10 Shaft Experiment

Last week I told you about my loom upgrade to twelve shafts. I decided to adjust gradually to the full set and so have started with a ten shaft project.

I had been thinking for a while about a tea towel warp and have looked enviously for quite a long time at the reversing hearts draft but it needed ten shafts. This was my chance to try it out. Now this draft came to me courtesy of Susan Harvey from Thrums. I think she used it as her first warp on her Louet Spring when it was new. I am grateful to her for encouraging me to give it a go, thank you Susan !

I chose to use 8/2 unmercerised cotton in a mixture of natural, two shades of pink and a pale yellow. This was the first time I had wound a warp with many changes of colour. I concentrated on having the right order in the cross but just stopped and changed colour as required letting the thread hang loose until I needed it next time. Here is the ten yard warp finished, tied up and ready to come off the warping board.............

Putting it onto the raddle wasn't the easiest job. I found the cotton to be very sticky and the threads hard to separate even with the lease sticks in the cross. This picture shows it almost done. You can see the piece of white non-stick shelf lining stuff I use to put the loose threads on until I need them...........

Winding the warp on took a while ! Tony sat on the beam side and I tried to control the sticky threads. They didn't even seem to want to lie in the right order and some bits seemed looser than others. I think I need more practise at winding a multi coloured warp ! The width on the loom is twenty two inches and I struggled to keep an even tension on all of the warp threads. When we got to the end of the warp the thread lengths were very different which wasn't a good sign. All in all not very happy at this stage ! Not much I could do really so fingers crossed I carried on.

Threading was much easier! The three yellow threads were always on shaft s 9,10 & 9 and the naturals on 3,2,1,2 & 3. this made checking the threading very quick and easy to do....................

Now for another 'go' at my sleying technique from Ellen in Denmark. Last time I posted about this I hadn't taken many pictures and may have confused people ! I'll have another go ! Step one, I put the front bar back onto the loom and laid two pieces of wood through from front to back then laid the reed on top lying flat, as you can see here............

I start to work at the left hand side, that's the opposite to the way I used to do it. Here I want to sley two ends per dent. In this picture you can see my left hand is palm upwards and I put the first pair between my pinky and ring finger, the second between my ring finger and middle finger and so on until I am holding four pairs of threads......................

Holding the threads firmly between my fingers I then turn my hand over in a clockwise direction so that the palm is down. the first two ends are then on the left hand side...................

All I need to do now is push my sleying hook up through the dent, catch the left hand threads and pull them through, repeat for all four pairs of threads and then start again. I didn't have enough hands to take a picture of me pulling the threads through but managed this one !

I find this to be a much easier way of sleying and I get faster at it the more I do it ! I should say that I do this having warped from back to front so the threading is already done and now all I have to do is put the reed into the beater and then tie onto the front stick. For safety I do tie the threads in bundles under the reed as I go just in case of any mishap putting the reed into the beater.

Anyway, I hope these pictures maybe make the whole thing a bit clearer !

Next the tie up. I tied up ten treadles without any difficulty, it just took a wee bit longer than doing eight. I have a question though............ what do you all do with the tie up cords not in use, do you leave them hanging or move them all out of the way ? It just looks a bit untidy to me !!

So, ready to go ! I managed to weave a sample using some scrap yarn and I think the threading is good, the pattern looks great anyway. Sorry about the toes of my slippers in the picture !!

 I am not sure what to do with the edges though. I will be using some purple weft and some dark green weft and my floating selvedges and edge ends are natural coloured. This means I have spotty edges ! Can't decide whether to live with them, these are tea towels after all, or whether to add coloured floaters or even coloured edge threads. Trouble is I will use more than one colour of weft.

Well, you will have to wait until next time to see what I decide to do !! 

All that remains is for me to thank you all for your support and encouragement over the year. It is just wonderful to know that I have a network of friends from all over the world keeping an eye on my weaving. I know help is at hand whenever I need it. Thank you for all the comments you have left, I find them very motivating.

