Monday, August 31, 2009

It is finished!

Today Greet came over again to help with getting all the heddles knitted so I can get down to some weaving. Greet brought her notebook (of doom...cause all notebooks that contain important info are notebooks of doom) with the notes from the wwweaving class that she took at Pennsic. We talked about how we would move the heddle thread through the threads and it was decided that a shuttle would work great (it did - I used a mini card weaving shuttle) We worked out how the heddles were knitted and started. It seemed a little different than what I had seen online (which isn't much - all the heddle knitting info everywhere is very vague...), but I figured there must be something that I didn't know since I have never actually seen a working wwloom in person - and then we finished. We were very excited. We moved the heddle rod and....nothing happened. We tried again. We walked around the loom and looked at it from many angles. We looked at the pictures in the book. We tried again. Nothing. We did it wrong. Greet had apparently been a few minutes late to class and had missed the writing down of the part about how the heddle loops around the thread. After discussing what we had done and discussing the vague pictures that I have seen online we deduced what had happened and figured out what needed to be done different. That was the good news....the bad being I had to knit all the heddles again - Well I did title this blog "My experiments..." :)
Greet needed to go to Ensemble practice so after she left I sat down and stared at it....and went and got a razor blade. We had discussed leaving what we had done in place - but it was just going to be confusing...and there is some kind of perverse satisfaction about cutting the threads and watching the heddles all fall to the floor. I then started to knit the heddles again. I was at least very competent at the knitting process since I had already done it once today. When I was finished. I crossed my fingers and moved the bar...success!!! Sort of...I had a few threads that had been twisted in the knitting process and I had to pull those out, straighten them, and using a yarn needle, put them back into the warp chain. I checked the sheds to make sure that all the threads were where the needed to be, added an extra weight to each side because it made it easier for the heddles to move freely, and re-spaced the top a little better (really understand why the card woven header is a good idea now). I also re-tied the warp chains to the uprights a little differently so that the sheds opened a little smoother.

Then I sat in a chair and admired the finished warp :)


See the glave in the picture...that was to hold the shed once it was separated - made it much easier to knit the heddles. Would have been even better had I had another piece of closet rod, but I didn't.

You can clearly see in this pic how the glave is working...
This is when the heddles were being knitted wrong...it's hard to see because of their color. This is also a pic of the little shuttle that I used.

This is a close up of the above shot...

Almost finished doing it...wrong :)

Up close of almost done...wrong...

Picture done the write way. Notice how you can see a lot more green and the threads are much further away from the heddle bar.

This is what the spacing and loom looks like when all the heddles are knit.

A closer look...

This is the natural shed that happens when the heddle bar in resting in the brackets. I'm holding it open with my sword beater, but you can see all the heddles and how they work.

This is the second shed that is formed when the heddle bar is moved back so that it rests against the uprights.

Now the loom is all set to do so simple tabby weave....we'll see how simple it really is :)

I've started on some mittens :)

In between working on my loom I have started a set of mittens...I have one almost completed and I'll post a pic of the pair when I'm done. I'm using the York stitch (Naalbinding)...in a pretty shade of purple merino wool...

Sunday, August 30, 2009

My sword beater is finished!



Here is my finished sword beater. It is made of poplar and is 29inches from end to end and about 3inches wide at the widest part of the blade. I'm lucky that the maker decided to use a draw knife to make it and then scraped it instead of sanding using sandpaper - So I have a period sword beater! Yeah! The last step will be oiling the wood to seal it so that it's smooth and doesn't warp.
Here it is!

How it compares to my current warp.

Starting the process of knitting the heddles...getting closer to actual weaving!!

Well...that last step before weaving is knitting/chaining the heddles. This is the process that actually makes it so there are two sheds. I'm veru excited that I will be starting to weave fabric in the next week!

Friday, August 28, 2009

Chaining the warp!

Today a new friend - Greet, came over and helped me make more progress on the warping progress. I needed to chain both warps and add the weights to the front before I could chain the heddles. I had started to chain the back row last night and it was slow going, today with Greet's help things went much faster. Warping a warp weighted loom goes much faster and easier with two people :)
This picture is an up close of the chaining.
The chain is the same kind that you would use to start crocheting
with one thread inside each chain...

This is the back threads chained...

A view of all the back threads chained and the front threads with their weights...

A little bit closer view...

Greet between the front and back threads.
She is feeding the threads down to me so that I can then chain them.

