What will you explore during Halloweave?

Comments

theresasc

I picked up a new to me Glimakra loom today.  I am hoping to have it up and weaving soon.  I have to finish a scarf on a loom that is where this one needs to go first.  It is always something!

Erica J

Very exciting! I hope you get tgat done, so you can join the Halloweave House and do dome exploration during Halloweave!!!

Erica J

I hope other folks are feeling adventerous. Even if you haven't decided yet, let me know what you might explore this Halloweave!

louiseinoz

Hi Erica

Thought you needed more company on your explorations!  

I have 4 levers on the front of my Toika loom which I was told are for some sort of double harness arrangement. There was a discussion about double harness weaving on one of the Facebook weaving groups recently which reminded me that I had found a project in Vav 1/2013 which seems to use the same arrangement. A friend gave me some long heddles and long eyed heddles.  I've made a  warp from yarn that's not too precious, long enough for sampling and hopefully a scarf, and narrow enough for the number of heddles I have

So I hope I'm good to go once I finish tidying the half of the garage that serves as a studio.  It could be an interesting voyage

Erica J

Awesome! Thank you for joining me in exploring! I think you will love double harness weaving. I love my drawloom attachment and may be able to answer some questions for you. :)

Queezle

In addition to sewing, I will get back to my Bateman Boulevard weave towels.  I ordered in 20/2 unmercerized cotton for the tabby weft, which I think will help that project considerably. 

Is it an exploration to say I want to explore having an organized studio?  yea, thought so, totally lame...

Erica J

Queezle,

I don't find your exploration or organizing your studio lame at all! I am constantly exploring different ways to organize my studio. Thankfully, Oli J is incredibly patient and always happy to help me try a new method! :)

I look forward to reading about what you do to further organize your studio!

10ashus

That is a magnificent exploration, seeking Shangrila. A place that functions smoothly and you get pleasure being in it. Send reports throughout your journey. I might follow your trail in January. Weaving has so much odd shaped stuff.

theresasc

I have the new Glimåkra set up, the loom that it replaced is gone so I had to do some work in the studio.  It still is not there.  When I sold the 8-shaft Kessenich,  a bench that I kept temples, extra heddles, and other miscellaneous weaving items in went too.  I am having a heck of a time figuring out what to do with this stuff.  I really need to figure out a good storage solution for reeds and temples.  I have seen the wood wine racks from Ikea used, but with all the things that I have I would need 4 or 5 of them and I just don't want to spend that much.  I have to put the thinking cap on for this.

Louiseinoz - when you have your Toika set up, I would love to see pictures.  Now that I have a cm loom I want to try double harness weaving.  I don't really have the space for a true drawloom but I know there are ways around it.  Your levers sound interesting. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erica J

Today I started something completely new. I am winding a warp for a warp weighted loom with a tablet woven header.

I got to tablet weabing set up and 5" out of 40 wound! :)

I have known this was common amoung Viking age textiles for about 20 years, but this is my first time actually doing it.

 

Queezle

Theresa - you are right that the Ikea wine holders do not hold much, and for stability, you need to mount one on top of the other.  I put two together maybe 6 months ago, and use them for my reeds, my lease sticks, some miscellaneous dowels, and warp separator.  In all my weaving live (25+ yrs!) I've used the same roll of cardboard.  It has served me well, but, err, like me, is showing signs of age.  Last weekend I went to restore (a habitat-for-humanity store with used building materials), and picked up a wood blind for warp filler.  I spent today washing it up, separating the wood from the strings, etc.  It fits nicely in the wine racks (better than the cardboard), I just hope I like using it.  Here are some photos of my organization.  I own 5 reeds, 2 are in use.  Suggestions for how to make it look cuter are welcome!

stuff contained

Enough sticks?

theresasc

but I just have so much stuff.  I have at least 20 reeds not including the 7 that are in looms right now, plus I think 4 raddles, who knows how many warp sticks, lease sticks, the parts to my trapeze.  I just have a lot of stuff - sometimes its kind of embarrassing just how greedy I am.  But what can I say, I have stuff - LOL!  Most of the warp sticks are not too much of an issue because two of the looms have warp stick holders.  I also have 4 temples that now need to go somewhere other than on the floor next to my drafting table. 

