weave4fun

So, the looms at college are not generally as clean as I'd like them to be. This is to be expected as I'm a little bit odd when it comes to looms. My loom at home is tenderly cared for and loved whenever I see it. Which isn't often, sadly. But heyho. Anyway, I was unhappy using shafts that had all sorts of random, bent, different sized heddles, many on the wrong way round and some crossing each other. So I found a couple of rounds of barely-used heddles in a cupboard and decided to take the old ones off and put the new ones on. Also, I wanted to clean the loom anyway, as I am unhappy with the idea of weaving on an unclean loom, it seems like it'll make the cloth dirty. And I don't want dirty cloth. So, for the first time in this establishment I have orderly heddles. And a clean loom. I don't know if I mentioned that I managed to get texsolv put on all the looms instead of the manky old cotton string, so now we get better shedding. Hurrah! I love...

Whooo! CONDUCTIVE YARN!! Like, actual yarn, not something with a continuous filament of steel in it, which is basically wire! Well easy to work with, happy days :) I wanted to make a square wave generator, but I haven't figured out a good way to sew on the IC's. They're a little fiddly. Also, I can't find my wee baggy of 555's, so I'd have to use half a 556 instead and that seems wasteful. So, you might not be able to see the traces that well, on the left hand side I measured out a little over 1kohm worth of yarn and darned it back and forth as a resistor. So that's cool. Everything else is just embroidered in. As you can see it works. So that's a start  * * * I have a new blog, brew4drunk , detailing my fun and trials learning to brew wine, beer and other forms of alcohol * * *

Very auspicious isn't it? I apologise for the video being on it's side. I haven't used this camera to take video properly before, that's my excuse. Anyway, that's an 8 needle, 200 course strip of knitted fabric, the yarn is six ends of really-rather-fine 2 ply silk/steel (1 ply silk, 1 ply steel) run together. when it's scrunched up together it's resistance changes and the little LED gets brighter as it's being fed more of that juicy current it loves so much (I = V/R, innit) I have also used these to create press pads by seperating bits of this conductive fabric with non conductive loosely knitted wool fabric. when pressed the two layers puch through the intervening layer and make a contact. it's pretty cool. Tonight I connected some of these sensors up to some square wave generators I made last year. Now I can make an array of hideous squealing sounds by squeezing these things. If I want to make any deeper sound I'm going to need mu...