Looming about

[merrileemakes]

I've got plenty of art yarn left to play with after the previous scarf, so lets give this Kromski Weaver's Choice heddle another go.

Here’s the yarns I plan to start with



I’m going to try to make another V cowl in a low contrast houndstooth pattern. Like so.



For the little stripes of teal art yarn I’m going to leave long lengths of yarn hanging out the side rather than tuck the ends in, so the cowl will have long fluffy tassels all along its length rather than just around the V. I'm curious to see if this will work or if it will just look weird and/or stupid. The wearer may end up looking like they're getting strangled by a fluffy jellyfish. Only time will tell!

In the meantime, I’ve also warped my Saori loom. I’ve put on a pre-wound warp, threaded the heddles and sleyed the reed and was all ready to start weaving when… disaster.



I know it doesn't look like it, but yes this is a disaster. I’ve put the pre-wound warp roll on the wrong way, and the back beam can’t hold it under tension. There’s 100% no way I can weave like this, or if I try it will be just a total disaster of unusable cloth (ask me how I know).

But flipping the warp tube around is easy enough as it just slides off the back beam and on again in the correct way. This movement makes a gigantic twist in the warp though. There's no way you can weave with the warp all twisted like this. So time to carefully unthread everything in the heddles and the reed and then spend another few hours redoing all that work.



Ooooooooorrrrr, I could do something totally unhinged.

Let’s go with that.

So the problem is not that there’s an error in the threading, it’s just the wrong way around right? Surely I can just flip the shafts and reed to undo that twist and things will be fine. Right? Let’s try.

So I unclip the shafts from their springs and one by one push them back through the warp and down towards the back beam. I can undo the twist in the warp by twisting the shafts left to right and also top to bottom, so the left side becomes the right and the top becomes the bottom (otherwise the threads come out of the shafts heading to the back of the loom rather than the front).



Here’s all 4 shafts sitting on the floor, where absolutely no weaving shaft should ever be. But look! The twist has moved up! Trouble is the bottom of the shafts (which is now the top) has the lamms, the rods that allow the treadles to connect to the shafts. So I have to unclip those and put them on the top (now the bottom) of the shafts.

These are the lamms.



This whole shaft-disconnection process went a bit off the rails and some of the springs and cords jumped out of their tracks so I had to take a screwdriver to the top of the loom to open up and get access to them. At this point the whole 4 shaft system fell out of the loom. Excellent.



So now my $4000 loom is sitting in a disorganised pile like a bunch of kindling. But it’s okay, I think I can still salvage this. I put the springs and cords into their right place, reinstall the 4 shaft system and reattach the bits of the loom that hold it all into place. Now to clip the upside down shafts back into place on the newly restored springs.

Sorted!



So now the twist has moved to between the shafts and the reed, but the reed is designed to come out of the loom so that’s no drama to take out and flip, and the rod the warp is tied to is designed to do the same.



And now the warp is straight and on the loom the right way. It took about half an hour (and a bit of adrenaline) to fix. Would I recommend this unhinged solution? Absolutely not. Would I do it again in the inevitable future when I put a warp on the wrong way…. Probably.

Comments

[threemeninaboat]

Oh god nooooooooo.