Tools of the Trade Looms

For the win part 2…

It is rare that I write posts back to back, most subscribers don’t want me filling up their inboxes with emails about a new blog post. But I’m on a role, and it is important to me to document this moment, with all the looms in my possession warped. It is a ridiculous amount of looms, I admit, but I’ve been asked if I had to downsize, which one would I pick. I can’t answer that. Each loom has a purpose. Until I have to move, or can’t weave anymore, they are all staying as a happy family. After my husband died, I went through a brief period of really evaluating all of my fiber holdings, especially since I am an educator and have 15 of everything, 15 drop spindles, 15 dog slickers for hand carding locks, 15 small frame looms, 15 inkle looms, etc. My daughter who caught me contemplating this, declared that I couldn’t get rid of anything because well, it would all be hers when I die. Did I mention she holds on to stuff like her father? With that idea of downsizing nixed, I just began to add to the mix when the opportunity presented itself.

So to continue the loom inventory from yesterday’s post, here are the main table looms. Starting with the Tools of the Trade looms, all are 25″ wide except this one, which is only 16″ wide and an 8 shaft. I really love Tools of the Trade table looms, they fold for easy transport, are quite sturdy, have metal gears, and the back of the loom drops away with the removal of two bolts making threading a dream.

This 16″ loom I found on eBay, years ago, and had shipped from maybe the Chicago area. I’m bad at keeping the provenance of my used looms. The outside castle frame turns out was a bit bowed, and shafts would slip out of the tracks, but I moistened the wood and put a huge pipe clamp on the side walls of the loom and that stayed on like a brace for a couple of years. It is fine now. Looms for the most part are pretty indestructible, though truth be told I’ve seen some pretty horrific mistreatment. Anyway, its name is “EMH” (from Star Trek Voyager, meaning Emergency Medical Hologram). I probably wouldn’t have picked that name, but my daughter loves to print labels, and is a Trekkie, so it is a magical combination. I don’t interfere. On it is a four shaft Doup Leno spread over 8 shafts. I use it when I’m demoing for an online class. The yarn is all handdyed cashmere I think, there was no label on it, but it is buttery soft, and took the acid dye well. Once the tension is released, it should collapse into a soft airy scarf. I think this will be one of my priorities to clear. I wrote a Heddlecraft issue on the subject of Doup Leno, issue #19.

Next to it is also an 8 shaft, but this one is 25″ wide. I remember buying this from my guild, because no one liked the loom, they thought it was heavy and awkward. My guild, Jockey Hollow Weavers, has loaner looms available and no one was using it, so they offered it to me and I paid a chunk of money to have another 8 shaft loom. It is precisely why I liked the loom so much, it is heavy and therefore sturdy. I can tighten that warp as dense as I want. This loom is named “Chakotay” (Star Trek Voyager) and on it is a Bateman Blend, #110, which I set up for the issue I wrote for Heddlecraft Magazine, issue #38, on combination weaves. I sampled, cut it off and washed it, photographed it for the magazine, and started weaving again. I don’t remember how many yards I put on, it is slow weaving, but beautiful cloth.

I talked about “Kim” in yesterday’s post, which has the Rep weave experiment. I ended up cutting off what I wove, washing it, tossing it in a hot dryer to see how much it would draw up. I’m happy enough with the cloth that I’ll leave it sett at 32 ends per inch. I laid awake last night thinking I should try to resley, but I’m glad I looked at the cloth after washing. Always a good thing. It is still slightly damp, so the color is probably a little richer than it will ultimately end up.

I have another 8 shaft Tools of the Trade table loom, also 25″ wide, and I have a vague recollection of helping someone who rescued this loom and refurbished it, with lots of pictures and support, and ultimately purchased it from her. I think my sister lived near her and did a pick up for me. There may be a series of emails somewhere in the archives, but that really doesn’t matter to me. I love the loom, and I think this one is cherry. Its name is “Tuvok” (also from Voyager) and though it is 8 shafts, my daughter set it up for a four shaft Split Shed workshop we took together back in the fall of 2019, with Deborah Silver. We each set up my two 8-shaft Tools of the Table looms, because I think the 4-shaft looms were busy. Her loom still has the warp on it from the workshop, so it isn’t mine to touch, but here are the samples that are on it so far. I would love to have the 8 shafts back in rotation again, but I have enough other looms to keep me busy.

I needed my 8-shaft Tools of the Trade set up for the Split Shed weaving class for the Bateman sample I talked about above. Because the Tools of the Trade looms are basically interchangeable, except for the size of the castle, I was able to preserve the leftover warp on “Chakotay“, by just swapping out the entire back of the loom with a 4-shaft named “Paris” (again from Voyager), so I could continue the technique. So now, my Split Shed warp is on a more appropriate 4-shaft loom, and I started a complicated design, which will probably take the rest of my life to weave off, and truth be told, I should have put on a different warp than the green carpet warp for the class, but I can recall the technique easily by sitting down at the loom.

