SpinnySpinny

I have been up to my eyeballs in loom, quite literally at times as I’ve spent far too long sitting under it messing with stuff. But the first real project on the big loom is now ready to weave. It only took 47 thousand re-dos with the tie-ups to get the pattern correct. Some comments:

I didn’t forget as much as I was afraid I had.

After five years without a floor loom (and longer since any serious project,) some skills are a bit rusty. (Kinda like the loom.) But I know what I’m doing and it mostly went the way I expected. I’m still working out the logistics of dealing with a huge loom. It’s big, my arms are short and this has been something of a problem.

Twelve harnesses have so many more ways to mess up than four.

I managed to thread my pattern without errors, but I spent far, far too much time working out the tie-up. I had a eight harness two block twill to start with and I was extending it to three blocks on twelve. Working out how to connect those four other treadles to get the pattern I wanted was a big pain. I would have saved myself some time if I had written out my design in full first rather than relying on the one in the book plus some scribbled notes. But it only somewhat helped, because when I finally charted out the whole thing, I got it wrong anyway.

I’m going to have to sort out the technical difference between shaft and harness.

I use “harness,” from the people I was around when I learned to weave. But many books and articles use “shaft” and I don’t understand why. Aside from the occasional comment on the difference, the two words appear to be used interchangeably. This never bothered me before, but now I’m reading more in the search for ideas for all those extra harnesses, err, shafts. It’s possible that understanding the difference may help me better design drafts. Or it could just be “one of those things.”

Stupid errors are still just as stupid.

I didn’t have any nice cord to tie up the apron rods, so I used what was lying around. It broke. It wasn’t a complete disaster, but it was a pain. Replacing the cord on the other end of the warp is going to be even more of a pain.

Some things I thought would be a problem were.

I had never tried folding a loom with a warp on it. But after bumping my head on the back beam a dozen times trying to fix the tie-up, I folded it up instead. Yes, it works, to a limited extent. My warp tension did recover, but only after some fiddling with it. So as a general rule, I’d say don’t do it in the middle of weaving something you care about. If you must, wait until you are ready to start the next towel.

Some things I thought would be a problem weren’t.

At the moment, I have one boat shuttle with (what appear to me to be) teeny tiny bobbins. But it turns out you can seriously over-fill them and they still fit in the shuttle, so it isn’t so much a problem as I thought. I want something larger for wider fabric, however. It’s hard to hide where you started a new bobbin.

I still can’t remember how to hemstitch without the diagram.

I copied two pages out of the borrowed copy of Learning to Weave. One was the reed substitution table, so I can figure out how to sley 40 epi in a 12 dent reed. The other was the hemstitch diagram.

The quill makes a much better bobbin winder than I expected.

That silly pointy thing I bought for the spinning wheel actually works quite well. It’s nice to have a foot-controlled bobbin winder, this
leaves you with both hands to deal with the yarn. The only problem is getting the bobbin to stay on the shaft. For these particular bobbins, a big hair elastic shoved in there works great.

This project is a bunch of hand towels from the 8/2 mill end cotton. The surprise pack of yarn included many colors I’m less than thrilled about, but most were not outright horrid. That means they are fine for gifts.

No spinning this week, because I’ve been weaving. I started a project of several bags woven as a tube, so as something of a swatch I’ve used the same yarn to weave the narrow shoulder strap. It’s way firmer than the finished fabric should be, but will give me an idea of how reasonable my guess at the sett is.

One thing about weaving narrow fabric on a big floor loom is it’s very easy to beat it too firmly. You have all that weight against almost no resistance. In this case, it’s what I want. I’ve set the warp for the strap very closely, the recommend sett for 5/2 cotton is 12-18 ends per inch and I’ve got it at 24. That means I have to beat the hell out of it to get enough weft in so it’s close to the same wefts per inch as the warp. With the mass of a 45 inch reed against 4 cm of fabric, this is no problem. I tried a sample at 16 epi just to see what happened and I could barely see the warp. I’ll probably try the wider piece at 18 and see how it goes. I can always fix it if it’s really horrible. Re-sleying the reed to change the sett after you’ve finished warping is tedious, but not all that complicated.

