Thursday, July 3, 2014

Learning curve!

4 days off, well kind of off.  There was laundry, groceries, a tiny bit of cleaning, paperwork, research a new stove and this:
Almost three years ago I was hunting a little on Kijiji and found this loom. 
It was old, older than me, but it came with a lot of extra accessories.  It seemed to be owned by a Doctors wife who purchased it in the late 1950's and was still using it in the 70's.  There is a binder of notes from a course she took in the 60's and a project binder.  Then I think it sat in storage for many years.  We picked it up on our way home from moving The Boy to school.

The Boy put it all back together and got everything adjusted to work.  (I don't know how he and The Farmer can do that but this may explain some of it)

Then we moved it into the tiniest room in the house, which I use as a closet/storage room. This week we dragged it out into our family room.

Tuesday I measured out the warp and The Farmer helped wind onto the loom, yesterday I threaded it up and started to weave.

The learning curve is huge.  Math is important. I was following a pattern that suggested each warp be 5 yards long, I choose to do it  8 yards to give me extra fabric to play with. I wound one ball onto the warping board only to find myself 1/2 a yard short. I now know how long it takes to unwind a warp!  Then I ran out of heddles as I was threading up, you can undo them too!  The loom is a counterbalance loom and so the instructions for the course will not work as the set up of the treadles are completely different; I have kind of make it up as I go along.

When I am done there will be pillows, how many I am not sure.  I do have to go and find some more yarn as of course I ran out.  

Good thing the Yarn shop is open again today!

Thanks for letting me have a break, it's good to challenge yourself!


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