Year: 2018

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A Trek Across the Country

One day last summer, as I was casually browsing the looms on Ebay, I came across the Loom of All Looms – a 60″, 16 shaft, 18 treadle J-Made with double warp beams, worm gears, and rear hinged treadles, plus tons of accessories. I knew immediately that it was meant to be mine.

I marched right out of the house and across the street to our neighbor’s driveway, where Chad was having a conversation.

“I found The Loom,” I informed him.

“Cool! Where is it?”

“Oregon,” I said, and turned to walk away.

“How are you going to get it?” He laughed. It was understandable, since we live in Florida.

“I don’t know,” I called, “That’s for you to figure out! I just know that’s The Loom!”

As it turns out, it’s not so easy getting a 6′ loom across the country. The seller wasn’t able to ship it or even take it apart, which really limited my options. First, I tried posting the listing on Uship. The quotes came in! I was thrilled until I actually read them. No way was I paying $4,000+ just for freight.

Next, I tried placing my own price. I waited and waited, but no one was interested.

As a last resort, I looked into a UHaul shipping container, but that was pretty pricey and I still had to pay someone to pack it up and load it in.

Finally, after nearly three months, I almost gave up. As a last ditch effort, I posted in a Facebook group looking for help. It was suggested I contact Eugene Textile Center, so contact them I did. It turns out they do this sort of thing all the time, and the quote was within my price range! I couldn’t believe this could actually happen.

I made an offer on the loom right away. It expired after only 12 hours with nothing response or counter offer. I was worried the seller never saw it because of the time difference, so I sent her a message.

Time passed, still no response. I was devastated. To be so close, and miss out! I had to know if she’d seen my message and offer. Finally I hit Facebook.

Fortunately, she had a unusual name. I found her right away and wrote to her. She responded quickly. She was so nice! She hadn’t seen the offer or message, but she would accept it! I still couldn’t believe this could actually happen.

Arrangements were made for ETC to pick up the loom and enormous amount of accessories it came with. Suzie, the owner, went down with help, and loaded it all up.

Less than a week later, it was packed into a crate and headed my way. I still couldn’t believe this could actually happen.

Then it arrived! The crate was enormous and weighed in at 900 pounds. It barely fit in the spot we’d cleared in our garage.

The next day, we opened it up.

Nine hours later, it had a spot in what had suddenly become my loom room…and I can finally believe it could happen.

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Swatching Handspun Yarn

I recently spun over a pound of incredibly soft Merino with Angora from Marvin. I dyed the Merino prior to blending it with the Angora. Believe it or not, I almost didn’t spin it all up. About an ounce in, I looked at it, and I didn’t like it.

I received lots of encouragement from my spinning peers, however, so I continued on and am very pleased that I did. Not only do I find it incredibly gorgeous, it is so soft and cozy! It just screams, “cardigan with big wooden buttons,” to me.

When you buy commercial yarn, it will come with a label that gives information to help you determine how it should be knitted (or crocheted). This information not only includes a needle or hook size and the stitches and rows in 4″, but there are also other clues. A crafter can reasonably expect to find the yardage, weight (in oz and g), and the yarn weight (scale from 0-6). With this information, a crafter can determine how to knit or crochet the yarn.

With handspun yarn, this information is not provided to the spinner. Instead, the spinner must use the information at hand to create an educated guess, and use this guess as a starting point. The first piece of information, and usually most easily obtained, is the weight of the yarn. I prefer to use ounces for this, and you will understand why in a moment. The second bit of information is the yardage. This is a little more difficult to calculate. There are a few methods, but I prefer to use my niddy noddy and count yardage as I wind my yarn off the bobbin when plying is complete.

With the yardage and weight in ounces, I can get a pretty good estimate of yards per pound. I divide my yardage by the number of ounces and then multiply the result by 16. Now, back to my handspun Merino/Angora. After calculating, I came up with 1500 ypp. According to my handy dandy yards per pound chart, this yarn would probably knit up like a light sport or heavy fingering weight yarn. But wait! This yarn has Angora fiber, which is much lighter in weight than sheep’s wool. That means I can expect more yardage in the same number of ounces. Now what? Well, I can find the yarn’s wraps per inch (the number of times the yarn can be wrapped around a 1″ measurement device without overlapping), or I can make an educated guess for the swatch.

Swatch? To some people that’s a four-letter word. To others, it’s a strict rule. I almost always swatch. The only time I don’t is when I’m using a commercial yarn that I’ve used very recently in the same stitch pattern. For my handspun, I decided to guess the needle size was a US4, and I was correct. It was the perfect size for the structure I wanted.

Next, I decided to swatch buttonholes. I worked the one in the pattern which had single yarn overs, then I worked a second one with double yarn overs for a larger buttonhole since I would be using thinner yarn and bigger buttons. Surprisingly, the smaller hole worked with my plastic test button, most likely due to the innate elasticity of the Merino wool.

Now I’m ready to knit. Hooray!

