Warp Swap

Having got the CB loom polished, assembled, beamed, entered and gated I settled down to weave but after awhile I started to have subversive thoughts. The gist of the thoughts were that it was silly to be weaving a twill scarf on this (CB) loom when I had a perfectly good semi automated loom (Glimakra 24S with Toika loom controller) that would do the job more efficiently. I debated with myself  on this for a while but was reluctant to logically follow an argument that would render this CB loom redundant and eBay fodder.  Then I remembered my lurking project that would probably be better on a completely manual loom - Overshot. I'll go through my reasoning in another post but my first priority was to clear the CB loom.

The objective as to move the warp from the CB loom to the Glimakra.

I cut out the weaving I had done and rewound the warp back on to the warp beam. I took the warp beam off the CB loom and suspended it over the warp beam of the Glimakra.

This picture shows the warp with its lease sticks in place and tied onto the apron rod of the Glimakra.

To get a bit of tension I slung a couple of weight over the CB warp beam.

The picture below shows the situation half way through the process. The warp is being wound from the CB warp beam onto the Glimakra warp beam. The CB warp beam is suspended from the Glimakra frame directly above the Glimakra warp beam. Lease sticks are in place to maintain the cross and tension is supplied by some weights.

It was not plain sailing all the way. At some time during the initial beaming of this warp I managed to cross over some of the bouts which meant that when winding from one beam to another there were threads that crossed over each other and were reluctant to move smoothly through the lease sticks and pilled together. The next time I beam a warp I shall pay particular attention to see if I can work out where my mistake lies.

It is all done now so on to the next stages. I have had a touch of flu over the past few days and have used my lucid moments to study overshot drafts and change my mind a hundred times as to which pattern shall be the first cab of the rank.

Temples - Weaving

When I was asked if I saw any interesting temples on my trip to India I said "yes". I think that virtually every weaver I saw in India was using one. Some were very basic but they all did the job.

When I was getting ready to weave on my CB loom I found that I didn't have a temple for the width of my warp. This is what I came up with and it does very well!

Gating the Loom

Luther Hooper got it right. He didn't mention that when one is doing it for the first time and has no "ideas as to the best way of adjusting the various parts for the work" one has to do the job several times before the ideas begin to materialise. I used instructions from the web (Glimakra and LeClerc have some good stuff and I particularly liked this document;- Hand Weaving ). It was only after three attempts at tieing up this counterbalance loom that I started getting a separation of warp layers that looked like sheds.

My eureka insights were;

- Immobilise the harnesses in their correct position before attaching the lamms and treadles

- Everything must be either exactly horizontal or exactly vertical (maybe treadles excepted) and it must be balanced

- To ensure the shafts rise and fall without tilting, don’t just wrap their support cords around the rollers, but actually fix them to the rollers

The last point is a quote from Peter Collingwood that I found at the archives of the a Rugtalk List (another site that is well worth looking at).

I am now getting shed that I can work with; I need to make a few minor adjustments but weaving should start real soon now!

Offset Twills

The pattern that I have threaded is "Offset or Skip Herringbone" from  page 27 A Handweavers Pattern Book - Marguerite P. Davison. I am using two close shades of orange and the resulting scarf using a black weftshould look a bit like the picture on the left.

The draft in PixeLoom looks like this;














MPD got the pattern from Oelsner - A Handbook of Weaves where there is a section on Offset Twills the drafts of which can be found at Handweaving.net. Such a plethora of resources for the weaver and so much to explore.

ENTERING THE WARP IN HARNESS AND REED

Hand Loom Weaving Plain & Ornamental (1910) - Luther Hooper


Nowadays we refer to this process as threading the heddles and sleying the reed but on a traditional loom"entering" is exactly what happens; you have to get inside it. I love the warning.

 These pictures here from Luther Hooper show and Old English Loom and the same loom prepared for entering.





Now here is the similar thing on my loom. I took off the breast beam, the knee beam and the cloth beam. The stool was too high but I found that a plank stretched between the two sides of the loom frame was at just the right height.

So as to get the lease sticks at the right height I clamped and clipped them to the back beam.

From experience I know that in order to be able to thread the heddles happily you must be able to sit and work with a straight back and see the lease sticks and the heddle eyes without any contortions. On some of my looms I have not been able to achieve this, but the setup here was perfect. Threading was a doddle!

