Skip to main content

Transitional phase is beginning

So I sold the Dryad loom yesterday. It is gone out the door and shall not return. I also took back all the yarn I'm not absolutely certain I want back to the college because most of it came from there anyway. I retain a small amount of wool and silk and stainless steel yarn too.

This is all to say things are changing. We've been doing a lot of clearing out over here, I've sold many surplus books on amazon, only retaining the fiction and those which are definitely useful. Beginners weaving books are all sold but all the tablet weaving and historical clothing books have been retained.

In time I shall be moving my online weavey presence over to www.humbleweaver.co.uk which shall predominantly be a place where I post notes on my progress in designing a jack loom. It's useful as I can easily give collaborators access to the page with which they can also post or edit. I'm not sure exactly how i'll be using this page in the future, but I suspect that it'll be tapering off.

I have work now, at House of Cheviot in Hawick, a manufacturer of fine country socks and kilt hose which promises to take up most of my time for the forseeable future. So it looks like I won't be making my living as a weaver after all, which is strange and ironic, but perhaps all for the best as I can continue to simply "Weave 4 Fun".

In time I expect to be able to export the contents of thi blog as an XML file or some such thing and send them to the new site to be hosted over there outside of blogger, but I haven't figured that out yet.

As far as weaving goes the main focus of my time will be on tablet weaving and on designing the jack loom. The jack loom if successful will be followed by a small jacquard lifter for ribbon weaving.

So that's that for now. I will be attending a living history fair dressed up as a 13th century cloth merchant this coming weekend, which should be fun.

I guess that's all for now, at some point the new site will be looking better. When I have a bit of time to spend on it I expect. For now it's just a postboard. See y'all around. I might be tapering off blogger, but I'm not going anywhere. I can still be found lurking on WeaveTech and weavolution so nae worries :-)

Comments

Michelle said…
I'll keep an eye on your new website! Just because you aren't making a living from weaving right now, doesn't mean you won't in the future ;)
13 August 2013 at 00:20
Laura Fry said…
Glad you found a job. :) Even if it isn't weaving, it's still with yarn. And a job is A Good Thing!
cheers,
Laura
13 August 2013 at 03:36
Dorothy said…
Best wishes for the new job - and the new lifestyle.
13 August 2013 at 13:53
Andrew Kieran said…
I'm actually quite excited about the job, and it means my weaving remains free from material concerns. Which is nice.

Now we just have to get a folding jack loom and we're happy as larry.
13 August 2013 at 13:57
Meg said…
I love your videos, Andy. Dot pointed us to it and I need to learn how to weave with cards. Thank you very much!
13 December 2013 at 08:35
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tablet Weaving Lesson #1: Backstrap weaving a simple diamond motif

This is the first in a series of video and photo tutorials showing basic to advanced tablet-weaving concepts. These lessons shall each build on the last and hopefully take the viewer from simple diamond patterns up to more complicated double face pattern weaving with finer yarns and eventually onto the heady heights of brocading and other fancy techniques (just as soon as I learn how to do them myself). In this first lesson we'll learn the basic weaving steps involved in weaving a diamond pattern in the backstrap style. This lesson is meant for someone who has purchased a ready-made warp from me. The next lesson shall detail how to design and make this warp oneself. And we begin This is the basic pattern we are making. The woven band is tied to my waist with another strap. I am holding a small stick shuttle in my right hand which contains the weft. In front of me are the cards, each card has 4 warp threads going through it. The gap that you can see is called the
4 comments
Read more

treble-cloth construction

I am currently in the process of designing a triple layered fabric. One layer shall carry conductive warp threads (one out of every three), another layer shall carry conductive weft threads (again, one out of every three) and a third layer shall lay between them and act as an insulator, keeping them apart and preventing unwanted contact between the two conductive layers. Constructing a treble cloth is a compicated process. The way that a treble cloth is woven is that first the face cloth is woven, then the centre cloth is woven, then the back cloth is woven. This is a draft for a treble cloth. The crosses indicate weaving marks for the cloth currently being woven, the dashes are lifts and are used to indicate shafts that are being lifted in the case of layers that are above the layer currently being woven. Blue is back, Red is front, Green is centre (All three layers are plain weave btw) The cloth is constructed like so 1: Back cloth is woven. All red and green marks are lif
2 comments
Read more

The curse of the faulty rachet-stop + The contractual obligation video post

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
3 comments
Read more