This is one of the things that really helped make it go much faster!! :)
The front and the back threads are now all chained...



A side view...

Us laughing and joking now that we are done with this part...
The loom is now chained and weighted...
All that is left is to chain the heddles to the heddle rod and it will be ready to weave!

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Adding weights...

Here is what the threads look like before the weights...
It's not quite as bad as it looks... This is about what it looks like at about the half way point on the back threads...

Up close...I threaded the bundle through the hole on the weight...
I then tied half a knot and
finger chained the rest of the threads to keep them out of trouble...


Finished finger chaining...


Getting closer to having the back row completed...


Back row complete...


Full length view of the back row with weights...
and lastly, the beginnings of my sword beater.

Sword beaters are as hard to find concrete info about as is everything that was made of wood from that time period. The one surviving example that I could find is posted earlier in the this blog and is made of whale bone. It measures at around 15inches. However, since we know that looms came in varying sizes, some of them quite large, it is hard to imagine using a 15inch sword beater on such a loom. After discussion and examination of pictures of what others are using, it was decided that a sword beater around two feet in length would be a good size to start with.







Monday, August 24, 2009

Yeah - all threads are on and ready to go!

Yeah!!!! All the threads are on and separated! It wasn't near as bad to separate as I thought it might be. If you look at the picture below, you can see that half the threads are hanging behind the heddle bar and the other half are in front.


This is a full length shot...

Now it's time to add the weights...


Also...

Warping the loom this time with 600+ threads I walked roughly 9000 steps around my kitchen chairs or 4.5 miles (the average person takes 2000 steps in a mile...).

During the last 200 threads my husband looked up the plans to make a warping board and promises to make me one by the next time I need to warp the loom so I don't wear a hold in the living room floor :)

Warping - Day three

Since I can't sit and spend 8 hours warping the loom - I have been adding threads a couple hundred at a time. This is what 5oo threads looks like....



Once all 600+ (about 610 was all that the cone would do) threads where measured and tied to the loom, I spaced them more evenly (they were a little cramped) and started the process of making the two sheds needed for a tabby weave - up, down, up, down - 1/2 the threads to the back and 1/2 to the front.




Threads spaced more evenly...




Closer view of the thread spacing...


Dividing the threads to make the two sheds needed for tabby...Don't let these pictures make you think it's an easy job - it took me over an hour to separate two hundred threads and this isn't nearly as "sticky" as wool.


Friday, August 21, 2009

Warping - day two


This is what 200 threads looks like...my hand is about the width of a standard credit card.



This is what 300 threads looks like...


I'm now guessing that I may need more than 600. I'm guessing that I will go to 800 or the end of the cone, whatever comes first. I will say that I have so far walked 4,500 steps around those kitchen chairs...if the average person takes 2000 steps in a mile...I think I will continue in this fashion to finish this warp, but I'm pretty sure that I will be having the hubby build me a warping board for next time :)

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Finally - a loom post.




Close up of 100 threads and the rubberbands that kept them from flying off the chairs :)

Today I started the basic warp for the loom. The fiber is pretty light weight two ply of some kind of synthetic origin (read as - it was free and it's unlabeled). I set to chairs about 6 feet apart and started walking. Note the rubberbands at the top of the chairs - these were crucial - otherwise the warp didn't stay on my chairs and made a big mess :)
What you see is one hundred threads...yes this means I had to walk around the chairs 100X. What this tells me is either I will get a lot of walking done while warping - or I will decide that I really am that lazy and have my hubby make me a warping board. Considering I was thinking that this first attempt should be about 600+ threads, we'll see what happens...


This is what 100 threads looks like in my hand.


I moved the top bar down so I could reach it to tie on the warp. I have decided to not card weave the warp into a band and sew it to the loom due to that fact that this piece will be a test piece. Besides, not every piece of weaving was done in this way. If I was making a piece that needed to have nice edges I could see the merit in weaving the band and have band of card weaving down the sides, but since I am learning the basics - I figured it was better to keep things as simple as possible at first and then build from there. The warp threads are tied on in bundles of five and so far seem to be behaving themselves...

A new member of the Barony, who is also a fiber person, was able to go to Pennsic and take a warp weighted weaving class there (I'm sooo jealous!) - She is going to come over next week and help with the chaining of the warp and the heddles.

My goal with this piece is to make enough to make something for my son.