I borrowed some boxes of pasta to hold the reed at the correct height for sleying. I started off with it too low but my back protested so I raised the reed and and everything was fine.

RUSSIAN JOIN

When I was cutting the warp of the warping wheel I managed to snip two ends in the wrong place so that they ended up about 12" shorter than the rest of the warp. I wasn't prepared to cut the other ends to match so I tried the Russian Join and it worked a treat.

TURNING ON, OR BEAMING

Hand Loom Weaving Plain & Ornamental  (1910) - Luther Hooper



From what I have read the warp has to go on before doing the final adjustment to the shafts and tying up the treadles and lamms on a CB loom.


I wound a 9 yard warp and puzzled a bit as to how to get it on. Usually when putting a warp onto a conventional (as opposed to sectional) warp beam my wife grabs the ends, applies tension, and walks slowly towards the loom as I roll the warp onto the beam. My wife was out so what I came up with was this;


The warp was tied onto the back beam and went up to a raddle secured to the back of the loom framework.

(I am not going to get into the debate about the respective merits of traditional european style looms versus jack looms but I do like having places to put things; the light clamped to the top cross beam is very handy.)

The warp then went up and through another raddle that I secured to the top of the loom.

From here the warp went across to the top of the beater of a second loom that was conveniently situated nearby.

The animals on top of the loom controller are a frog, a penguin and a crab.

The warp ends dangled down and were weighted.

I was able to sit at the back of the loom and wind on the warp and put the sticks in. I am never quite sure how many to put in so I settled on 5 per revolution.


Every now and then I had to nip round to the front and adjust the weights It all went very smoothly.

(The computer screen in the background of this picture shows an overshot design, not mine, that I am working on, trying to get some interesting colours happening)

A happy beamer!

Counterbalance Loom

I bought this loom in March. It  has been sitting in a shed that I am just starting to repair to convert into a studio. The time has come to give my wife back her dining room.

So the CB loom had to be moved and the safest way to look after a loom and keep it safe is to have it assembled and working. By moving some stuff around an repositioning my Glimakra Standard I have made enough room for the CB loom with sufficient space to use both looms.

I wrote to the Yahoo group WeaveTech to get advice on how to clean the loom and several people gave me excellent advice; I have bought and tried every recommended product and mixture. The framework I cleaned with equal parts of mineral turps, boiled Linseed oil and vinegar. The cross beams got special treatment with natural turps and Tung oil. I also did some garden furniture for good measure. I put Carnuba wax on the moving parts. Fantastic smells!Reassembly was straightforward. The CB rollers were in a hopeless muddle with cords tangled and heddles half off the shafts. There was sufficient information on the web to enable me to sort it all out.

Weaving Hat back on again

Well, I sort of hung up my weaving hat over the last four months, but not completely.

I had too many projects on the go and was dithering between them and not getting anything finished.

I put it most of it to one side for a while and did some different things and caught up with the jobs around the house and garden that had been accumulating.  I have built up a considerable supply of brownie points and have been easing myself back into weaving.

I have done a lot of needle point, woven off the last three scarves that were on the colourful warp that I have posted about earlier. I have also done fair bit of planning for some future projects.

I am currently putting a warp onto an elderly counterbalance loom which I bought some time ago but have just cleaned  up and reassembled. This type of loom is completely new to me so it is all very interesting and great fun. I shall post some photos tomorrow.

Four scarves finished

Having completed four scarves I decide to take them off the loom and finish them. This leaves enough warb for three more scarves. I wove a  two stick heading (thank you Peggy Osterkamp) and sampled a bit of novelty yarn with glitter whilst doing it. It is probably a bit belt and braces but I put some craft glue on the heading to make sure that nothing slips.

I did a lot of the fringe twizzling whilst we were away camping at a place called Knorrit's Flat. 

The pictures below show the end results. The colder weather should be with us soon so we will be able to wear them; having said that they were originally destined to be gifts.

Progress

We have been away for a couple of days trying out camping and getting ready for a bush walk  Back to my weaving today, another scarf finished and on to the next one. I am beginning to get to the stage where I want this warp finished so that I can move onto the next project. I feel a bit guilty about this the warp  has served me so well and taught me so much! 