The bigger problem of a narrow band on the big loom is managing the warp tension. I used a knitting needle instead of the big steel apron rod to tie on, and with it only attached to the cloth apron in three places it tends to shift around. This is not good, as every time it moves it changes my warp tension. The warp is only tied to the rod in two places, so if one bundle slides one way the other half goes the other. It was ok as long as the rod was buried in the roll of warp, but once all the protective paper came off I just had it sitting there. Every time I advanced the warp, I had to fiddle with it. I finished a shuttle of weft with about 40 cm to go and decided it wasn’t worth winding another.

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.

I have a third millspun reproduction and the Andean swatch now. The swatch is drying, so it will be a while before I can get pictures up. But on the second attempt, it worked nicely. A little weird warp tension here and there, and I have no clue about the traditional way to finish these things, but it’s done. I spent most of the day weaving, once I got it warped the correct way, it went quickly. Even if I did forget where I was every other pick for the first two repeats. I even found a use for those 0000 double pointed knitting needles I foolishly bought — they work great as shed sticks for needle weaving the starting edge. I wove in various ends that could conveniently be woven in and neatly tied off the rest. The other end has a fringe, to show how the overtwisted warp works and also because I didn’t want to fight to open smaller and smaller sheds.

Tomorrow is another fleece-buying opportunity, err, spinning event. I’m sure I will see all kinds of things there that I just Must Have Right Now, but I will have to avoid temptation. I already have too much raw fleece sitting around the living room in plastic bags because I can’t put it in the storage unit like that and it takes forever to wash 400g at a time in the sink. I was going to bring the swatch to weave but once I got into it I realized it was too fussy because I didn’t know the pattern very well. But I did get the bread started for my potluck dish! I had to promise The Boyfriend that I’d make a little one just for him, he really likes bread and I don’t bake as often as I used to. (Yes, I did indeed make the trek west with my wagon full of household goods and a jar of sourdough starter. I haven’t used commercial yeast for about eight years now.)

Last night was the monthly get-together at the local spinning shop. I picked up a few things I’ve been needing: new drive band, shed sticks for weaving and FLYER CLIPS!! Finally I can replace the nearly-dead ones on the Insanely Fast Flyer. Plying this Andean stuff just kills them. I’ve been trying to locate some replacements for months. Was it last summer? I don’t even remember anymore. I also got some Egyptian cotton top, which I will try for the fine cotton yarn and see if I like it better than the Pima. I picked up some alpaca/silk, not normally something I am interested in, to try it with the supported spindle. Early results are mixed, I may end up with the cotton pencil roving after all and this turns into a holiday gift exchange goodie. I really didn’t want to do a whole skein of cotton on the supported spindle. I’d rather not do anything on the supported spindle at all, actually.

I finished two of the millspun copies and added the new pictures. I spun the fat single for the Brown Sheep sample and then had to go back and remove twist because it had too much. Ick. Now I guess I’ll start on the next one, I’ll do both from commercial Merino top. The others would have come out smoother if I had done that, but I had to use fleece to match colors.

I’m waiting for the water to boil to steam more blue yarn for a second attempt at the Andean swatch. I hosed the warp tension so badly I gave up and pulled it apart. I can still use most of the yarn but I need more blue and white for the pattern. If I’m going to re-do the white yarn anyway, I am going to go get some different fleece out of storage. The Blue-faced Leicester is nice, but the staple length is shorter than I’d like. I think the Shetland will do. I hope to get it warped by this weekend so I can work on it at a local spinning event Saturday.

This winding skeins business is getting really old. I’m doing fast skeins right now, so it seems like I get two new ones finished for every one wound.