weave4fun

I might as well start at the beginning... When i bought my large floor loom, i was informed that it could be tied up for either counterbalance or countermarch treadling. not knowing what on earth that meant (having only used a jack loom), i went "oh, alright then" and that was that. Now, when in plain weave, my counerbalance setup was working alright, but then i tried to set up a 2/2 twill and it all went wrong, as detailed in an earlier post. since then i haven't been able to get an even shed, even in plain weave. nightmare. so, thought i'd try countermarch, cos at least it lifts the shafts evenly. so i downloaded the instructions trapunto directed me to and used them. or, rather, attempted to. because, it turns out the countermarch tie-up needs to sets of lamms. and i have only one. vexing is not the word. so am i going to have to go back to finikity counterbalance tie-ups then? am i ever going to be able to use that horizontal countermarch castle without learning t

Yesterday I decided to attempt to recreate a spiral twill i saw on stephanie's blog . And, hooray! it's just a simple pointed twill, with warp and weft threads alternating one by one. ain't that simple. What is slightly vexing however is that, having (as it turned out) threaded the heddles without error (through constantly rechecking everything throughout the whole process), i then proceeded, as you do, to Sley The Reed. Which is, i must admit, my single favourite part of the entire warping procedure. the rest of it being frankly tedious and footery as anything. Never mind that anyway So, i finished sleying the reed, and stood up and had a cup of tea. Sitting down again, i decided to finally tie on the the front stick and begin, upon which i discovered that I'd sleyed the bloody thing back to front. and i never take the reed out of the beater bar because then i'd end up wearing the thread out of the wee holes the screws go into, cos it's all screwed down, not de

why didn't i think of doing this before? Gives me something weaving-related to do while i'm in college and probably ends up helping me get into the next college. hooray! The top one is the sheperd's check, except the bit i've done already is a plain weave, and the draft there is a twill. i've got another couple of metres sitting on the loom waiting to be woven, and i want to do that in twill, but i can't figure out the tie-up to do it properly long live checked paper -hb

I got the warp wound on the medium sized loom last week, and threaded and sleyed it this weekend Now. The back beam is held by a ratchet. and the ratchet-stop is a plate of metal which is pulled up from the ratchet-wheel with a handle attached to the main upright. It seems that somewhere along the line of the last couple of weeks i must have bent the plate back a little cos it no longer holds tight against the wheel. i've tried holding it down with a piece of cord wrapped round the beam, but it's not having it and i've had the whole thing come loose while swinging the batten twice already. I've tried to remove the plate but one of the screws is held tight. I'm going to have to take it outside and hammer it flat on the doorstep. This is aggravating On another aggravating note, the shuttle keeps flying out of the race and hitting the wall when i beat from the left hand side on the larger loom and i can't figure out why, cos i haven't changed anything from the

Teacher told us to post to our blogs. I am actually doing a class in college on blogging. It's almost unbelievable isn't it? I think i saw a music video for some bog-standard american pop-metal band where they're all sitting in Blogging 101 taking pictures of themselves. As it goes, I finally cleared the table loom at the weekend and put a wee silk sample on it. 200 ends, and 56epi on a 14dent reed. it's going a lot better than the last one. and i got the rug loom almost beamed. should finish it tonite, but probably won't get much more done on it till the weekend. Ho hum. More pictures when i'm finished -a

finally got the 2/2 plain weave check finished. Reasonably chuffed with it. I'll cut off the hanging weft trails and darn the remains back in 2nite then give it a soapy foot pressing in the bath before gently steam ironing it. Must remember this time to keep a copy of it in loom-state for future comparison Having cut it off halway along the warp for the sake of starting off afresh with new tensioning, i have another 2 metres left to weave. I have decided to do this in straight twill. However, it occurs to me that it looks different on one side to the other. I am assuming that i threaded to loom with the draft pointing in the middle and that's why things are the way they are. Anyway, i like the effect and will probably try to create large blocks of colour alternating on each side. However, before i do that, i have to sort out the hideous treadling problems with which this tie-up is being afflicted. This is the first time i've tried to do a twill tie-up on a counterbalance s