The last of the Tools of the Trade table looms is one I set up just a couple weeks ago. It is for Zanshi fabric, which is a Japanese philosophy of wasting nothing. I wove a length of cloth in this technique a couple years ago, since I spent an inordinate amount of time in Zoom meetings at the start of the Pandemic, and just sat and tied all my thrums or loom waste together into balls. Simple overhand knots. The resulting balls get woven in a basic ground warp, knots and all, and I wove off the length of yardage in record time.

I wanted another warp to weave my endless stash of Zanshi thrums, so I set up the last of the 4-shaft Tools of the Trade table looms, “Torres” (again, from Voyager) with a fine black 10/2 cotton, and experimented with a couple different structures, plain weave, twill, ultimately settling on a rib weave, which is two shuttles. If nothing else, this should slow me down.

I should also mention that there are a couple of additional table looms in the studio, two of them are Leclerc looms, one a 12-shaft Dorothy, which my daughter bought from the estate sale of one of our own beloved guild members. She calls it “Data“. Right now it is the only loom without a warp, because it is my daughter’s and not mine to warp.

The other Leclerc is a folding Voyager, 16″ wide, also 12-shaft. We named this one “Janeway“. I bought it from another guild member, who is buying and selling looms all the time. I don’t think I ever sold a loom that came through the studio, I almost did once, but changed my mind at the last minute. My first Tools of the Trade 4 shaft table loom. I did permanently loan someone a loom, another Dorothy, a young weaver that needed a jump start, and I had a wooden Structo that got beat up in the garage before it was my studio, that I donated to someone in the guild who vowed to clean it up, but now that I have a real space for all these looms, I’m careful to protect each one. Anyway, “Janeway” has a 12 shaft Echo weave on it, which I wrote about just a couple of posts back. (The draft is from Denise Kovnat, from her collection of WIF files for Echo Weave available on her website. This is a variation.)

And finally my daughter’s folding 8 shaft Ashford table loom. When she went off to college in 2011, she wanted a loom to take with her. Friends suggested a rigid heddle and she looked at me like I had three heads. “Why would I want a rigid heddle loom when I can turn a jack loom into shaft switching!”, she declared. So the folding Ashford 8 shaft was her go to loom away at college for four years. It has seen a lot of yardage, because she is my daughter and that’s what we do. Unless we are specifically weaving towels, we never have a plan for what we weave. All that comes later. So, this is “Spock“, her first love in Star Trek, and her first loom of her own. Right now there is a warp that’s been there a while, from a couple of hand painted warps she procured from a Kathrin Webber class in my guild a number of years ago, and says that the 8-shaft structure is a modified Atwater Bronson from Strickler. Whatever she says.

I should mention the one remaining floor loom in the studio that isn’t a Tools of the Trade and caused a lot of Sturm Und Drang when it first came to me in very poor condition. I spent a lot of money rehabbing it, much to the consternation of the other looms, but they all seem to get along now, and each has its purpose. This one is a 25″ 8 shaft Macomber from the 1970’s. It is a full size loom with two warp beams. We call it “Mac“. Because it is a Macomber after all. I’ve never been a huge fan of Macomber looms, but this one does get the job done, and after all these years it is still a workhorse. And it was the loom that got me weaving one armed when I broke my shoulder the end of 2021. Right now I have an 8 shaft combination warp on it, from my 12-shaft draft I wrote for Heddlecraft Magazine, issue #38, which upon studying closer I found I could convert to 8 shafts easily. Sometimes I just amaze myself. Most of the yarns are hand dyed, which is something I tend to do in the dark winter months.

The rest of the looms are my collection of 26 Structos, and 5 Leclerc Sample looms, and multiple inkle looms including a Gilmore Wave, and one from John Mullarkey, all named after Star Trek characters. I’ll cover them in a follow up post, because they are all warped, or most of the inkle looms anyway, some are on loan to a guild mate who is doing a program for our guild.

Definitely stay tuned…

For the Win…

When my kids were young, a dark time in my life because raising children, especially my children, was really really challenging, I found myself in one of the lowest points in my life. I was probably in a deep depression, not something that is a normal affair for me. I remember hearing about a book, or maybe my beloved Mother-in-Law gave it to me, by Sarah Ban Breathnach, called The Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude. I have five of them on my shelf, and each one starts in January, with a few lines for each day of the year. Inspirational quotes are scattered throughout the book. The copyright is 1996, so that would be about when my kids were just starting school. Those were tough times. I was taught long ago, how important it is to have gratitude, for anything, even if it is just that you woke up in the morning. Desperate times call for desperate threads to hang on to, and I latched onto those little books, for what looks like five years straight, and I dutifully wrote in them five things I was grateful for each day. There are other journals on the shelf which came after, because I actually got into the habit of journaling, a healthy way of putting thoughts on paper and celebrating the good stuff and documenting the tough times. I haven’t ever sat down to reread what I wrote back then, I’m not sure I can or should. But eventually, as my kids grew and I survived multiple traumas, like breast cancer in 2002, I found that the journals I wrote to be more limiting. I wanted to add pictures, and information of where I was traveling, and teaching. I wanted to add what I was working on in the studio, and what my students did.