I hope you will have a very Happy Holiday Season and enjoy being with family, friends and those special to us. 

Both Tony and I send you our kindest best wishes for a peaceful and happy year in 2011.

I will look forward to updating my weaving journey for you in the New Year.

Dorothy

Loom Upgrade !

Hi there - you may remember back in February that I went to Holland to collect my new Louet Spring Loom. At that time I decided that eight shafts would be quite enough to keep me going forever !  I was OK with that for a while but back in the summer I began to think that maybe I should have gone for twelve shafts after all. I realised that I could buy a four shaft extension kit especially for the Spring so have been quietly saving up !! I recently sold a few scarves and the egg plant shawls and so was able to justify (to myself I suppose) the purchase of the kit.

The package containing the four shafts arrived last week and Tony was volunteered to put it together !

The kit was made up of four treadles, four harnesses and eight lamms as well as all the cords and screws to make it happen.

First step, read the instructions !!!

The first step was quite tedious ! Each of the new treadles had to have fourteen screws screwed into guide holes so that was a lot of screws ! Then the ten existing treadles each had to have four additional screws added. This did take a while !

Then the loom had to be laid flat on the floor before having the new treadles fitted.

Here I am with fourteen treadles, looks a bit scary !

Tony added one of the long cords at a time fixing it at the top with the plastic clip................

Each of the four new cords had to have a harness and two lamms attached. To make this happen there were plastic clips to be attached to each end of the harnesses.............

The kit didn't include any new heddles but luckily I had ordered extra ones so before the clips were added I added the new heddles.

I seemed to make heavy weather of getting these into place ! In the end I had to do each one individually, 200 in total !! Once the clips were fixed the cords snapped into place like this........

So, four clips on each harness and a clip on each end of each lamm, that's a lot of clips !! There was some comment about sore fingers !!

Once each set of lamms was in place I added the cords, short ones for the lower lamms and longer ones for the upper lamms. I had a cord for each slot on the new lamms. My existing lamms didn't have a full set and I often had to borrow from another lamm ! Here I am looping a cord over the lower lamm..................

I will confess that we did this job over two days, it was surprising how long it took and after two of the four shafts we needed a break. However, at last I had a full set of cords, you can see all twelve from this top view...................

And here is the side view.................

And lastly the view of all twelve shafts in place....................

I am delighted with the result and can't wait to get started ! I was trying to think how I was going to know which treadle was which now I have fourteen ! I didn't want to put stick on numbers on as sometimes I might only use eight. After a short absence in his attic workshop Tony appeared with odd looking bits of plastic !  He had cut small pieces from some electrical conduit plastic and they just fitted over the treadles as if made to measure. He added my sticky numbers and this is how they looked.........

And on the treadles..................

They can be moved around and I can use a few or all of them - how cool is that !!

Husband in the good books  after all that and I am ready to go with a twelve shaft loom ! It has been pointed out that I have no more room, twelve shafts is as good as it gets !!!

I am going to start with ten shafts but more of that next time !

Just in closing, I thought I should share a couple of pictures of the finished snowflake shawl, hope you like it.

That's all from me for this post, I'm off to look at twelve shaft drafts !  Bye for now.

Snow Experience and Weaving Update !

Hi folks - my apologies for missing last week's blog ! We were having an unexpected snow experience !
We went to our little holiday place at Crail the weekend before last to check on pipes and things as low temperatures and snow were forecast. The weekend was very pleasant although we did have a bit of a snow shower on the Sunday. Being close to the sea it wasn't too bad and after draining the pipes etc we set off for home on Monday morning. The country roads seemed not too bad for about twenty miles but then we joined a main dual carriageway and found it to be almost completely snow covered with traffic moving very slowly and some cars skidding all over the place. With another 100 miles to go I was more than a little anxious so we decided to stop and assess our options !! We have friends who live in the nearby town of Dunfermline so I phoned to ask if they knew what the motorway was like. They kindly suggested we go to their house for a coffee. This we did and stayed for four days !! Level snow fall of about 17" and not much happening to clear the roads. In fact the Forth Road Bridge was closed because of snow for the first time in its 45 year history ! Our friends made us very welcome and we were safe and warm and comfortable. The weather took a short breather on Friday and it allowed us to make it home using motorways and avoiding our usual cross country route ! The moral of the story is......... don't ask the Stewarts for coffee, they will stay for four days !! It will take us a while to live that down. We are now the best of friends though so every cloud has a silver lining. This is the view from the house last Thursday............

