Weaving adventures

Maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew by choosing something hard like this undulating twill. The warp is tencel and the weft is a fingering weight merino wool, I think. I messed up the threading, skipping a whole segment, and it became really noticeable once I got going, so I had to unweave a few inches to fix that... there are 2 other places where I think I switched two threads but I have to really look for those places so I just left those in... perfection is so overrated anyway. Besides, unweaving is no fun.

I've learned how to use two shuttles/colors and to treadle two patterns (tabby with the left foot and the twill with the right). It's fun to watch the curves appear. Notice my perfect tension... and I forgot to use warping sticks or paper or anything. Hope the weaving police don't show up.

Weaving...

Getting set up for weaving... here is the swift on the left and the ball winder to the right. Mom and Janie, I fixed the swift's missing top by using one of those wide rubber bands from broccoli along with cotton string. Seems to be working so far! The swift takes a skein of yarn and unwinds it as the ball winder re-winds the yarn into a ball (also called a cake).

Here is my new (old) loom. It's a 32" weaving width 8 shaft-10 treadles Loomcraft. It feels so much sturdier than the Norwood or even the Artisat, mostly because this isn't portable! It is firmly ensconced in the dining room but out of sight of the great room so Bill doesn't have to actually SEE it. His only comment so far was just that it was big. Heh. Locking pins are holding the beater stationary for now. It came with the tilt seat bench.

Here's the back of it. The back beam flips up for when I need to thread the heddles. I also have a home-made replacement warp beam that's more like the cloth beam... maybe I'll switch it out if I can't get used to this large one that's already on here.

For Mom and Dad (and Janie), this is the wedge trick I read about that helps to elevate the shafts to different levels to make threading the million heddles a little bit easier. I don't think a doorstop would be big enough after putting in this nearly empty cone. I just raised the shafts and inserted this in the space in the middle (bigger end toward the front of the loom).

Hopefully you can see how the heddles on each of these 4 shafts are at staggered levels - I think this will be better than trying to paint the heddles different colors.

When I get this all threaded and get some weaving done, I'll post a picture of what this scarf is going to look like. I am doing a draft from this article online http://www.weavezine.com/content/flowing-curves-part-1-overshot-and-weaving-overshot