weave4fun

Before I start with the main body of this post, I thought I'd share this. Don't you just hate the way selvedge threads are always breaking because you don't use a temple because they leave nasty holes in the cloth, are a pain to move and anyway, whatever? This obviously doesn't apply to those blessed by the rolling temple, you lucky people you. Anyway, check it out. It's an elastane yarn that's been twisted with 2 plys of worsted, to make a 2/48Nm yarn with a composition of 97/3 worsted/elastane. The worsted has been competely worn away by the reed, yet the elastane filament holds out. Cool huh? Now check out these awkward guys here. The way this cloth is constructed is that there are 4 main blocks. The black is woven on the first 4 shafts, to make a 2/2 twill, and the colours are woven on 3 seperate 6 shaft blocks. the whites are on 5-10, the lights on 11-16 and the darks on 17-22. The back two shafts have some spare heddles for in case I fe...

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...