Double Weave Lace

In that brilliant book  Doubleweave : On Four to Eight Shafts by Ursina Arn-Grischottthere there is a picture of a beautiful double weave shawl with what seems to be two layers of airy lace held together by almost invisible stitcher threads. My next project is to work towards weaving a similar type of shawl. There are going to be several stages to this, the first being to determine a weave structure. I shall start with double weave huck and weave a sample using something nice and visible like an 8/2 cotton. This will enable me to see how the different layers sit together and where to put the stitchers - these are the places where the two layers intersect to join them together. 

As always when thinking about double weave I have to go back to first principals otherwise I get confused as to what is happening. The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers, Madelyn van der Hoogt explains very nicely the ins and outs of huck lace and there is loads of material on doubleweave by Paul O'Connor on http://handweaving.net. 

The pictures below show how I have derived the doubleweave draft. The first draft shows the basic 4 shaft huck lifts; this is the draft for my blue top layer. The second is exactly the same but with the threading moved to shafts 5 to 8 and a similar movement on the treadles; this is the draft for the pink bottom layer. The third draft shows the two interleaved together and the lifting of the top layer out of the way when weaving the bottom layer.

Now as the draft stands both layers will be the same; plain weave top/plain weave bottom, huck lace top/huck lace bottom and so on.  The draft shown below has been modified to allow for different structures in the layers, in this case huck lace on the top with plain weave on the bottom. 

One of the problems I have with double weave drafts is that I find  it is difficult to see the structure from the draw-down. It is possible to see the warp and weft floats in the draft below but not easy. I use PixeLoom for all my drafting but WeavePoint, which I use to drive the control unit on my loom, has a cunning feature that recognizes double weave in the View/Fabric function.  So I derive the drafts in PixeLoom and view the fabric in WeavePoint. The screen grabs from WeavePoint of the blue and pink layers (top and bottom) are shown in the picture next to the draft.

The next think to do is to work out where to put the stitchers as there is nothing joining these two layers of cloth. There will be a bit of theory needed that I shall address tomorrow (I love theory but I know that it is not everyone's cup of tea) but their ultimate position will be decided when I weave the sample.

In the meantime I am still weaving my scarves and they are looking pretty good. I have put up an inordinate number of pictures of these scarves, so no more now until they are being modeled!

Keep it tidy

In my last few posts I have written about the fun that I have been having weaving a series of scarves with occasional diversions into technical stuff. I have also been doing a bit of planning for my next project (double weave lace).

Somehow during all this activity I managed to completely wreck my weaving area so there has been no weaving today and a big tidy up. My wife was less than complimentary about the difference I had made but I think that it is all a bit tidier. The top two pictures are "before", the bottom two are "after".

Considering the size of our house I am very fortunate in the amount of space that I have for my looms, equipment and supplies. I just put it down to a lack of charity on my part that I find the picture on the front cover of this excellent book intensely irritating.

Back of the loom

I rewove the last 6 inches of the scarf and all is good.

I decided to critically reappraise my arrangements at the back of the loom. Have a look at the photos below - it is all a bit industrial and just asking to get itself into a pickle. The selvedges warps are on netting shuttles and at great risk of getting tangled with each other and the live tension system. The netting shuttles sometimes unravel and the weights fall off and they tend to get caught in sectional warp beam.

One of the blessings of traditional European style loom is that there is always somewhere to hang things from. So instead of letting my weighted selvedges hang from the back beam I have raised them up. I have used two broomsticks and the pictures show how the new disposition looks. I have replaced the netting shuttles with tapestry bobbins and I can see them from my weaving position. I am of an age where dealing with things above waist height in infinitely preferable to messing around below knee level so that is another plus for this arrangement.

This is all fine and dandy (as my sister would say) but ultimately I am going to have to move to dedicated selvedge rollers. I have done a bit of a web search and I have found information from AVL, Luther Hooper and Bill Koepp. I need to find a wood turner - wooden cotton reels have disappeared of the face of the earth.

Pipped at the post!

I started and finished a scarf today which is a first. Using an office chair rather than a stool made a difference and I think that the fishing line in the selvedge may have enabled to throw my shuttle with a little more gusto than usual. It was all looking pretty good as the top two photographs show.

Unfortunately I got over excited as the finishing line drew near and didn't notice that the selvedge threads on the left were inexorably tightening - the results can be seen in the bottom two photographs. No great disaster as I can easily re-weave these last few inches. The cause of the tightening was two of the selvedge threads becoming "pilled" together and catching on the lease sticks. A silly mistake because I am supposed to check for exactly this sort of thing when I put in a new pirn.

