Hi all. My name is Hakim and I live in Mt Barker in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia. I am very new to actual weaving but have a long standing interest and 20 years ago even hand-carved a working replica of a wooden shuttle I saw somewhere online or in a book that was used with a backstrap loom.
That is as far as it went until I responded to an ad for a class in Middle Eastern rug weaving last year. The class never happened; cancelled twice because of insufficient numbers; but I persisted and was eventually given the phone number of the teacher, an Afgani man who had gone to Iran as a refugee and from there, a decade later, came to Australia. We started one on one lessons towards the end of last year.
So I have built a medium size vertical loom and am currently 'playing', learning the basics and making lots of mistakes.
Then my school teacher wife came home saying the school wanted to get rid of an old loom: I am now the proud owner of an 8 shaft loom which I learnt last week is a countermarch. Its been reassembled, dusted and oiled but that is about it so far - can't get much greener than that :) I eagerly await delivery of a couple of books on setting up and warping the countermarch.
Now to the lament part. After hearing that the rug weaving course had been canecelled for the second time I decided to emulate the Little Red Hen in the children's book and 'do it myself!' So I started researching and found that the state library had a copy of a now unavailable book. So I scanned and printed some relevant bits from which I could build a loom and start weaving. Then, based on instructions in the book, I ordered some 12/6 seine twine and some Tuna wool in a range of colours. I also bought a set of tools which the Craft South had imported from Afghanistan for the planned but cancelled classes.
All ready to go I met my teacher, Ahmad, for the first time. Our first attempt at warping the loom showed my choice of 1" aluminium rod was not up to the job of supporting the warp; back to the drawing board. 1.5" steel pipe at the top and 2.5" stainless steel tubing for the bottom works very well and allows the weaving to be rolled down and around to the back. Hooray, we are away!
Now it's Christmas and we have a break from lessons and I decide to start a new project on the back unused part of the warp. But I want wider spacing for the warp. Ahmad had warped the loom and I had 78 warp threads in 3". So with my existing project now in the centre of the rear of the loom, I spread the warp threads at the bottom and top of the loom as wide as the existing project would allow and end up with 6". I secure and lace as I had seen him do and start weaving and knotting.
All is well until I decide the warp is too loose. I totally forget basic physics and crank the tension up until the warp threads 'sound' the same as Ahmad had them. I sit down to watch tennis with my wife and soon after - twang! A weird sound. The warp is now slack but it is all still intact. Then I see my original project.
Lesson learnt.
Hakim