weave4fun

Hey there! Been wanting to talk about this for aaaaaaaages. But by god does designing medium scale 3D printed objects take a long time. Anyhow, I've been designing this thing since maybe August and been printing since late October. Here's a couple of pictures of it open. I'm just freehanding that pattern. I kind of fluffed up the last two switchovers. And it was meant to be a knotwork but it clearly isn't. I really need to learn to draft things out before weaving them, I'm not good enough at sketching. Same thing on paper actually, I can draw stuff in front of me (to an extent) but I can't sketch from my head. Anyhow, here's a couple of pictures of the thing closed up. Boom! So, that's nice. I'm quite happy with the progress so far. Now, onto the issues. The big circles that form the hinge get in the way of my hands when i'm weaving and I'm always bumping my knuckles off them. Would probably work better for rigi...

First in a series of screw tests. I'm designing a 3D printed loom and am documenting the design process. I have already come up with the preliminary shape of the thing, but shall keep that under wraps until I'm ready to launch. I am currently attempting to make a 3D printed screw for operating the hinge. Currently the loom is designed with a 20mm wide screw and screw hole so I am working from this for the time being. The parameters I shall initially be varying are the thread size and the clearance (push). I have had good results printing a slot-together joint with a push of 0.125 so shall start from there. Standard dimensions will remain the same throughout all variations of 1.x, specific dimensions will be changed according to the results. Print setting will most likely stay the same, at least until I start narrowing down on Specific Parameters and feel perhaps the printing quality needs to be improved. Standard dimensions thread size 20 x 20mm Spec...

Hi there all. Bit of a picture heavy post the now. I've joined a group on Facebook called Weaving Hacks, which is a very nice group which does exactly what it says on the tin. Anyhoo, I said I'd share some of the unconventional ways I make warps, so I'm going to do the indoor one the now as it's very cold outdoors so there's no way I'm going to do a "making a warp on fence posts / sticks in the ground / hammers tied to trees / sticks wedged into a dyke post while it's this cold. Hate the cold me, totally hate it. So, that's the craic for this post. I'm going to start off with making paper bobbins so I can break down a large cone into separate packages. Simple enough. Wrap a piece of paper Round a pencil, tape it and Bob's your auntie. Then stick a pencil in a drill, put the bobbin on and wind your yarn on. Takes ages, I really miss having access to a bobbin winder. I took a couple of pictures of this but not gon...

Starting note. If you're a Greek weaver or a Greek speaking weaver and get bored with this rambling, please scroll to the bottom, I need your help with language. So, things didn't quite work out as planned in Dundee, for very personal reasons. As these things tend to do. I'm sure many of you have been in a similar position before. Something very central to your life changes and the life you have just doesn't make sense anymore. So, the upshot is, I couldn't afford to keep the flat anymore. The rent is more than I can afford, even when working at full capacity. I've been working as a delivery driver for Domino's Pizza and while it's a great deal of fun, very satisfying and my workmates were really good fun to get on with and the management was the best I've ever worked under, no matter how many hours I worked there'd be no way to make anything more than a subsistence level income with the rent. I'd thought of several option, I though of...

This is my old tablet weaving loom. I guess calling it a loom is a bit of a stretch as it's basically a plank with a couple of bits of wood nailed to it to mount another bit of wood as a rudimentary cloth beam. Anyhow, it served it's purpose fine and all, but I only used it the once to make some particularly intricate bands from silk. It's a bit on the bulky side, and I need more bulky crap like I need a hole in the head. So I made a new one. I wanted to make a tablet weaving loom that was no bigger than it needed to be, that allowed one to weave a long warp, that had a spacer (helps both with combating twist and with keeping a consistent cloth width) and that most importantly could be made in pieces, shipped across the world in an A4 packet and put together without any nuts, bolts or glue. This loom also combines the technique I've found most helpful in tablet weaving (the spreading board) with the basic technology of a handloom. One of the benefits ...

