Last week I spent £264.70 on lots of sticks of wood.
To be fair, they are sticks of wood with a purpose. Most of this pile became a stand for my weaving loom.
And some of the little ones made shelves to clip on each side of the stand. They even have a slot to hold your scissors.
I'm on a mission to make my weaving easier to do and less painful for my back, hence the stand. I'm not sure I would have bought it just for this loom but it comes with an extra brace for the bottom so that it can also be used for the bigger sizes of Ashford Knitters Looms too. It just so happens that I have a 20" loom in my sights for the future so this is good.
I've had my loom for years. You can tell that because it has the blue plastic parts, rather than the more grown-up (and boring) brown ones they switched to quite a while ago. I have woven lots of scarves on this loom but I've been wanting to branch out beyond plain weave for some time and also to try sewing with handwoven fabric.
Rather than worry about what to make I've decided that sampling is the way to go. I'm going to try lots of the techniques in Jane Patrick's wonderful The Weaver's Idea Book. The first one I did was a long warp with lots of different pick-up stick patterns which were so exciting to do.
Who knew that you could weave all sorts of textures just with an extra stick of wood? Well, lots of people probably but it was news to me. Needless to say there were two more pick-up sticks in that pile of wood ... and a few more shuttles too.
Not only is weaving samplers very freeing - you can make all sorts of mistakes and poor choices and learn something from them all - but it will give me lots of practice with warping. I want to train my muscle memory so that I can do it more easily and it would be nice if it didn't hurt my back so much too.
This leads to one of the other benefits of getting the loom stand. I can use it when I'm warping the loom. Before this I've always had the loom on a little low table or stool which wasn't the best thing for my back. Now I can put the loom on the stand which makes it just about level with the table that I clamp the raddle to.
Once the warp is on the loom, it needs to be wound on which used to be very difficult until I bought this little device.
The plastic block clamped to the side of the loom is one of a pair that hold four dowels which control the warp as it's wound on so that the threads stay in order and the tension isn't messed up. This next picture shows it with the first two dowels in place.
As you can see, these go under the warp while the other two sit on top of it. Then the tops of the tension blocks are screwed down and off you go. I bought mine from Etsy; you get the dowels yourself as they have to be cut to suit the width of your loom. The first time I used this system I followed the instructions which said to take the warp off the raddle before winding and this resulted in crossed threads so I wasn't very impressed. This time I left it on the raddle and let the stand with the loom on move across the floor towards it as I wound.
The next problem I had was when the loom met the end of the table the raddle was on. I'd planned to take the loom off the stand at this point and move it on to the table but the clamps holding the tension blocks on were in the way. Finally, I came up with the bright idea of putting a heavy book across the warp and then taking the ends off the raddle. The book was heavy enough to keep the tension but light enough to move with the warp as I wound.
Best of all, when it came to tying on the warp ends, I didn't have anywhere near as much trouble sorting out the tension across the warp. It normally takes ages trying to get an even tension but not this time. So, what with the new stand and the warp tensioner, I had a much easier time warping the loom for this sampler. It still took me hours mind but I'm hoping to get quicker with practice.
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| Ready to weave. |
This sampler is yet more pick-up stick patterns, some of them calling for more than one stick - oh the excitement. I used King Cole's Bramble DK for the warp; the shade is Cloudberry. Then I've been trying all sorts of plain colours in the weft but they all looked horrible. The best of them was black but I didn't like even that.
There was too much going on with all that contrast and texture for my liking. Also I ran out of shuttles. I had to filch some from the old Spear's Weaving Loom I bought at Orinoco a few months ago.
This is actually a 16" wide rigid heddle loom. I have yet to have a play with it; the first thing is there isn't a stand for the heddle so I'm wondering if I could rig something up. Anyway, in the meantime, it gives me four extra shuttles.
Yesterday I decided enough was enough and switched to using the same yarn for the weft as the warp and it's settled down nicely. I can see the texture better despite the variegation in the yarn.
I absolutely love weaving so it's good to be able to find ways to make it easier to do. At the other end of the scale I'm still enjoying my self-imposed task of weaving 20 hexagons in each of the 20 shades of Bramble to make a big blanket. So far I've woven seven lots - that's 140 hexagons. Here are the first 120 ...
.. and the seventh set, Blueberry ...
This is the little loom I'm using for my hexagons, together with the shade I'm using at the moment which is Heather. The loom is the fine sett original hexagon from Turtle Looms which is probably my favourite pin loom.
I didn't hink this shade looked particularly exciting but I've been loving seeing how the hexagons come out. I've had everything from dark green, through shades of purple to something that reminds me of raspberry ripple.
Four more to go and then these can go to join the others. I started off with a small basket, then this bigger one and it won't be long before they have to move again.
I have to say a big thank-you to my daughter who turned that pile of sticks into a loom stand for me on her last visit. Not only that, there was also this waiting for her ...
She turned this pile of sticks into another folding step stool for me. I have one on the middle floor but have been wanting one on the top floor for ages as that's where my craft room is. Climbing on and off a chair to reach things is a pain. So now that will be easier too. These are great stools; the step folds up inside so it can also be used as a small table.
That's it for now. Happy weaving to fellow weavers and, if you're not a weaver, why not?
