This past weekend I bought my fourth loom – my first floor loom – a 1970s Glimåkra 100cm Ideal (4S/6T).

my handsome loom

I’m waiting on a shipment from the lovely and responsive people at Glimåkra USA with new heddles, tie-up, and some lamm rods before I can start using the loom.

I’ve designed a three stage plan for upgrading the loom to 8S/8T over time. 4S/6T to 6S/6T to 8S/8T. I decided that I can live with four shafts while I learn countermarch.

While I wait for the necessary parts, I have placemats to finish up on my table loom.

placemats

This fabric I’m creating is awesome. I can’t wait to see how they wash up.

^*OK, technically I had a potholder loom as a kid and I also have a few weavette looms I got in 2008.

I think she liked it.

Despite the Clown Barfiness.

8/4 rug warp in smoky blue, ~200 ends, 8 epi (12 dent reed, threaded 1-1-0).

I tried a rag shuttle, ski shuttle, and a long stick shuttle. I found the stick shuttle to work best for the looper chains.

I knotted short sections of loopers, then wound into balls. As I finished a ball, I would knot the new ball to the one I just finished weaving, so there were no looper ends to weave in.

I doubled the warp yarn and wove about 2″ on either side of the rug to start. I decided I like the look of that plus fringe on these.

Weaving wise, I stood up to weave this. I beat on an open shed, closed shed, and next shed, usually beating each more than once. It was a workout! I used a ~45 degree angle from selvedge which helped keep things somewhat neat at the selvedges (as neat as can be with loopers). I had some issues with my table loom — it’s really not strong enough for this and beating would move all the shafts. It worked out ok in the end though I also could not keep tension as tight as I’d like.

in progress

It’s been a while since I’ve knit a sock. The inexplicable urge hit me a week or so ago and I dug through the sock yarn before pulling out this very well aged hank of Mountain Colors Bearfoot (Glacier Teal). The yarn doesn’t knit up quite like I expected but I think I like it anyway.

My new office gets a lot more natural light than the old one!

table runner

My first time using a boat shuttle. It’s very quick.

Yarn is Wollmeise. Wollmeise is pretty good for weaving because it almost behaves like a cotton – it’s not stretchy.

more patterns

I finished one table runner at about 2’10″. The second one I hope I can eke greater than 2 feet out of as well. I’m not beating completely evenly, which is most obvious after I take a photo. Still awesome!

scarf in a tree

Then it took me over a month to twist the fringe.

fringe

But hey. It’s cool. I love the fabric.

red yarn is koigu
black/grey is plymouth yarn happy feet

Misc Stats:
sett 12 epi
108 ends + 2 floating selvedge
basic 4 shaft houndtooth twill

wound the warp on 6 dec
done weaving on 22 dec
finished twisting fringe on 12 jan
finished trimming fringe 31 january

close up

Yeah, I kinda like this weaving thing.

warped, in more than one way

After I warped it, I realized that I had accidentally left the tension flap swung in instead of out:

oops

I had decent sheds though so I thought it would be fine. I wove a bit, tried a little pick up (obvious in this little sample, that wonky line that doesn’t match the checkerboard pattern).

sample

It was fine until I went to advance the warp. On an inkle loom, the warp is a continuous loop. So when you advance the warp, you just slide the warp down towards the starting peg, exposing more unwoven warp.

I tried to move the warp. It was stuck. I loosened up the tension flap and realized that this was the reason the tension flap needs to swing out slightly from the loom while warping — it offers slack that is necessary, especially on a long warp, to advance the warp. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I slipped the warp off of the bottom peg and tried to figure out a way to MacGuyver it for this sampling project. I couldn’t figure out a good way to do it without messing up my entire warp or having to rewarp the entire thing. I could cut each thread one by one and tie to the one next to it. I could cut all of the threads, rewarp, tying each one to one another and that would work alright as long as I warped a shorter length. But what a pain in the butt!

I eventually just rewarped the loom in the same colors, making sure this time that the tension flap was swung out beyond the loom. It advances fine now… Learning! Hopefully I won’t make that mistake again (I’m guessing on a short warp it wouldn’t have been as much of a problem).

assembling

Before you can warp the loom, you have to make string heddles. Inkle loom string heddles are used a little differently than string heddles on other looms — you fold the heddle over the warp thread rather than inserting it through the heddle. I used some plain white cotton rug warp — smooth and not stretchy. I wasn’t very methodical about tying them and wondered if I was going to have issues making clean sheds or not (I didn’t).

tying heddles

I read a bit in the book and online about warping. Many tutorials suggested adding the heddles after warping the loom, which seemed a little fiddly to me (especially on my small size inklette loom). Instead I opted to heddle as I warped, which I think made mistakes easier to catch.