Fishing Line in the Selvedges

There have been several informative posts on WeaveTech about reinforcing the selvedges with fishing line which is removed when the weaving is completed. I rather liked this one;

I have been told that my selvedges are amazing. I always use a floating
selvedge of the same fiber in the body for consistent shrinkage etc. also, I
was told, by another weaver in my group who does beautiful work that she
adds to that selvedge following the same track and dent, as the floating
selvedge fiber, no heddle, is 12 lb test clear fish line weighted separately
from the main warp and not wound with the warp. Then when you are done
weaving and taking the piece off the loom, pull out the fish line. It pulls
out easily and the other selvedge thread maintains your edge perfectly. This
fish line helps support and defend your edge while weaving and gives it
strength and preventing some draw in. I love it.

I have done this but using the fishing line to augment the existing outermost selvedge thread on each side rather than adding a floating selvedge. I had to cobble together something to tie the line on to and came up with a bit of wire cut from a clothes hanger. I had to fiddle about a bit with the weights and the warp tension on the end feed shuttle but once that was done I got nice even selvedges on each side and a greatly reduced draw in.

I am trying out using an office chair (adjustable) rather than a weaving bench. It is definitely more comfortable when working for any length of time. I have tended to keep stuff on the bench beside me so I had to commandeer the clothes peg basket as an alternative. It works a treat and now that I have bought a replacement for the clothes pegs I am no longer in trouble.  In the photo you will see that next to the basket is my "grabber". There is nothing worse than getting settled and then having to get up to retrieve something that has been dropped under the loom.

Weaving Timings & Checks

I have finished the scarf that was started yesterday - much quicker that I thought. I took some notes of times spent  and picks woven.

My basic unit of weaving is a pirn. I am using an AVL end feed shuttle and the pirn is about 5" long. I am getting about 140 picks per pirn  which is around 9" of weaving. I takes me just under 20 minutes to weave off a pirn. It takes me just over 10 minutes to to be ready to start weaving again. During this time I do the following;

• Have a stretch
• Wind a new pirn
• Unwind more yarn for the selvedges (they are weighted separetely and hanging from the back of the loom
• Check that the live tension system is OK (sometimes the cords get twisted)
• Check that the warp is moving freely over the lease sticks
• Have some water
• Change music (if necessary)
• Have another stretch
• Feather in the new weft thread

So with the weaving time and the change over/checking time I am getting around 18" of weaving an hour. In  theory this means that I could weave a scarf in four hours but I think that six hours would be more realistic; I find that I need to take a longer break every 90 minutes - a good turn round the garden and a cup of tea sets me up nicely for the next session.

Change of plans and distractions

I have been a little bit distracted over the last few days because I stumbled on a loom in a second hand shop that called to me! I walked away from it initially but in the end I just had to buy it even though I have no need whatsoever for another loom. It is a traditional 4 shaft counter balance of unknown provenance but with the dignity that comes from age and experience. It is now safely wrapped up in my shed waiting for me to do a bit of reorganisation to find a space for it.

 In my last post I confidently stated that I would be weaving a rosepath patterned scarf using a "Ginger" weft. Well I won't! I wove a little bit and it looked shocking. It was both insipid and messy; because of the variety there is in the warp the rosepath pattern was lost. It looked marginally better in blue and in yellow but was still a bit ratty. I also wove a bit of 1/3 and 3/1 twill - the Ginger yarn is going back on the shelf!

So, no more rosepath - it is a striped warp so I focussed on a pattern that would emphasise this. I have settled on a weave called Tricot which comes originally from A Handbook of Weaves by G.H. Oelsner ( I got it from A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Pattens by Carol Strickler.)

The picture below shows the theory;

and this is what it really looks like;

There is a very pronounced rib which looks good and the scarf is much brighter in the daylight than depicted in the photographs. I wove about 35" today so I should get it finished over the weekend.

Rosepath Scarf

The scarf with the "Soft Plum" weft is finished and I am just starting on the second scarf which will have "Ginger" as the shade of its weft and a rosepath design in both the threading and the treadling.

Again it is basically a four shaft draft expanded to fit 20 shafts and 16 treadles with extra shafts and treadles for basket weave hems and selvedges.