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Loom Restoration Progress

After quite a bit of long, hard work, my loom puzzle is nearly complete! I mentioned last time I’d managed to clean and wax the loom, along with doing a good bit of assembling with Chad’s help. The next work session we replaced the bent metal treadle bar. Then we carefully assembled the lamm cables from 1/16″ metal cable, ferrules, stops, and believe it or not, jewelry crimps to prevent them from coming out of the lamms. We also nailed new apron ribbons onto the cloth beam. We left the warp beam alone because it will become a sectional later.

The next step was to repair and assemble the bench. The top was split on either side, so we screwed metal braces into the wooden top to keep it together. It seems pretty sturdy now and since the braces are on the underside they aren’t seen or felt. After repairing the bench Chad took the heddle support bars outside and used the electric sander to remove all the rust. They looked great when he was finished.

To help the heddles slide easily I treated them with cold blue, aka gun blue. This is a chemical treatment that oxidizes the surface of the steel bars and leaves them a beautiful black. However it doesn’t prevent rust, so I followed it with a wiping of 3-in-1 multi purpose oil. Look at the difference!

Once the heddle support bars were finished I was able to assemble the shafts with the bars and new heddles. Then they were hung using new Texsolv cord and arrows, and attached to the lamm cables we assembled previously.

 

Once the shafts were hung we were able to tie up the treadles with the treadle chains. Then I cut and melted holes in the ribbons on the cloth beam and added the new steel apron bar that Chad cut for me. I ordered the remaining parts, excluding what we need to build the sectional beam, from Harrisville Designs and they are scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Hopefully the next time I post about this loom it will be finished and ready for weaving!

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Making Progress

After a long week, and with a lot of help from my youngest, I managed to wash and wax every piece of my loom puzzle. I used Murphy’s oil soap diluted in water to do the washing, and boy, did it need it! The water was so brown I had to change it after only half the loom was washed.

After I got it all nice and clean I used SC Johnson Finishing Wax to moisturize and protect the wood. It’s amazing the difference the wash and wax make.

We made a not-so-quick trip to to a couple of hardware stores for some parts and then worked on putting the pieces back together. It’s finally looking like a loom!

There is still quite a bit to be done, but seeing it mostly reassembled is encouraging. Next time we will attempt to put together the treadles and repair the bench. Hopefully those go as smoothly as the assembly today.

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Looming Adventure

Today was an interesting day. I had responded to an ad on Facebook for what was supposed to be a 6 shaft 22″ Harrisville Designs floor loom. However, HD never made a 6s, so I suspected it was an 8s. After several conversations with and picture requests for the seller, I was able to ascertain that it was, in fact, supposed to be an 8s but was missing two shaft frames. In addition, it was not actually the 22″, but rather the older 40″ which, fortunately, they still offer parts for even though it is no longer being made. I was also aware that in addition to the two missing shafts it would need new shaft cables and possibly some other parts.

We decided to drive the hour and see if the loom was worth the asking price. I utilized the time to work a little on the reversible two-color Brioche scarf I’m knitting.

When we arrived and saw the loom we were ready to head right back home. There was no way it was worth the price. The legs were off the castle and so was the entire assembly of the back beam and warp rod, so the loom was sitting at an unpleasant angle. One of the side supports for the back assembly was missing, and it was apparent that in addition to new shaft cables it needed new cables for the lamms, at least two new wooden spools (that the cables sit on), and the bench top was split on both sides. The treadle chains, reed, and heddle support bars were rusted and all the heddles corroded. The treadle bar was bent, too, and I think the tension brake may need repair or replacement.

However there was some considerable negotiation and we finally settled on a price we could live with. Next the loom had to be disassembled because the seller’s doorway was very narrow and the loom would not fit through in one piece. Chad had thought ahead and grabbed the tools we would need, and there was someone present with a drill who helped. Finally they got it apart and loaded into the truck. On the plus side, I realized as we took it apart that all the shafts were actually there hidden behind other parts.

It is going to take some labor, money, and a lot of time, but I do think the poor thing will end up being a rather nice loom. The hope is that it is restored by the time I finish the (accidentally insanely long) 50 yard warp on the Gilmore, so I do have a while. Besides, there’s nothing like a good jigsaw puzzle.

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Alpaca Scarf

This last week was a very long one, so unfortunately I didn’t manage to get much fiber-related work done. However I am happy to have accomplished something and share it today, and that is this lovely scarf.

It has a nice blend of colors but beyond that, the 20% alpaca makes it super soft and cozy! It will soon eventually be available in my shop (or, for you locals, at the next Farmer’s Market).

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A New Look

Welcome to my new, redesigned website! It is quite a change from the old one. I recently had a really terrible experice with my previous web host. I’d been with them for a decade even though most of their customers had left, but it became very apparent it was time for me to jump ship. Unfortunately it meant that I didn’t have time to download my previous blog posts, so those are lost. On the plus side, you will soon be able to shop directly and securely right from this site and check out via Paypal or credit card. I’m going to be adding new products so be sure to keep checking back as things are added.

On another note, I finished this incredibly soft scarf adorned with sequins and twisted fringe. It is one of the items I will be listing very soon.