In 2008, I read an article by tech wizard Syne Mitchell, a column more specifically, that she wrote for Handwoven Magazine, talking about how weavers should embrace this new technology and start a blog. She explained how to do it on eBlogger, and I thought, I can do this. It would allow me to write, journal style, and add pictures, and links and keep a digital journal that if someone actually wanted to read, they could. My tech husband saw what I did, and after a couple of posts told me that I needed to switch to Word Press, and he moved everything I’d done to that platform, much to my dismay, since Word Press at the time is not particularly user friendly, and still isn’t. It just gets more and more complicated. But that was 2008.

I have written more than 900 posts at this point and I have gone back and read and reread many of my posts. I am shocked, surprised, dismayed and thrilled at all I’ve accomplished over the last 15 years of my life. If nothing else the visuals are stunning.

Lots of people read my blog, but that’s not why I write them. I actually don’t care if they are ever read, though I will say I always enjoy getting comments, because I learn a lot and know that people care and appreciate the share. I continue to write the blogs, even though blogging is so last decade, because I like to write, and journaling keeps reminding me of what’s important, or what was important to me at the time I wrote each post.

Today I reached a huge goal. It was maybe a silly goal but it is still an important one to me. In my last post I talked about all the looms I have, and how it became an obsession over the last year to get warps on all of them. A personal challenge? I had one remaining Tools of the Trade table loom in the back corner of the garage/studio that I had purchased used from Eugene Textiles in Oregon and paid to have it shipped across the country. I never got around to cleaning it up and replacing cords, apron strings, and giving it a good wipe down with Howard’s Feed and Wax. At least the heddles all canted in the same direction though I’d need to add a few hundred! So I spent a day, earlier in the week, giving this last Tools of the Trade loom in my collection, a solid refurbishment, and it was ready for a warp. My daughter named all of our looms, because frankly it is the only way we can keep track of the 50+ looms in this studio. She referenced Star Trek for many of them, and this one is named “Kim“. Ensign Harry Kim from Voyager…

In my last post, I mentioned I got the idea of Rep Weave, which I had only played around with briefly many years ago in a guild challenge, and looked through all the books I had on the subject. I found a project that I could base my design on, and started looking at yarns.

I found this cone of vintage Silk City Fibers Contessa, a 75% rayon, 15% silk yarn that at the time, (and still is) my favorite yarn to work with. It was discontinued a long time ago, but because I live near Silk City, when it use to be headquartered in Paterson, guild members in my area acquired a lot of it, and I frequently find the mother lode in estate sales. So I have a decent stash, especially in natural which I dye frequently. This particular cone was one of their beloved variegateds, called Roman Holiday. Cute name…

I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to see if there was some sort of repeat in the dye coloration, and there sort of was. It seemed the colors repeated themselves every three yards give or take.

When I want to line up colors in a variegated yarn, I have to wind the warp in a circular fashion. You can’t do that on a warping mill. Because I was going to do a short warp, 3 yards, I used my small warping board, and tied it to a music stand. Perfect height.

I went around the board, and up the side, taping off the end of the color sequence so I could start around the board again. As a side, I’m giving a lecture in warping the loom from the front to the back, a method I’ve used since the early 80’s with tremendous success, for MAFA Virtual, a remote conference in July. The great thing about this conference is you can sign up for as many sessions as you’d like since they will all be recorded and what you can’t watch at that moment, you can watch later. I believe sign ups have just begun. Anyway, I’m going to discuss what I just described in more detail in that lecture.

The other day, it was just gloriously warm and sunny and I took my warping board, tied to the music stand, and all the yarn I chose and hauled it out the back door to the studio onto the deck, where I stood, listening to the busy birds and the waterfall in the pond, and kept on winding.

Eventually I wound all the chains I needed for this very complicated warp. I couldn’t get the colors to line up as perfectly as I hoped, especially after there was a break in the yarn and a large knot, and things seemed to go haywire after that. But I persevered and got all the chains wound.

After rehabbing “Kim” I started to sley the chains, four ends in a dent, in an 8 dent reed. I tied the reed into levels, like I always do when warping front to back. Again, I’ll talk a lot about this in the lecture for MAFA Virtual.

