I'm a weaver now!

OK - it's all warped - LET'S GO!!!

Actually weaving's the hard part - it took several headers to get the warp straight (probably means I had it spaced too close on the front bar). Even without worrying about selvage it was so easy to snag a shed with that white plastic shuttle and pickup the wrong thread.

Using a proper wooden stick shuttle made it so much easier, using a boat shuttle easier still. Oh, and now I realise why Deborah Chandlers weaves barefoot, it's so easy to pick up an extra shaft by accident (see white blobs in the fuschia tabby below).

Still it's a learning exercise, on the whole it's pretty fair for a first effort. The two yarns have differing elasticity so the weaving tends to pucker a bit on the darker warps (another learning experience).

Here's me weaving

Me weaving 

and here's the result so far:

weaving 

Yes - the hatpin is holding in a new warp thread to replace the one I broke (I don't know how). Fixing is surprisingly easy. OK the weave is uneven, the selvages are rough but it is weaving and it interesting experimenting with tabby and simple twill but I do need to read the book badly now as I have no idea what I'm doing or what to try next!

Scary time - warping the loom

So let's try follow Deborah Chandler's front-back warping. Holding all those cross threads is really scary - don't even think about dropping them. Sleying is immensely satisfying. The first warp goes in 12 dents and then misses 12 then in the next 12 etc.
Sleying is pretty easy but counting the 12 missing dents is harder - I used the reed hook to go in and out of each dent until I got to the 12th and sleyed the next one and then counted the gap, and then counted it again. Also after each group of 12 had been theaded I pushed them down to the bottom of the reed and checked

• there were 12


• there were no empty dents


• there weren't 2 threads in any dent

Actually I made few mistakes.

One lesson learned - the second (darker) warp I pulled further past the reed and so when sleyed the ends were all 4-5" longer then the first (lighter) threads. This was a nuisance which I kept encountering right until tying to the back beam - I should have sort it out earlier.

I did seem to lose the cross on the first warp but still managed to seem to keep order - the second warp went perfectly.

Threading the heddles was far more mistake prone, Getting the wrong shaft or wrong heddle order seemed to be all to easy. Again I checked every 12 threads for mistakes and there were a few but it was easy to sort out. Once I was sure everything was OK I checked again - paranoia is setting in with this weaving lark.

Once threaded it was easy tying to the back bar and beaming. I had surprisingly few out of order threads and it beamed pretty straightforwardly. I didn't have thick paper and UK stores don't have brown bags so I couldn't use the lack of brown bags as a good excuse to stock the liquor cabinet :-( I did find some sturdy A4 (about US letter size) envelopes and they look like they work fine. Tying to the front beam was again easy - the larks head knot method of adjusting tension in the groups is really easy and I was happy with the result.

If there is one thing I need to be sure of - If I'm going to use this front-back warping method with the cross held in my hand then the phone just has to be switched OFF! I don't want any interruptions. I suspect this took me a good two hours to do - although much of that time was popping out to read the book or watch the video Deborah made - "Beginning Four Harness Weaving". The video is useful but the book
probably covers everything as well if not better.

Whilst sleying and heddle threading I paid tribute to my Ashford loom's New Zealand heritage by listening to a fabulous CD called "Maori" with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and some Maoris singing traditional NZ folk songs, some to more modern accompanyment

Anyway here's the front beam with a header weaved. I couldn't find the stick shuttle so I quickly made one out of plastic - mistake, it's a pig to weave with, it's zen nature is to snag anywhere it can.

Front Beam 

And here's the back beam - this is a nice photo - it looks so neat and tidy!!!

Back beam 

Lets make a Warp

For a first project I'll follow the example in Deborah Chandler's book, 2 yards of 10" weave at 12 ends/inch in 2 contrasting colours. Well I decided on 2.5 yards just to give me plenty to practice with and as an excuse to use up some more of these particularly unmanly pink wools Liz had left over from machine knitting days. The warp will be soft candyfloss pink and vibrant fuschia pink - lovely!!! Actually this was a deliberate choice - this first weave is not likely to be perfect (there's an understatement if there ever was one) so why not deliberately choose colours that help focus on getting technique right rather than worrying about trying to make a good end product?

So check the yarns for size, wrap around a ruler for 1" (harder than it sounds) and count the ends - 24 - exactly right.

Making the warp was easy. My warping board has 3 pegs separate to the rest so making the cross was pretty natural - I didn't forget once. Got interrupted a couple of times with phone calls so glad I used counting threads every 10 warp threads. The 2nd warp I removed the end from the board before tying up the cross - whoops. Just needed to be careful to tie it without disturbing the threads.

Probably took 30-40 mins or so - hard to tell with the interruptions

Here's my warping board - the 'cross posts' are at the top - you might just make out a faint blue wool thread still on it which was my thread that showed how to warp 2.5 yards.

Pics 

Festina Lente

At last - enough time to go out and knock up a simple raddle. The garage workbench is littered with tools and rubbish so there goes 15 minutes. However a quick search finds a great piece of wood which is just a couple of cm longer than the loom. Careful marking ensues and then I discover a total lack of suitable nails. Oh well! I use a small nail to make ding points where the larger nails will go when I get them and call it a night.

Small World

On getting the loom home on Sunday I had it set up on the stand in a trice; checked it all over in case anything had worked loose. A pleasant evening shared between TV and the first chapters of Deborah Chandler's "Learning to Weave" and I was chomping on the bit to start. Unfortunately on Monday the day job intervenes and so Monday evening my tasks are a) build a raddle, b) measure a first warp. Well, that's what they should have been but a call from my neighbour with a computer problem blows that away. Usually his problems are minor and often require just a little software tweaking and a bit of user education but tonight it's serious - he has a weird problem that looks like a power-supply failure. Luckily I have a spare one (doesn't everybody?) and so he was sorted.

What's all this got to do with weaving? Well, talking to Don and his wife June it transpires June used to weave. What's more her teacher was none other than the great Hilary Chetwynd herself (of "The Weaver's Workbook fame - which, by coincidence, I was reading just as Don called). Turns out Hilary used to live only a few miles away in the village of Cheriton.

To begin at the beginning ....

Oh no not another start-up blog! What's this one all about?

Well, I've had an interest in weaving for quite some while now. Last weekend I was donated an entire weaving studio: 32" Ashford 8 shaft table loom with floor stand and pretty much everything I could want to be able to start weaving. I feel I owe it to the donator and, maybe, other beginners in this fine ancient craft to document my progress, share my exasperations and idiotic fumblings and glory in my successes.

Woah! That's not starting at the beginning. Many years ago now (probably near 20) I saw a 4-shaft table loom in junk store in Bristol and bought it without hesitation. My first weaving folly, it was old, delapidated and needed more tlc than I could find time for. A couple of house moves later and it still lives in the attic.

Here's a picture of the new loom