I really need to redesign my stash room.  Originally it was considered a closet and it has clothes rods with shelves above them along 2 walls.  I have wire stack shelves on the lower shelf and that has most of my coned cotton.  Then there is a tall book shelf with wool and other assorted coned yarn.  Stuffed into the corner between the tall bookshelf and the wall shelves is a stack of raddles, lease sticks, etc.  The room is large, I think its like 8' x 8', but it just is not user-friendly for me.  Again, there is just so much stuff.

stash room

ETA:  Okay, I have a panoramic photo of the stash room - it is a mess.  To the right of the door is a wall with shelves for my fiber library and all the reeds are leaning on the wall.  I had to fix something Microsoft messed up in order to even get this picture up - urrrr - Microsoft.

I keep debating if I should set some kind of storage out into the actual room, but then I would probably have to do something about lighting.  It is after all considered a closet.  This is my big challenge, weaving and fiber arts take up so much space.

10ashus

Erica, those vikings were intrepid explorers. So are you for exploring this historical technique. I have never seen it before. The words describing it left me turning in circles. The photo got me back on the trail. Wonderful and fascinating.

Erica J

It is pretty fun! I'm not looking forward to lacing all tge string heddles, but winding the warp is pretty fun. I posted more photos of the process on my project page. The project is shared in this group, so should be easy to find! :)

Thor (not verified)

Okay, weavers... I'm in! First ever Halloweave!

My adventure for this month is to stock up an inventory, weave down my stash, try out a new (to me) weave structure, and schedule a trunk show of my work to be held in November.

I'll get specific when I get to my computer 

Erica J

Very exciting and very "viking" of you Thor! :) I can't wait to see photos from your turnk show! I love that these are becoming such a thing, I think it is a great way for artists to sell their work.

Thor (not verified)

I can't survive without structuring myself so here are my "specific measurable results" and parameters of my adventures for Halloweave -

1) No more posting to Facebook about specific projects. General weaving related posts are ok, but nothing specific. Seems like when I do, things sell before I get them off the loom. Admittedly, a good problem to have, yes, but I never have any product when asked to join a show. Marco Polo didn't have Facebook. I will surivive.

2) Weave ONLY from my stash. No new fibers or yarns for the entire month of October. Now, THAT is a frightening thought.

3) I will try at least one new weave structure during the month of October. I tend to do the same structures over and over...yes, there is a variety of them, but I need to push myself to learn something new.

4) I need to complete at least two scarves or one shawl EACH WEEK in the month of October.

5) I will schedule a "Trunk Show" of my newly inventoried woven creations for sometime in November. I will also invite both of my sisters to participate (one is a multi-media artist specializing in Fine Art Portrait Quilts and the other is an accomplished crocheter and dye artist!)

All right. There it is. It's out there in the World and I stand accountable to each of you.

louiseinoz

The 'studio' (aka half the garage) is tidy and all sticks and shuttles are restrained for the moment 

Here's a picture from the front of the loom showing the levers and from the back showing the rollers and strings.  And the heddles as well, hope they are the right length.

The warp is made - what a pity that I now have to leave for work but maybe tonight

Sorry about the pictures and text all mixed up but as I said, off to work, no time to change it and it more or less makes sense

 

ShawnC

As usual, you're all productive-in many ways! I love to see more discussion of double harness weaving. Theresasc, you can try your hand at double harness weaving with your loom-no drawloom attachment needed. Before I got mine I used my Varpapuu to set up for skillbragd/smalandsvav (pardon my spelling). It is really quite fun. The reverse of how the drawloom is set up, with ground shafts (on CB mechanism) in the back and pattern shafts on elastics in the front, though both techniques require long-eyed heddles in the front. Just regular heddles in the back for the ground weave (plain weave on 2-4 shafts). In addition, some of the units for skillbragd aren't even threaded, and those that are, are threaded together so goes quickly, even though you're threading heddles twice. I will revisit this structure this winter. Just love the possibilities. I'm currently threading the drawloom with its second warp, a wonderful hand painted warp from Fairview Treasures. It's quite lovely. Still deciding where the other looms will go-basement I think. Oh, and there is a Facebook group called Drawloom Dreams for discussing double harness weaving. Some nice stuff there.

Erica J

Great explorations everyone!