I flipped the loom around, dropped out the whole back of the loom, which I can do on the Tools of the Trade table looms, and started to thread. This is a pretty dense warp at 32 ends per inch, basically the blocks are only on two shafts each, so I was sort of sweating whether this loom could handle such a dense warp and still give me a shed…

Then it was time to beam. The colors really started to sing, and I got the dense warp onto the warp beam in record time, since it was only three yards.

And then the moment of truth. Yes, I was able to get a shed, though I have to push down the shafts that want to ride up together, on a table loom that isn’t really an issue. Takes about 2 seconds. I chose a thick and a thin weft, typical in Rep, and started in on the pattern.

I could have sett this closer, probably should have, but I was really afraid the loom couldn’t handle it, and because I have large eye inserted eye heddles, they just don’t nest like a flat steel heddle, which I never had for any of my Tools of the Trade looms. They weren’t designed for that type of heddle. But it is pretty cool anyway, and more to the point, I’m learning a lot. And that’s why I do what I’m doing.

Meanwhile, for no one’s benefit but mine, for the rest of this post and the next couple of posts to follow, I want to document that at this point in time, I’ve warped all the looms that are mine to warp. Since most of them are mine, that’s a lot of looms.

So in no particular order, I’ll start with my first loom back in 1978, Tools of the Trade, 8 shaft, 45″ wide, with a double back beam and sectional option. When I bought it I had no idea what any of that stuff was, but I bought it anyway figuring I’d grow into it. I did and then some. Because this was my first loom, purchased directly from Tools of the Trade in Fairhaven, VT, the looms is called “Fairhaven“. All of the Tools of the Trade large floor looms were numbered. This was one of the first hundred, #94. At the moment it has something like 4 yards of mohair, desperately trying to use the last of the stash, in a plain weave, 6 epi. I blogged about that here.

After I purchased that loom, I realized I needed a second, for demos, workshops, and scarves that would match my regular production fabric, because I was full on into production weaving and beginning to do craft fairs. I bought the identical loom, but 25″ wide, so it could be put in a van and brought to a craft fair. I called this one “Fairhaven Junior“. On this loom, I have an 8 shaft project, from WEBS, documented in a blog post here.

My mother in law, who was a bit of a weaver among other things, (primarily bobbin lace) wanted a loom for her apartment in Wilton, CT. I ordered her a 25″ 4 shaft floor loom, also from Tools of the Trade, somewhere in the mid 1980’s, and when she got too old to weave, she gave it back to me. I just warped it earlier in the week with the cotton runner commission I talked about in my last post. I called this loom “Wilton“.

Next to it is its twin sister, that my daughter and I drove to Atlantic City or somewhere near there to pick up when we saw an ad that it was available. I don’t remember who owned it, but it was really for her use because at the time, she had moved out and taken “Fairhaven” with her and wanted a smaller one for workshops and demos. She named it “Porter“, something to do with it being from a port city in coastal NJ . On the loom is a cotton warp and she is cutting up her late father’s interesting shirts and assorted clothing and weaving one long rag rug art project on it.

She drove to Massachusetts a few years ago to pick up a vintage Tools of the Trade, meaning really early, predating my 1978 loom, 4 shaft 32″ wide. Somewhere along the way, someone had a second warp beam kit in their closet for a 32″ Tools of the Trade loom, which they shipped to me for free. I sat on it and realized that it would fit this loom, so Brianna drilled for it and I named this “Snyder” because I think that’s the name of the women I purchased it from. Right now I have a ten yard ice dyed warp on it, which has been on there a while, and I think I’m weaving this in a crackle structure. I blogged about it here.

Mother’s Day 2021 Brianna loaded up the trailer and drove 4-5 hours to Rochester NY to pick up the largest loom in the studio, which was a 12 shaft Tools of the Trade loom, 54″ wide. # 486 one of the last looms he made. We called this loom “The Duchess“. It is almost too much loom for me, though I did weave my 12 shaft combination weave fabric for my walking vest which was part of the collection I sent for the Convergence fashion show in Knoxville, TN, summer of 2022. Brianna now has a very cool 12-shaft dishtowel run of fabric, in rainbow colors, based on a 10 shaft draft from a Robin and Russ collection we purchased from a weaver’s estate sale. I find the logo for Robin and Russ a bit disconcerting, but the content and swatches in the four binders we have is invaluable.

Behind it sits a sister loom to my original “Fairhaven“. This loom is also an 8 shaft, 45” loom with a single warp beam, # 246, named “Princeton” because my daughter answered an ad that had this loom for sale, and she went to Princeton, with a tool kit, paid the woman the couple hundred dollars she was asking, and completely dismantled the loom so it would fit in the back of a Rav4 as a pile of lumber. She then reassembled the loom in her second floor apartment, next to “Fairhaven” which I had given her when she moved out. Of course all the looms came back when she moved back home, along with her dog and cat. The rest is history. On it is an oversized overshot pattern which my daughter says is from Strickler’s book of 8 shaft patterns.