Oioi Still not been posting much to the old blog recently. Things have been a bit busy. Been visiting my brother in Greece, and so much moving. So, yeah, life's been a bit hectic eh. So, I was staying in Galashiels and working at the uni as a technical assistant, repairing and maintaining the looms and running the power loom. First off, at the end of last summer, I moved my tools into a farm outbuilding at a pal's place in Earlston, about a 20 minute drive away from my house. I got a little bit done there, but not that much in the grand scale of things. Then in April I decided to rent a garage unit in the same town and moved my tools there. I then found a cast-iron dobby head online and decided to buy it and get the floor loom back from up north. The funny thing about this was that the dobby head was in the deep-south of England, which required two days of driving and added about £150 onto the (very reasonable) price of the thing. The thing came with a compressor. ...

Woop! So, this is largely Roslyn's idea. She had the idea of doing a kind of stepped-backwards grade in blocks on a dogtooth weave. As it goes, I misunderstood her and when she said dogstooth I heard herringbone, which is kinda odd, but it's still a twill I guess, so it works. Anyhow, we talked over it all night. I say all night, I mean till 1am. We didn't literally stay up all night mucking about with pointpaper and coloured pens. That would be obsessive to the point of compulsion. We might like weaving, but not to the point you'd have to call the men in white coats. So, anyway, this is going to be a sampler scarf. Now I made a mistake here when I was making the warp. One of the blocks is 4 ends too wide. I wove all this then Ros said "is that bit a bit bigger"? So I took the measure and it was, then I counted the ends and it had 32 instead of 28. So that's annoying. Now, this yarn is expensive stuff so I'm going to actually unpick th...

  You can't easily know how happy this picture makes me. So I'll try to explain. First off, what's happening? Well, when I tied the new warp on to this loom the other month, the knotting machine found a few instances where the ends in the crosses for the old and new beam didn't match up. So, doing what I've seen done before, I broke them out, knowing I could always run some new ends in from cones.  Now though, I've managed to completely sort out the warp and managed to put every end in it's place. I checked each row of hooks individually and tied new warp ends in. Where possible, from threads hanging off the back, of which there were a few on the left hand side there. Also, on the right where the threads go up,  I ran 4 cones up, around the beam and into the heddles and reed.  When I finally finished, I realised I had 4 free ends on the left hand side, in exactly the right colours, so I took a stick with a hook on either end, ran them do...

It's taken me a little while to get round to this. Finally though,  I have the space and,  in the form of the remains of a large pile if shafts we got shot of from work over the summer,  the materials. Lots of pieces of wood of uniform dimensions. Nice strong stuff too,  tasty. Also,  the drop saw makes short work of cutting the stuff down. I drew up some plans the other night,  and built the frame and Castle today. The castle has been built in such a way that I expect to be able to be able to swap different shedding systems in and out. The castle is probably a little tall just now,  but I thought better bigger than smaller. The first shedding mechanism I'll install will be counterbalance,  then maybe a countermarche and perhaps eventually a jack mechanism,  though I'll need a router to do that,  so it may have to wait for some time. Also,  there are lessons to be learned in the process.  Even in the building of the frame...

Here's that warp on the loom. I beamed it with sticks,  despite the fact I don't believe in them. Sadly,  my wee loom has a tottie wee warp beam,  about the thickness of a broom handle,  so it's really the only way. Still,  it works for short warps.  Heyho,  we have to work with what we've got.  The loom is currently beamed at 60 epi and sleyed at 112 epi.  I'll really it after the festival two samples at something like 80 epi,  which is a more natural sett for thus yarn.  I'm trying to make denim,  so am upping the epi in a bid to increase the density of the cloth.  I'm also going to try different samples with differing tension,  to see if I can increase the prominence of the warp floats. A part of me is wondering whether this is a useful exercise as I plan to weave a proper quantity on the big floor loom in the new year and the characteristics of the loom are very different.  For starters,  the shed us ...

This arrived today from Devere Yarns. 1.5 Kilos of 2/20's combed cotton and 1.5 Kilos of 2/40's. Well packaged, each cone of 250g labelled properly and arrived in good time. This is my first warp in 2/40's cotton of 396 ends. I'm going to make samples with this to determine the correct sett I need to make reasonable denim. After that, a larger warp with 4 solid colours, trying different twill variations and wefts. In other news, I shall soon be getting my big counterbalance loom down from up north, now that I've got somewhere to put it. Then I can get some serious weaving done. It'll be awesome.