After that, I warped a simple band based on Single Flowers, a pattern in The Weaver’s Inkle Pattern Directory: 400 Warp-Faced Weaves (p.22). I had some issues warping, mostly with changing colors and keeping the crochet thread taut. I also had issues with the first and last warp thread — I wasn’t sure how to tie them to be taut. Inkle warp doesn’t wind onto a beam like other looms. In order to advance the warp, you move the band along the loom path. This means you can’t tie the warp to the starting peg, since it has to move when you advance the warp. I tried tying the first warp thread to the last warp thread but that didn’t work out so well. I also tried tying the first and last warp thread to the warp thread next to it, which is how I ended up doing it. It didn’t work great either, but it was passable.

starting to figure it out

I had some issues at first because I didn’t realize how tight to pull the weft or when to beat it. You can see in the above picture how much of a mess it was at first and how I slowly started to figure things out.

first inkle band

The band wove up quickly and by the time I got to the end of the warp, it was much tidier. I did have an issue at the very end where a warp thread came loose.

Part of the reason I jumped right in was so that I could figure out what I didn’t know. I had four major questions at the end:

1. what is the best way to deal with color changes in the warp?


2. what do I do with the first and last warp thread?


3. how do I tidy up the selvedges?


4. how tight should I pull the weft? is there a particular method for picks that I should use?

I searched around and found answers for the first three questions and I’ll try it on my next warp. I am thinking about trying some pickup and letters.

I started the year with a couple of weavette looms I got back in 2008. They’re still in a box, but now I have three additional looms — a new 19″ Glimakra Emilia rigid heddle loom I got in April, a used 25″ Rasmussen 4 shaft table loom I picked up in August, and an Ashford inklette loom that my mother gave me for Christmas.

2012 mosaic

For 2012, I completed 11 knitting projects, 1 cross-stitch, and 3 weaving projects. I have two other weaving projects that just need a little finishing — twisting fringe by hand is not the most fun thing ever, though I really love love love the scarf it’s attached to.

Only one adult-sized garment! Only two things for me — Skelf, a sweater I love and wear often and my Different Lines.

2013, what will you be?

I’d like to finish my Collins sweater this year.

And, you know, more weaving.

rusty heddles

I tried the method of cleaning them off with naval jelly (which you can find in the section of your hardware store with the bondo) but they were so pitted and pocked at the eye that I didn’t feel right using them — I expected it to wear the warp thin. It wouldn’t have been so awful if only a few were bad… but this was almost all of them. I sucked it up and took a lunchtime trip to Weaving Works to pick up some heddles.

Before I went, I spent some time weighing the decision of flat steel heddles v. inserted eye heddles. I figured I may as well replace the flat steel heddles with shiny flat steel heddles. Unfortunately (or fortunately), Weaving Works only had 100 flat steel heddles. I wanted at least 300, more likely 400 heddles. There’s some sort of weird shortage (??!) on the flat steel heddles right now.

But they had a pack of 500 inserted eye in the 9.5″ size I needed – at a good price! – so I got them instead.

shiny new heddles

In the end, I’m pretty happy with what I have. I put 125 heddles on each shaft and these heddles were quite easy to thread. I’m a little bummed that I had to invest $80 in new heddles when I had checked for rust on the heddles when I bought the loom, but I’ll take it as a learning experience.

four shafts full

Shiny, shiny!

I’m glad I was convinced to do that because in the process I learned a lot and started to feel like the loom was mine.

One of the first things I did was realize that the reed, while in decent shape, did have a bit of rust on it. The worst spot can be seen in this photo.

reed rust

I sat down with the reed outside and sanded each slot, from either side. 220 grit paper.

sanding the reed

It’s a 25″ 12 dent reed, so that’s 12 * 25 = 300 slots time either side is 600 slots of sanding. It took a while.

At the same time, I cleaned the wood of the loom.

rasmussen looms

I admit, I think it is cool that I have a loom from here in Seattle, even if they are long since out of business (sold to Dundas, then became Montana Looms, now out of business).