Lovely Little Looms

I have been more that a little obsessed with my collection of pin looms lately. There's something very compelling about being able to weave small pieces so quickly. I started off with my Hazel Rose Multi Looms - that's the two square looms at the top of the picture. These looms have the pins placed in groups of three so that you can weave squares like those worked on old Weave-It Looms which were very popular during the twentieth century in the United States.

With this type of weaving you create the warp by wrapping the yarn round the pins in three directions and then use a long needle to weave across. The finished squares have a dimpled edge.

Squares woven on the 4" and 2" multi loom

That bigger square is one of a pile that I'm weaving with James C Brett's Marble Chunky yarn. I find this is the thickest yarn that I can use on these looms. I'm using two shades and plan to sew them together into a blanket eventually.

As for the tiny 2" loom, that's been useful in planning colours for a new weaving project I'm planning - more of that later.

These looms are called multi-looms because you can weave on them in various ways, including diagonally. I've just bought a set of Hazel Rose's looms specially designed for this bias weaving.

This is the Tiny Weaver Set, a square and a triangle loom to weave shapes that can be sewn together to make lots of exciting patterns.

With this sort of weaving, you wrap the pins and weave at the same time, using a long crochet hook to pull the yarn through.

The resulting squares have straight edges and I like the look of the diagonal weave.

Straight weaving and diagonal weave

I'm using two more shades of the James Brett Chunky to weave a blanket, using just the square loom from the Tiny Weaver set. You can make all sorts of exciting patterns just with squares. Here's the design I planned after looking through my quilt books.

i'm starting in the middle and working outwards in a sort of spiral; this is what I've done so far.

Somehow, this looks more like one big piece of fabric than knitted or crocheted squares do when they're sewn together.

I haven't forgotten the little triangle loom though; that's going to play a starring part in the Temperature Blanket I'm planning to weave next year. I've been inspired by reading about weavers working on their temperature blankets this year on the Looms To Go ravelry group and I thought it would be nice to have a go too. It took me ages to draw a plan of what I want to do.

The main part is going to be made up of woven triangles, one for each day of 2019. I'll weave each triangle in a shade to match that day's temperature. I've got 19 colours ready, one for roughly every two degrees Celsius. The months will be marked by squares and then I'm going to do a key to the colours at the side. The whole thing will be bordered with grey squares. I was going to use navy blue as in this sample but it's just so hard on the eyes to work with very dark colours.

I had thought I would have to buy lots of colours in a thick yarn but then I made the happy discovery that two strands of Stylecraft Special DK are just the right weight. Here are a few sample squares ...

The two grey squares are samples of my border and month squares. All those little squares are going to be the key to the 19 colours. I've stuck labels on the back of these with the temperature range that each one represents.

I'm really looking forward to starting work on this blanket in the New Year. It will be nice to be doing something that isn't one of my own patterns, just like a normal person.

The other little loom I want to show you today is very exciting. 

This is a Turtle Loom from Blueboonet Crafters and, as you can see, you can weave hexagons on this one. These looms come in various sizes and a friend kindly sent me the new Fine Sett Turtle Loom. The pins are close together on this loom which means you can use finer yarns. This is great for me as I have a LOT of leftover thin yarn. 

The Turtle Looms combine bias and straight weaving which makes them fun to use. First you weave diagonally ...

... then you thread your yarn on to a needle and weave back and forth for the rest of the hexagon.

By the way, I love the new pencil case I found to hold my weaving tools. Not only is it a beautiful green but it's made of a very tactile silicone. I may have to go back to Office Outlet and get another one. They had a bright blue ... and a yellow ... and ...

Anyway, here are my hexagons sewn together.

I'm using Hayfield Spirit DK which is a thinnish DK and this will be a scarf. I'm adding the hexagons in rows of three (those dark ones on the right are the last row to be added).

Another very exciting thing I've discovered with this loom is that, if I use thin sockweight yarn (about 400 m per 100 g), I can sew two hexagons together to get a hexiflat. When I sew these together, I'll have different colours on each side.

These are going to be a cowl when they grow up. I'll use single hexagons at the sides and fold them in half so the finished cowl will have straight sides. Does that make sense? Here's a little mat I made using a double hexagon in the centre and then folded hexagons around it. 

I may have got just a bit carried away when it came to embroidering those little flowers.

I hope you've enjoyed looking at my loom collection. These are such fun to work with, I can really recommend them. In fact, I think I might just do a bit of weaving now ...