Something I did yesterday. The car is still in the workshop, but I expect it to be out soon. Then I can start properly making things. First in line is a couple of tapestry frames. After that I'll make a counterbalance rug loom on two shafts. But I'll make the castle big enough that it could fit 16, in preperation for the day when I get round to building a dobby box.   For now, there's this. I'll paint it and the backing up in contrasting colours and put it on the wall. I'll probably make more, but have to work on my knotwork design skills.

Well, we had a brief discussion the other week/month (time flies) about making tablet weaving accessories. So, last month I bought a scrollsaw and a pillar drill. And since then I have been getting a workshop space ready at a garage on a friend's farm. There's been a lot of work, and it still isn't quite ready yet. I'll have a lot more space when the car is out of the way. There's a long workbench for my woodworking tools and the desk where they're currently at will have a cheapo laptop and some of my 'leccy tools and projects, I also intend to build a very simple, but biggish, rug-weaving loom which I intend to have set up in such a way that I can fold it up against the wall when it's not in use if i need to. Thinking of maybe having the warp going up and over a rail at the top and weighted down, with the back beam of the loom sort of attached to rails on the wall. Difficult to describe, I have a picture in my head. Anyway, I moved my tools in toda...

This is the kind of thing I get up to when I'm bored and the loom isn't cooperating. These are drawings for Tablet weaving card. From left to right, 6 3-sided cards arranged radially, one 6 sided card, which I haven't figured out the best way to arrange yet, and an array of 4-sided card. Also, a comb and a shuttle. Everything but the shuttle can be easily made in plastic by laser or waterjet cutting. The shuttle may be a little trickier as I would like the beating edge to have a gentle slope leading to a nice curved blade edge for good beating. The warp can be tied into the comb with string on top, I see no need to make a hinged attachment to go on top. I may make other shuttle shapes tonight, and rethink the comb. I am undecided about what material to get these things made in. I reckon the cards should be as thin as reasonably possible, 1mm acrylic perhaps. They will be breakable, but these things tend to be. In my experience the thinner a weaving card the ...

Found this video online. Just randomly. Check out the way she swaps the cards around, about 30 seconds into the video. Can't believe I never thought of that. Don't know what language this is. Also, I love those cards.

I felt that when I started working that my journey was pretty much done. But far from it, who was I kidding? Think I was being a bit daft. To be fair, the original purpose of the blog was to chronicle my getting-to and getting-through college, and that's done now. But it'd be silly to think it really ends there. A lot of good has been built up here, I've been coming to realise over the last year, in the friends I've made on the comment sections and the things I've learned from the other weavers, sometimes seeing other people taking on similar paths to my own. It's all good. So why waste it? I may work in education for the time being, but why should I limit myself to one job when there's so much more to do? I realised this truth recently when I got an email from youtube telling me that one of my videos,  Tablet Weaving Lesson 1 , had gained 10 000 views, which was frankly surprising. To be fair, it's the first video I put any serious effort into ...

I'm the new weave technician at the college now. How utterly odd, who would have thought things would turn out this way 4 years ago when i started studying here. I am in charge of teaching students how to weave, weaving jacquard fabrics and eventually getting the hattersley working. It is part time so I can create my own collections in my spare time, and begin some serious progress on the lifting box From now on I shall publish videos on youtube and articles and so on on my own webspace www.humbleweaver.co.uk I shall at some point begin selling plastic tablet weaving supplies, don't hold your breath for that though. If you don't find out one way or the other then my advertising strategy shall be seen to be rubbish. I continue to have a really scarce involvement in weavolution, but I'm mainly a youtuber these days. I've enjoyed my journey blogging here and all the lovely people I've met. I started this blog to document my journey in learning how t...

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 ...

test test test

So, I saw a picture of a Hochdorf band woven by a member of the Historic Tablet Weaving group on Facebook. It looks like you can get more detailed patterning with this technique and you also get a nice sort of pebbled effect in the background weave. Anyway, so I googled it and found this webpage  The Warp Factor , with a nice explanation of how to weave this band and a good diagram to go with it that tells you exactly when and where to turn the cards. Nice stuff. This is my second attempt at Hochdorf patterning. First was in acrylic to work out the technique and the use of the board. Second in 2/60's silk, to make something extra special nice. This is my new weaving board. It's a bit scrappy but it does the job. there's a few wee annoying problems with it, but the next one will be better. This is how tension is maintained on the band, with a nice even consistency. The main part of the band is held as one with a bag full of weights. The selvedge table...