Structos here… I think I now have 30… 🙂

Life just gets curiouser and curiouser, and I’m not one to question what the universe has in store for me. The last three years have shown me that. I’m busier than ever, and really having fun, and yes, the studio is now bulging at the seams, but I’m a good garment maker and know how to let those seams out…

Stay tuned…