SpinnySpinny

I just spent the week at a conference where talk about threads and fiber had nothing to do with textiles. Aside from getting a bit of knitting done while waiting for things, nothing of note happened this week to talk about here. But there is some to catch up with, as I had to drop everything to get ready.

I pulled the sari silk fabric off the loom and it immediately twisted up. (Not shown in the non-image, above.) High-twist singles will do that, enough that sometimes a fabric just refuses to lie flat no matter what you do. (Narrow stuff is worse: less mass, less inertia, nothing to keep it in place. Wide fabrics may only curl at the corners.) I was able to mostly get this one under control by ironing, but it took a bit. I’m reconsidering my previous idea of cutting it apart for coasters, when it gets wet it will just curl up again. I suppose I could mount the pieces on sheets of cork, but covering up the back side makes it less of a weaving sample. So off it goes to the Textile Aging Vault while I contemplate.

While I was busy, my package of mystery weaving yarn arrived. I wasn’t able to pick it up from the mailbox until today. I bought 25 pounds of 8/2 mill end cotton, stuff that is generally used in industry for lightweight sweater knits. Some of the yarns are even waxed, a dead giveaway that it’s for machine knitting. I was able to include general color suggestions, so I’m fairly happy with the results but some is a bit odd. I asked for natural, white or pastels and specifically requested no orange. I hate orange, it makes me have nightmares about bad Halloween parties. I got a good amount of bleached white, several pastels and a dusty medium blue. There were other darker neutrals I’m not too thrilled about, like a really strange brown-green, but still colors that can be overdyed darker.

And then there was the large cone of that wonderfully subtle shade generally known as OSHA Orange. We’re talking serious highway safety here, my personal nightmare yarn color. The kind that makes people ask if they can use your deer cooler. I have absolutely no idea what I could do with this, the only things that immediately come to mind are hunting gag gifts and that’s a lot of work for a joke. The only dye that would cover up this monstrosity would be black. Maybe.

Everything is working fine with the loom, I’ve decided to weave one long strip of fabric and cut it apart for the coasters. The sari silk yarn is very textured, which tends to make the selvedges a little messy. In general, it’s weaving ok although once in a while I have to stop and untwist a snarl. It’s still a single. I’m using a stick shuttle (the only thing I have that will hold enough thick yarn) and doing a very narrow fabric, so I end up fiddling with the weft every pick anyway. I think for a wider fabric, I’d skein and set the twist again under high tension before weaving with it to reduce the tendency to snarl.

So with my first project on the loom, I can tell you one thing I’m not doing again is using all twelve harnesses for plain weave. I did it just to make sure everything was working correctly and get a feel for threading. But every shed is lifting six harnesses, along with all those extra heddles. That’s pretty heavy for no good reason.

The heddles are back on, I decided to only put 150 per harness because I had them already counted out in groups of 50. If I need more than 1800 heddles for something, I think I can go back and put them on. I think it will be a while before I get to that.

Of course, as soon as I got everything together, I had to warp something. That’s what I’ve been doing instead of updating the website. I had just enough on a tube of carpet warp to match some sari silk yarn. I’m planning to do some coasters, if it turns out well I’ll give a set to the guy I got the yarn from. He’s a local, and I’ve helped him out at a few shows.

And, now that the camera is better behaved, I have a picture!

It’s huge. After working with this, I know I’ve been correct all these years in turning down offers of 60 inch looms. This one is quite enough, thank you. Even trying to reach through twelve harnesses to thread the thing is entertaining. And to think I was looking for a 36 inch, 4 harness.

There are a few things to work out in the warping procedure, the first is to find some way to lock the beater in place for sleying. Trying to wrestle with yarn and sley hook while the reed keeps moving is no fun. My other Leclerc had this problem as well, I don’t know why there isn’t some standard way of dealing with it. And there is also the same old problem of getting wire heddles to move around when you want them. I can see I’m going to have to undo the clips that hold the heddle bars in place every time I thread this thing. Otherwise the heddles won’t move. Even after I tied on to the back, I was still trying to get the heddles in place so the warp lies straight. Fortunately, undoing the top clip is enough. I’d never get the bottom ones back on after threading.

So I have 2088 heddles. That’s enough to do the full width of the loom at about 18 ends per cm or 46 per inch. I think that will keep me busy for a while. Now I just have to get them all back on.

This afternoon I started back on getting the loom ready and got quite a lot done. All the major pieces are assembled and the next thing is to deal with the heddles. So I’m counting to determine how many I have and how to distribute them on the harnesses. So far, I’ve found that I’m missing one wing nut (for the treadle assembly) and I could use a couple more tie-up cords (to attach the treadles to harnesses and create patterns.) Nothing major. I decided to not put a rug under the loom so I can get the dust mop in there for cleaning. There are rubber pads on the bottom to protect the floor and I’ll likely pull out a small rug or two while warping to catch dropped items. I still have to think about how to protect the wall and floor from over-zealous shuttle throws. At least it’s not right next to a window this time (and the wall directly to one side is bead board, not plaster.)

This loom is about as large as I think I am capable of handling, as I can barely reach across the full weaving width. As it is, I have to fold the back beam in two stages because I can’t reach both ends of the adjustable braces at once. If I ever attach the second back beam, that is going to be a real problem. Related to that is that this thing is very heavy. I had to adjust the position a few times and it’s a big pain to move once it’s all together. Before I got the front beam assembly attached, it was threatening to fall over whenever I unfolded the back beam.

One thing I’m going to have to get used to is the loose front and back beams. My previous loom was securely attached and on this one they are loosely fitted on pegs. It’s nice for working around the loom, but it also means if you grab the beam it’s going to come away in your hand. This very nearly sent the whole back crashing down on several occasions. When it’s fully open and there is a warp on it, it’s not going anywhere of course. But if it’s folded, that could create a major disaster.