I am exploring away, my main focus this week are my spinning explorations. As Team Captain for the Weavolution Spinzilla team, you probalby wont' see me here the rest of the week, but my know I am exploring and will be back to share my explroations here the beginning of next week.

I also hope to have some exciting news on the development front next week too!!!!

louiseinoz

Last night I removed half the normal heddles on my loom and replaced them with the long eyed ones, fortunately just the right length.  Then I put the right number of long heddles on some spare shaft bars, labelled them and put them carefully on the floor so they're ready when I need them.

Then I posted about it on the iPad and the iPad swallowed my post so this one is on the computer.

Tonight I'm planning to get the rest of the long eyed heddles on the loom and untangle to strings from the levers to the pulleys.  Could involve some trial and error as I have no information about where they should go.  I did work out though that it was a really good idea to untangle the strings before I start tying anything to them.

Stay tuned for the next instalment!

Yvonne K

Hi Louise,

What a strange contraption! This looks like quite an adventure and I'm waiting to see how the 4 pattern shafts are mounted.

louiseinoz

So am I Yvonne, but I'm just about to go to the studio/garage and find out. My first plan is to tie a couple of loops of nylon fabric cord to the castle, support the shafts on that one at a time and tie the strings, after I untangle them.  

The next challenge will be getting weights for them.   I don't think anyone in Australia sells lingoes, and my best guess is that it would cost $300 to $400 to get enough here.  That's a lot for an experiment so I think fishing weights will have to do, it will be interesting

Yvonne K

My drawloom set-up uses a bar through the bottom of the long heddles as well as the top. This bar can then be weighted. I think individual fishing weights would swing around and get tangled.

There's an old post somewhere from Sally E, describing how she made her own lingos from heavy gauge wire. Possibly under "home made equipment".

Yvonne K

Sally's post is under DIY looms and tools - "my drawloom". You might see more than you want to at this stage! Beware of the double harness bug.

Dawn McCarthy

You can sew little bags and fill them with rice or sand to replace the lingoes - easy, inexpensive and quiet (although I love the tingling sound of the lingoes)

Dawn

 

 

louiseinoz

Thanks Yvonne and Dawn. Last night I got the last of the heddles changed over.  The loops of nylon cord worked well and it was easy to tie the strings to the heddle bars. It turned out the strings weren't tangled, once there was some tension on them they were fine.  I think the height of the bars is wrong because I tied them on in the up position and I assume that the extra shafts sit at the normal shaft height at rest.  I'm sure there will be plenty of adjustment to come so I will sort that out later.

From your comments, I will start with bars through the bottoms of the long heddles and weight them with the fishing weights I normally use and make some little bags, for them  Just had a look at the fishing store website and they are on sale this week, how good is that

I started threading last night, well I just did one 4 end unit, but stopped because it was late and I knew I needed to be fully alert. It felt a bit like patting my head with one hand while rubbing my stomach with the other.  My weekend it not too busy so hope to have some weaving to show by the end of it

theresasc

enjoying this double-harness venture.  Louiseinoz, it sounds like it is going to come together for you.  Once you have it set up please take lots of pictures.  I want to mess about with double-harness but I just don't want to go the drawloom route so what you are doing is very interesting.

 

I have officially completely finished a project woven on my new-to-me Glimåkra Standard.  I have created a project page here.  I have to say that I just love, love, love my new loom.  It is so sweet to weave on.  I am still not too crazy about the tie-ups, the chain tie-ups on the Cranbrook are easier but I think I will be able to get this worked out fine.  Right now the loom is out of commission for a little while.  I am expanding the loom to 10 shafts/10 treadles and I had to send a lamm in so that the modifications will all line up.  Hopefully all the parts will be back home next week.  I am anxious to get another project on the loom.

 

I did some things with this project I had never done before - used a quill shuttle and paper quills.  The shuttle worked very well with loom and they are so quiet.  Actually the entire loom is quiet, just that nice thunk of the beater hitting the fell.  The beater is very easy to move back and forth in its brackets, nothing like trying to move that pig beater on my Cranbrook.  With having a 110 cm weaving width, this new loom is very nice to handle all adjustments.  When I was done weaving the towels, just simple 2/2 twill for a starting project, I took some of the thrums and wove an inkle band on my mini-inkle for hanging loops.  It gave the towels a really nice finish.  All around, a really great and fun project.