Luckily I had a knitting project with me ! Why are you not surprised by that ! When I was in Denmark I bought a beautiful kit for a jacket designed by Hanne Falkenberg, a Danish designer. the jacket is called Mermaid and will look like this when it is finished.......

The pattern is knitted from the left hand side all the way around and finishes at the right hand side, a method I have never done before. It starts with a strip of icord from which you pick up stitches and then has eight gussets all the way around formed using short rows. All of these are new techniques for me so the project is a bit of a challenge. Our snow stranded week gave me a good chance to get started and this is how it looks so far................

The big hole is the armhole with another gusset. The actual knitting is easy garter stitch but I just love the colours, a turquoisey mix, green and sea blue for the icord edge and gussets. You can find Hanne's designs here on Ravelry. I'll keep you posted on progress ! Would you believe I went all the way to Denmark to buy Shetland yarn !!

Once we were safely home and settled in it was time to catch up on weaving ! Gillian my younger daughter has asked for a shawl woven by Mum for Christmas ! The loom is threaded up with 8/2 tencel in iris with my favourite Swedish Snowflake pattern by Ruth Morrison in Twill Thrills page 55. I have said before that I am not comfortable with sleying the reed and when I was with Ellen she showed me a different way of doing it ! I will try and explain, this picture shows that I have the reed lying flat rather than being fixed into the beater. It is actually lying on two pieces of wood going front to back on the loom...........

Now to try and describe what happens next ! I started at the left hand side and turned my left hand palm upwards. using my right hand I picked out the threads I needed, two, two then three in this case. The first group went in the slot between my pinky and my ring finger, then the next group in the next slot and so on until four slots lay between my fingers. Then I turned my left hand over to be palm down. This put the groups in the right order to be sleyed. All I had to do was push the sleying hook up through the dent and catch the group in my pinky/ring finger slot and pull it down through the reed followed by the other three. I got faster as I went along once I had got the hang of it and you can see in the picture I am about half way along. Belt and braces approach, I did tie a knot after each handful just in case the reed slipped off the wooden blocks ! All I had to do when I had finished was re-insert the reed in the beater bar and hey presto sleying done and no aching back ! So my thanks to Ellen for introducing me to that technique.

When I am ready to do the treadling, Tony helps me to lift the loom onto two wooden stands and then I can sit right in at the treadles with my legs under the front bar. This makes the job of tying on the treadles very easy to do and again no backache !

I have worked hard at the weaving this week, not much attention to the house or husband for that matter ! I had lost a week and this was urgent. There was enough warp for two shawls and I have just taken them off the loom this evening. The second one has a weft of 10/2 tencel in a slightly different shade. I do like weaving with that 10/2 weight ! First shawl is on the fringe twisting board so it looks as if it will make it for Christmas. This first picture gives a view of the snowflakes on the loom but is completely the wrong colour, sun was shining in the window .............

There will be at least one set of keen eyes out there who will notice that my up and down snowflake arms are taller and thinner than my left to right snowflake arms ! Is that something I have done or is it just part of the design ? Anyway, this picture is a truer colour perhaps.....

So, I think I have brought you up to date with my weaving, knitting and weather experiences, hope you have enjoyed them and I will look forward to your comments.

I will leave you with the view from our front window here at home ! The large expanse of white beyond the trees is the Castle Loch !

Bye for now !