A number of years ago, knowing I’d be downsizing at some point (hahahaha) and feeling that my 45″ “Fairhaven” was getting to be too much loom for me and that I’d be eventually giving it to my daughter, I found a loom for sale outside of D.C. that was identical except it was only 36″ wide. It is one of my favorite looms in the studio. It fits my aging body well. It is 8 shaft and has a second warp beam. # 273. We call this one “Princess“. On it right now is a chenille ‘color and weave’ on only 4 of the 8 shafts, but I needed the width of the loom. I blogged about it here. I have no idea how many yards I put on it. I’d have to go back and look at my notes. (It was 8 yards)

That leaves the six Tools of the Trade Table looms. I’ll talk about them next time, though one of them, “Kim” was described above.

Stay tuned… Lots more loom fun to come…

I worked hard for this one…

To say this has been a challenging couple of weeks would be an understatement. Considering what’s happening in the world, there is nothing I should be complaining about, but in my own world, nevertheless, life has been more challenging than I’m use to…

My daughter, not without sturm und drang, left for a Star Trek cruise about two weeks ago. That put me alone to run everything, deal with all the animals, and my fractured shoulder, for about 10 days. I had mourning, mopey animals that waited for her return.

Nights were the most challenging, they all needed to be close to me, and I was struggling to sleep anyway with a fractured shoulder, and I didn’t sleep the entire time she was gone. No, I couldn’t lock them out of the room, I would have had a dog fight, broken doors, or worse. They need to be where the people are…

I struggled with my shoulder as well. Now weeks into PT, I seemed to be going backwards, near tears trying to do anything, and after much discussion, changed a number of things, including switching to ice packs periodically to reduce inflammation, and trying to curb my enthusiasm in my studio, since I was developing secondary stress related injury like tennis elbow. It is hard to keep a good artist down. Or weaver, or whatever…

Meanwhile, I did manage to wind a warp, dress the loom, and I started weaving the 20/2 overshot placemats I promised my friend. This is going to take awhile… A long while…

My daughter returned to much fanfare from the animals, but had been exposed to Covid on the ship, and by the time I picked her up at the airport, with a rapid test in hand, which was again negative (she had been tested daily on the ship), she was pretty sick. She got a PCR test the next day, but it took until late Wednesday to find out that was also negative. She picked up something and it seems to be responding to antibiotics, but she has been basically unavailable and hiding in the opposite end of the house, mostly sleeping, so I don’t get what she has. And with her constantly asleep, the animals have been more than needy. Sigh. There is something completely unfair that one goes on vacation and then comes home and is down for the count for a week…

So what do I do when life is at its most challenging? I dive into a project so intense that I sometimes forget to come up for air. Which is why my arm flared up and I developed a sort of tennis elbow. I still like to think I’m invincible, it helps me get through the days, but I will say that more than once over the last couple of weeks, even I was feeling discouraged. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and I can’t even weave a new handbasket… Whatever that is, I’m trying hard to figure it out and if it will help at all…

In a previous post, I talked about the yardage I wanted to weave inspired by the puzzle I fixed with my daughter, and had pulled all the yarn for it.

About 98% of it was hand dyed, still in the skeins. I decided not to “cake” the skeins, wind into pull balls on a ball winder, and just work directly from the skeins, since I only needed maybe 20-60 yards of any one color. And there were a lot of colors. I rigged up double skein winders, which went through hooks in the ceiling beam, and then directly to the warping mill. Yes, this was brilliant but very taxing on my fractured, slowly recovering shoulder. I did this for a week.

I wound…

And wound…

And wound…

A total of five warp chains. This last sequence references the upper corner of the poster.

I warp front to back, it works better for what I warp, and the complexity of this warp, on 12 shafts, where every group of threads, 3,5,8, or 13 (all Fibonacci numbers) change structure. I’ve been working on this draft for months.

I started sleying…

I’m just loving these colors and was too impatient to stop and rest my arm. So I packed it in ice and carried on…

Note that I haven’t actually tried weaving anything this wide, at 28″, with a fractured shoulder, but figured eventually I’ll be able to, anyway it would be good therapy to try.

I struggled to get into the back of the loom, there isn’t a lot of room in the studio to drop the back beam of a 12 shaft loom, and I didn’t have the strength to try to actually move the loom forward. This loom came to me just under a year ago, and it is 54″ wide. Long story. There is a blog post about how it came to me. This is the first time I’m warping it and I’m going to assume it will actually weave.