Erica J

Due to the focus on Spinzilla, I decided to see about speeding up my 2 block exploration by using Photoshop. I have woven one repeat of each possible block combination (none, just pattern in block one, just pattern in block 2 and pattern in both). I took a photo that I will manipulate in Photoshop to explore difference combinations over the weekend, then I'll start weaving up some that I think might be the most interesting. :)

theresasc

I would never have thought to use Photoshop, be interested to see the results.

Queezle

I've moved on to start working on the purse itself.  I still wish I were better at sewing in a straight line, but my experimentation with the two smaller bags has been informative, and I realize that there is a bit of forgiveness in the fabric.  Here is my progress on the front.  The dark blue is a commercial fabric, which ends up being mostly covered, and I used to allow the handwoven to be in all the exposed areas.  The central handwoven is a large pocket, and two interfaced sidepieces are pinned.

another zipper

louiseinoz

Here is the beginning of my first double harness sample, seen from the loom side

and from the back, not a very good shot as it's limited by the apron but I already like the way it looks

While the setting up was a bit tedious and like everything will become much easier with practice, I had no idea that the weaving would be so easy.  It's just 1/3 twill, using 4 treadles in that order with occasional changes of the levers.

I decided to start by weaving a sampler, 12 picks of all the 14, 4 shaft combinations.  So far I have done 1,2,3 and 4, only 10 to go but I'm starting to have a bad case of the 'what ifs' - what if I reversed the order, what if I do different numbers of the repeats, what if I mixed up the order, what if I used something other than 1/3 twill on the ground shafts, what if I used any of the myriad of 4 shaft patterns on the pattern shafts instead of the point threading that's there???

The setting up was not really that bad and I decided to start with the lower shaft bars as weights.  I have 20 to 40 ends on each one and read somewhere that 10 grams was about right for one medium size thread. I weighed the shaft bars - 275gm - so thought I would try that first.  It seems to be working for the number of ends I have and even though I thought I might have trouble because it's a narrow warp and the bars could slide around, that hasn't been a problem either.  No matter how careful I am with threading, mistakes appear from nowhere so I have fixed the 2 mis-threaded ends and also fixed the 2 ends which somehow took a circuitous route to the front of the loom around an adjacent block of ends

Here's a picture with lever 1 raising pattern shaft 1 from the front

and from the back

Not sure how this looks on on other monitors but my heddles are not the pink they appear to be on mine.

My only problem is with the shed for the ground shafts.  The project I am using said to tie shaft 1 to rise and 2 to lower on the first treadle,shaft 2 to rise and 1 to lower on the second treadle, shaft 3 to rise and 4 to lower on the third treadle, and shaft 4 to rise and 4 to lower on the fourth treadle.  This is what I've done and it's a narrow but still weaveable shed. I don't understand why I don't have to tie the other 2 shafts to lower on each treadle.  Is it to do with the way the pattern shafts work or have I missed something?

I guess that will be another 'what if'

Back to the loom - this journey could go anywhere but not on this warp as it's only 4 meters, so wish it was a lot longer!

Yvonne K

Hi Louise,

welcome to the damask learning curve. This confused me for a while, too, but as you are threaded and weaving, look to see what is happening. Your tie up is correct - at rest, all the threads are at the bottom of the long eyed heddles. When you raise a pattern shaft, those threads rise to the top ( or thereabout ) of the long eyed heddles. To make the two opposite twill blocks, one of the threads on the lower position must rise, to weave the ground as 1/3 twill, and one of the upper threads must sink to weave the pattern blocks as 3/1 twill.

the other shafts must remain stationary, with threads on the bottom of the shed.

The problem is, the shed that sinks must have a way to get back to their original position. This can be done with counter weights on the countermach jacks or with elastics suspending the shafts. I will try to attach some photos from my loom in another post.

Yvonne K

the weaving looks great, you must be pleased, and yes, those heddles look to be a lovely shade of pink.

To continue my post from above, I want to add three photos. I have used large rubber bands, attached to Texsolv, that are positioned to just support the shafts at each end. When the sinking shaft goes down, the band stretches then returns the shaft when you take your foot off the treadle. The rising shaft rises above its bands, then returns to rest on them when the shed is changed.

shaft 1 is lowered, shaft 6 is raised. The rest stay neutral.