I started threading. Really challenging, as reaching through 12 shafts for the warp ends coming from the reed was tough with my left arm. I found in the beginning I had to have my right arm do the reaching and pull through the heddles. Slow going…

I wanted to ask for help, but this was all that was available…

I kept at it. Eventually I was able to reach through with my left arm, truly remarkable considering where I was a week ago…

By now, my daughter is feeling remarkably better, and to her credit, she did help me get this baby beamed.

The colors are gorgeous. They make me so happy.

So now I can’t sleep thinking about how it will look, how the loom will actually weave, can I even lift rock maple 54″ wide shafts?

Next step was tying on the front and then crawling underneath the loom to do the tie-up.

I looked for help, but my assistant was passed out on the chair behind me…

I managed to do the tie up, and was pleased I could reach further than I thought with my left arm. Getting up off the floor with one arm is a challenge, but I did it.

And so, yes, I could weave. I’m gloriously happy that, though a bit painful, I can throw a shuttle and pull the beater, which is the heaviest one I’ve ever worked with, but I swear, by the time this yardage is finished, I’ll have abs of steel. No Covid belly for me anymore. Dear Lord the shafts on this loom are heavy.

I’m sampling wefts, and think I’m going to continue with the 2/12 lambswool in the mid brown coloring. Though I like the darker blue on top, the brown stays truer to the original poster coloring.

I’m just loving the juxtaposition of the different structures. Each is so interesting. Each could be a yardage all by itself. I feel an article coming on about combining structures, already there are things swimming through my head, but for now, I’m content that I did the impossible. I earned this one, most challenging thing I’ve done under the circumstances…

And of course I’m making slow progress on my double weave sampler jacket. The fronts are done, and I’m working on the back side of the back, all reverse appliqué windows, so both sides of the double weave are visible in a reversible jacket. Thanks to my weaver friends who found me a place online that would make a custom length reversible jacket zipper, color choices were limited, but I got what I needed to make this jacket work.

And so dear readers, I try to look at the news with only one eye, otherwise it is too overwhelming. I’m laying low, struggling to work with my slowly recovering fractured shoulder, walking into town three days a week for PT, stopping at the grocery store on the way home. I buy only what I can carry home. Life is simple, but complicated. I’m just getting through the days, waiting for spring…

Stay safe, and stay tuned…

It’ll be fine…

My daughter has a snippy saying, when she has had enough, or doesn’t want to engage further, she will look at me and say in a really dismissive attitude, “It’ll be fine”. Sometimes it relates to I’m being overly worried about something, or sometimes it means, that whatever she is doing, it is good enough and I should stop thinking that she should do it differently.

It is one of those sayings that I have learned to embrace and hate at the same time. Really, in most of life, most things are really fine, they will be fine. But sometimes that statement can be a sort of shorthand for, “I’m really being lazy and don’t want to see what else I can come up with…”

This all started when I went wandering through my yarn stash, just to see what would spark my interest. I found a bunch of hefty cones of a Silk City Fibers Skinny Majesty, a very slippery rayon bouclé, in a color probably long since discontinued, probably part of a stash I purchased from another weaver long ago. There were probably 6 or 7 pounds of it. I really love the color and I had hoped, since many of Silk City’s variegated yarns are engineered with a repeat, that I could get an ombré effect out of it.

Though I usually don’t pick wefts, I always sample first, I had four cones of this beautiful Wool Crepe tweed on the right, which I recently purchased from the same Silk City Fibers during a sale. I like how Wool Crepe washes, it is very springy and does collapse a bit. I thought it would tame the very slippery rayon.

My four shaft Tools of the Trade 32 inch loom was crying for a warp, as of tonight I still haven’t received my shipment of parts to rebuild the Macomber loom (tracking stopped saying USPS was going to deliver it tonight), and so over the past couple weeks or so while I’ve been waiting, I wanted to warp up another loom. My looms are much happier when they are warped.

I pulled my trusty copy of Marguerite Davison’s A Handweaver’s Pattern Book and started leafing through and found this really lovely block huck structure called Julia Larrabec’s Linen. There was a lot of surface interest, in different blocks, but all on four shafts.

I tried for a couple of days to find a repeat in the Skinny Majesty Variegated. I gave up. So I searched for other Skinny Majesty yarns, in solids that would coordinate, for the separate block areas where there is a collapsing huck lace weave. I did a yarn wrap. I thought this would work.

I wound the warp in short order, and threaded the loom pretty quickly. At the start of last week I was ready to weave.

I really wasn’t impressed. There wasn’t a lot of contrast with the warp, and I was honestly disappointed, the colors were so gorgeous on the cones. I showed my daughter. She said, “It’ll be fine.”