 

Well that came out a bit disordered, hope you can make some sense of it. In the first photo, shaft 1 has been lowered and shaft 6 is raised.

Erica J

The what if is what this group is all about!

I have only woven a few more pieces of damask than you have. I had the same question about raising and lowering only 1 shaft myself. You obviously only raise 1 shaft, because you are opposing the 1/3 and 3/1 structures to create the pattern you want. Since you are only raising one shaft, you only need to lower 1 shaft for balance. If that doesn't make sense I think it will as you weave a bit more. This is also why there is such a narrow shed, but after a bit more weaving you will get used to that too. :)

Erica J

So far my main explorations have been spinning. I have spun up 4 different colorways in a variety of ways, mostly combining 2 togther. I have spun over 2,200 yards this week, no that many yards of final yarn, but that much spinning, if that make sense!

variety of skeins in greens, purples, and reds

Queezle

Multiple harness weaving - I know this doesn't mean 8 harness - but it confuses me...  I think I am missing some basic concept here.  help??

 

I continue to explore converting my schacht standard to a walking loom.  The treadles are attached to a horizontal bar by just three screws.  I can remove them, raise the loom, and then pull them back about 12 inches.  That might be enough to walk the treadling.  My challenge will be (a) making the loom secure in its raised position, (b) raising the loom enough for treadle action to clear the lower horizontal beam, (c) extending the treadles so they are long enough to reach the tie-ups, and (d) extending the tie-up cords for their longer reach to the treadles.   

I am working on all these issues. I think I have items (b) and (c) solved, and am wondering if texsolv will give me options for D. 

Advice welcome!

Erica J

Queezle,

We are using the term harness in the traditional sense here. That is harness as a set of shafts, rather than a synonm for shaft. As far as I know you only have a maximum of 2 harnesses, such as on my drawloom. I have one set of shafts that weave the ground structure and another set of shafts that control the pattern. In the case of damask weaving each thread passes through heddles of each harness type.

I hope that makes sense. :)

theresasc

reference used to confuse me too.  I think that comes from people interchanging shaft and harness to mean the same thing when it is not.  Once I learned that my basic looms are all single harness looms with x-amount of shafts it made sense.  Drawloom and that type of weaving has ground shafts (one harness) and pattern shafts ( another harness).  I sort of understand the concept of how it works and I know I want to understand more.  I pulled Sara von Tresckow's book out this weekend to read some more.  I am so excited with Louiseinoz and her project.  I know there is a way of weaving damask without an actual drawloom and sometime I want to try it.

BTW, louiseinoz,  I like seeing your pattern appearing.   That has got to be so cool to see it working.

Queezle

that makes sense but now i do not understand how 2 harnesses gives you more options than a single harness with lots of shafts  

theresasc

which is weak, I am still on a huge learning curve.  It is where you can place the design with more than one harness vs having many shafts in a single harness.  With singles, the design goes from selvage to selvage and stays the same doing what the tie-up tells it to do.  With multiple harness, you can place the design anywhere in the cloth.  This works with geometric and figurative designs.  That is the best way I can explain it.

louiseinoz

Sorry for the silence, I’ve been having far too much fun weaving to write about it, although I am about to make up for that with a very long post today, and what great questions Queezle and theresc.  They have really made me think because I too am on a huge learning curve and am at that stage where I can produce the cloth but still don’t quite understand it. Hopefully, trying to explain it to you will make it clearer for me

The first warp is off the loom and I have 2 samples and long piece which will become a scarf.  The sett is not quite as firm as I would like it to be even though it was what I would normally use for this yarn and I wonder if there is something in the weave structure which requires a closer sett.  That’s what sampling is for

I think what is happening is that I am weaving 3/1 twill because that is what is happening on the 4 ground shafts at the front of the loom with 1/3 in the other blocks.  If you look at sample 1

the 3/1 twill is obvious at the beginning, bottom of picture, and in the first few blocks, you can see the 1/3 appearing, the structure is the same, but a bit more weft faced, as this earlier piece, woven with 8 shafts in twill blocks. 

The big difference is the very easy way to change the number and order of the blocks.

The second sample,using the end of the warp is the original VAV design, woven with 3/1, 1/3 twill in orange and in broken twill in white.

And here are a couple of views of the scarf piece, not mended, not wet finished but looking pretty good. 

Perhaps a ‘weaver’s eye’ view from the loom might help. 

This is not the whole loom but taken to one side to show more detail. I’m sitting at the loom, the front 4 of my 8 shafts have long eyed heddles on them and are threaded 1,2,3,4 all across the loom while the shafts 5,6,7 and 8 are just sitting there, doing nothing.  The front 4 shafts are tied up so that I can raise each shaft by itself – and that is all my feet are doing, is weaving 1,2,3,4 over and over again.  Across the top of the loom are 4 levers, each with strings that go over the pulleys at the top and through the 2 brackets on each side so that there are 4 strings hanging down on each side, in the space where I think my 8 shaft loom might have had another 4 shafts at some stage.  Each pair of strings is tied to a heddle bar which has long heddles on it and these are weighted at the bottom with another heddle bar.  The 4 shafts at the front are the first harness and the 4 extra at the back make up a second harness – hence ‘double harness’.  What I have could be described as a baby drawloom – I only have 4 levers.  A real draw loom normally has many more extra shafts and needs the loom to be extended at the back.

The loom is threaded so that the first 4 threads are threaded through the heddles on the first of the back shafts and then those threads are threaded, one to each shaft, so 1,2,3,4, on the 4 front shafts – that’s why threading it is a bit tedious, each thread goes through 2 heddles.  I was using a normal point twill so the next 4 threads went through the heddles on the second back shaft and then through 1,2,3 and 4 on the front.  And so on all across the loom using the heddles on the back shafts in groups of 4 according to the point twill order.

To weave, I just select one of the levers to raise a back shaft and treadle 4 picks – 1,2,3 and 4.  Then I can repeat the same block if I want to make a stripe, add another lever if I want to make it wider, or just keep playing around which is what I did with the long piece although I took a photo of the beginning so that I could make the other end similar.  I think – and hope those who know more than I do will correct me if I’m wrong – that I am weaving a form of pick up by using the levers to select the blocks I want to pick up.

Which brings me to Queezle’s question about the difference between 2 harnesses and just lots of shafts.  Let me try to explain by using a variation of the old Rumplestiltskin story.  I’m locked away somewhere, someone tosses me a scarf like the one I’ve just woven and I’m told that something really bad will happen to me if I can’t reproduce it within a couple of days.  Rumplestiltskin appears (he of ‘spinning straw into gold’ fame, sure he would be able to weave as well), but he tells me that as I can weave, I will have to weave it myself although he is able to wheel in any loom I choose, hopefully warped threaded and ready to start. 

Obviously I know I can do it on my loom but perhaps I should consider the other options.  I could do it by using ordinary pick up on a 4 shaft loom, one block at a time but I am under time pressure so that’s probably not a good option and I have a stalled pick up project at home because it’s just so slow.  I could try a top of the line computerised Jacquard loom but I presume I would have to enter the design into the computer in some way.  If I had to do it pick by pick that would also be tedious but I think I would probably be able to photograph the original scarf, convert it to a digital file and weave it that way.  That would be a good solution as long as RS is paying and providing the space.  The original VAV article suggested that when the fabric had been analysed they thought that it would require 32 treadles to weave and I suspect 16 shafts though I could be wrong on that one.  Not sure about you but I have enough trouble with 10 treadles.  It could probably be done on a 16 shaft table loom – but that would also be tedious.  I think it could be done on a 16 shaft computerised loom but the design would still have to be entered into the computer and I would lose the spontaneity I have for exploring ‘what ifs’ with my current set up.

I could of course ask RS to wheel in a proper draw loom with 50 draw cords – I could use just 4 of them to reproduce my scarf – and then spend the rest of the time playing with the other 46 (or however many the loom had) to see just what I could do with a loom like that. You might have worked out by now where this is going, even though there is a huge amount of exploration I can do on the set up I have, I am already tempted by the idea of a full size draw loom or at least a draw loom attachment for my existing loom which is what I think Yvonne has, her loom looks very familiar.