I sent a picture off to my weaving buddies, and they encouraged me to send a picture of it washed. I really didn’t want to do that because I knew it would collapse, and I really wanted to use this weft, and I really didn’t want to cut off what I’d done and re-tie on, and I was being just really really lazy. It’ll be fine I said to myself.

But it haunted me. I knew I should push ahead and see if I could do better.

I asked my daughter what other colors of wool crepe she had hidden in her bedroom, she has her knitting machine stash up there, and will occasionally abscond with all of a specific type of yarn for projects on the knitting machine.

So there was a beautiful chocolate brown. Sigh.

I started weaving the fabric with the brown, and yes, it did look better. Sigh.

So I just got over myself and cut off the sample and tossed the whole thing in the washer and dryer with a load of clothes.

Yeah, of course it is lovely.

I actually thought that because it is blocky in nature, that I really liked the block with the twill and that might be better fabric, to just weave the whole thing only repeating one block.

So I tried that, and yeah, it was OK, but sort of boring.

So I’m back to the full draft, of two distinct blocks using the brown weft, and now I’ll agree that it’ll be fine. Sometimes ‘good enough’ isn’t really good enough when you were being too lazy to really see what the alternatives are. I should know better…

At least it is really easy to weave and now I know what it will look like washed. It really will be fine…

So I did a thing…

Last weekend I taught a three day class, a real honest to goodness three day class. In Indianapolis. From my studio. They all met in person, and I sat happily in my studio, on Zoom for three days straight, with my laptop focused on the classroom, and basically I just hung out, keeping busy watching the screen in case anyone came up to the laptop on their end to ask a question. The whole weekend went swimmingly well, from my perspective.

The group met together to create a vest from leftover fabrics, scraps, handwoven pieces, samples, whatever they had. They got, as part of the class, my 500 vest pattern, and the fusible backing and the pressbar, in a kit shipped to them. I lectured, was available for questions, and because they also employed the use of an iPad, they could carry it over to someone’s work station and really zoom in (pun intended) on what someone was working on, especially pattern alterations, and I could direct the student how to do the alteration I wanted them to do, with multiple people assisting. I could clearly see what they were doing, and the only glitch was because I was looking at my screen, through someone else’s rear camera from their screen, at a person sitting backwards, facing the camera, my orientation was completely off. I found myself prefacing a situation by asking, where is Florida? That seemed to help everyone know the orientation of what I was seeing and I could direct them accordingly.

They were to trace their size pattern and create a test garment, which I evaluated the first morning of class. I’m frantically creating YouTube videos to assist in this, so a lot of the work can be done prior to class. With the assistance of Mary Alice’s iPad, I really felt like I was there.

Anyway, once they had the patterns worked out, they cut a fusible foundation and laid out their pieces. Of course I have no pictures to show, but hope that they will eventually send me pictures of finished vests. Note to self, ask them to take a cell phone shot and email it to me every day. Duh…

So I created a sample for the class, prior to the class, and finished sewing it up earlier this week. Here are the images from my version of the pieced vest. I blogged about the components of this vest here.

But that’s not the thing that I did, referring to the blog title.

During the workshop, sometime on Saturday or Sunday, in a lull in activity, I checked my email. And there it was. Typically I get at least one email a week from someone who obtained a Tools of the Trade Loom, and has questions about it, because if they Google the loom brand, my name pops up. Probably because, the looms are no longer made, and I talk about them in my blog a lot, since I own 13 of them.

So this email was actually someone who had a Tools of the Trade Loom and was interested in selling it and did I have any idea of what it was worth?

It was a 12 shaft loom. I was a dealer for Tools of the Trade back in the 80’s. I love the loom. I have always loved the loom. And they find me. But I never knew that they made a 12 shaft loom, until I joined my guild and found out that one of my guild mates owned one, she isn’t far from me, she got it from a person in Oregon, and paid a fortune to have it crated and shipped back across the country to NJ. The loom was originally made in Vermont. She knows that if she ever dies, that I will pay her husband anything for that loom.

Anyway, I nearly had a heart attack, I have coveted a 12 shaft Tools of the Trade loom since I found out that Tools of the Trade actually made one. They didn’t make many, but here, I had a letter from someone who had one to sell. I asked how wide, this is sort of important, and crap… 55″ weaving width. Crap. I called my daughter to come into the studio, because I’m still on standby for my workshop, and she walked in and took one look at my face and said, “Who died?” I said, “Worse, take a look at this email…”

Long story short, my lovely beautiful brave, completely competent daughter got up very early Saturday morning, (tough for her since she sleeps till about noon) and ate the Taylor Ham, egg and cheese on an egg bagel I went out and got for her (It’s a Jersey thing…), packed up the Rav 4 with the trailer, and drove 5 1/2 hours to Rochester NY. She completely dismantled the loom down to just lumber, carried it all to the trailer, and reassembled it in the trailer, covering it with a couple of tarps, and tying it down to within an inch of its life.