So Queezle I think the answer to your question is that a double harness gives you different options, not necessarily more options, than just having lots of shafts or treadles.

The real draw loom is not going to happen for a while so I’m off to plan another project for the baby one.  I’m thinking Tencel, set a bit closer than normal, with the second harness in a simple overshot pattern but before I do that I will need to tie some more heddles as I planned the first warp to use all that I had.  I have worked out that I’m enjoying this enough that it will be good to have enough heddles to do something a bit wider and in finer yarn.

theresasc

Louiseinoz that was a really good explanation.  Someday I want to put some kind of baby drawloom on the Glimakra,  that was one of the reasons that I bought it.  I don't think I want the whole big drawloom setup with the bridge and everything, I don't know if I have it in me to do that, but something like what you have on your loom would be cool.

louiseinoz

Glad you liked the explanation teresasc.  I'm not sure where you would get a baby draw loom.  Mine came attached to my second hand loom but with no explanatory information at all.  I'm pretty sure it came from Toika, like the loom, because the metal finish is exactly the same, but I have not been able to find any information despite emailing them and writing about it in weaving forums like this one.  Deep down I've been hoping someone will reply that they have one just like it and this is how they use it.  That hasn't happened and it's only taken 10 years for me to get it working which has turned out to be much simpler than I thought.  You could always get a full size drawloom attachment and start by using as many extra shafts as you felt you could manage.  I have to say that after just one project, I'd be using more extra shafts if I had them but I don't so I'll just keep exploring what I've got

Last night I twisted the fringe, mended the skips and wet finished my scarf.  I'm very happy with the result.  I knew that the yarns I'd used would not change much with wet finishing, the cream is is labelled 'UNFELTABLE' after a previous wet finishing surprise, but they did felt a little, just enough to make me realise that the sett was right all along. The handle is OK, not quite as good as I would like but I did use the 'not too precious' yarns in case it was all a disaster, that's why those yarns were not in the 'really good' box.

Here's a picture 

and I'll post the others on the Project page

It's a quiet day at work so I am consulting with Mary Atwater and Josephine Estes (rather than paying customers), looking for a suitable small overshot pattern, once I decide which one to use, I'll be able to tie some more heddles and move on to the next project when I get home.

Queezle

That is beautiful, and I think if I just re-read everyone's explanations, I'll both understand, and become covetous.  Your patient time working to understand this unusual loom has certainly paid off.

louiseinoz

Even though I just joined the Prcrastination House to share a simple raddle addition for Queezle and theresasc, I haven't really been procrastinating on my double harness project.  

This weekend mostly disappeared into birthday celebrations but I have managed to find an overshot draft I can use, wound a warp, made 2 heddle jigs and some more heddles, and got it on the loom threaded and tied on.  I think I might have had some beginners luck with the first double harness warp as this one gave me a few challenges but it seems to be weaving OK now.  I've started sampling and I'm auditioning wefts, these look better in real life but not sure I've found the right one yet and playing with the structure

Erica J

Awesome, I love the draft and the warp color. I love the phrase "auditioning wefts"! That is very accurate and a fun way to look at sampling, which I have come to love!!! I look forward to seeing more auditions. :)

louiseinoz

It may still be October somewhere near the International Date Line but I suspect November 1 has just arrived.  Today was a public holiday here, for Melbourne Cup Day - that's right for a horse race!  My plan for the day was to bake Christmas cakes - the heavy fruit cake variety which need a lot of preparation and very slow baking - and to finish the first scarf on the red double harness warp.  I'm pleased to say both are done, and while the cakes are still cooling, I thought I'd share the scarf.  To be honest it's not quite finished as it hasn't been washed yet but the fringes are done, the ends are darned in and I've taken some photos.  There's still enough warp for 2 more scarves, they should be finished in time for the Procrastination House

It's been quite a journey.  A month ago I had no idea how to use the small draw loom attachment on my loom and now, a month later, I've got it working, have made 2 scarves and have all sorts of ideas about other things I can do with it.  I've also realised that a full size draw loom is a real possibility.

Queezle

Louise, that is a lot accomplished in such a short time.  Lovely second scarf, and this second harness business has me very intrigued.

 

Erica J

Fabulous! I know I have been fairly quiet, I have been expoloring and will share soon!

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