She said the loom smiled at her when she walked in to see it. It is beautiful she said, barely used, gorgeous condition, but assembled wrong. The entire back beam assembly had been reversed. She corrected that for the trip home, and 5 1/2 hours later, she pulled into the driveway, I raised the bay door, and we moved it into the garage studio, making this shaft loom number 37, and there is no more room in the inn.

Earlier in the week I had a discussion with all my other looms, letting them know that the Macomber was coming to live with us, it was a rescue, and I expected them to play nice together. (See my previous post). Looms can get jealous, and sometimes they get uncooperative, but I expect harmony in my lovely studio. I have a feeling that while I was sleeping there was a bit of mutiny and my 13 Tools of the Trade Looms decided once and for all to cement their solidarity against this Macomber interloper and find me the mother of all looms, the largest one Tools of the Trade ever made. There is no other explanation…

And so dear readers, I am in the process of assembling the shafts, correcting some things that weren’t quite right. I’m putting 225 inserted eye heddles on each shaft, though that number is fluid. I have over 100 shafts in my studio that all take the same size heddles and I am constantly moving heddles around. I’m very efficient at this, every shaft is clearly marked with how many heddles it has, and I’m very careful and organized at how I accomplish this.

So I opened a bag that came with the loom and found this…

Sigh…

So for the weavers who are reading this, we need to have a discussion on heddle etiquette. I’ve taught many many times in weaving studios, and taken workshops involving round robins, so I’m working on other peoples looms. There seems to be a lack of understanding in the weaving community about heddle etiquette in general. NEVER NEVER NEVER just remove heddles and toss them into a bag. First of all, that pretty much ensures that the fine wire heddles will end up bent and misshapen. Secondly, each heddle is canted a specific way, and they all must face the same way. Heddles are canted so that they nest close together when a loom is warped.

THEY ALL NEED TO FACE IN THE SAME DIRECTION… I spent hours, days really, sorting and replacing all of the heddles on more than 100 shafts when I was involved with the donation of a dozen Macomber looms from William Paterson University to Peters Valley School of Craft. You cannot imagine what a mess. Apparently no one got the memo that all heddles had to cant in the same direction. Towards the right if you are right handed and towards the left if you thread with your left hand. You can easily make a loom cant left by flipping the heddle bars on any shaft. Takes about 15 minutes, depending on how many shafts.

NEVER NEVER NEVER just remove heddles and toss them into a bin or bag. Heddles are carefully slid onto holders, some use stitch holders in knitting, I’m particularly fond of old pairs of steel or plastic knitting needles. With a couple of rubber bands, I can effortlessly slide heddles off and on the heddle bars, storing them in a tidy fashion, canted in the same direction and they can easily move from one loom to another.

I spent about an hour per shaft tonight, resetting the heddle bar hooks, wiping down the shafts with Howard’s Feed and Wax, and fitting 225 inserted eye heddles all canting in a right handed manner. I’ve only got two shafts done. This will take awhile.

Meanwhile, it is Mother’s Day. My daughter gave me the ultimate gift by volunteering to drive to Rochester NY to pick up this beloved loom, and I let her sleep until noon of course. Once she was up and functioning, we headed out to the garden to do the Mother’s Day weekend planting of the vegetables. Our zone is pretty much safe to plant after Mother’s Day. Tomatoes, basil, peppers, cucumbers, all went in amongst the radishes, turnips, kohlrabi, and other greens. I’ve been eating garden salad every day.

I thinned the turnips, kohlrabi, and radishes, and brought in a bowl full of thinned baby greens, took a handful, washed and destemmed, and sautéed them with a couple of chopped anchovies for a nice veggie side dish with my turkey burger. I know. I love anchovies. Turnip greens sautéed with anchovies is just the best… I put in a whole flat of Marigold’s, and then scrambled to clean everything up because it just started raining. It has rained steadily on our new plantings well into the evening. Life is good. Or wet. Depending on your perspective.

And so dear readers, for those of you who care for another living breathing thing, be it a loom, an animal, a person, a child, a parent, you are all mothers. And for those whose mothers have gone on to another life and another world, know they watch over us, and guide us, and give us hope, and comfort and really good memories.

My delightfully curious cat couldn’t wait to explore that stack of shafts spanning the counter over the sink. Our fur buddies keep us smiling and on our toes.

So I did this thing, and now it is tough to move around in my studio, but this thing I did makes me really really happy and I am accumulating lots of good loom karma. I’m still waiting on the shipment of parts to get the Macomber loom functioning, and I am already winding a warp for one of the other empty looms. There is always a loom needing a warp. Sort of an ongoing thing in our house…

Stay tuned.