(This article is 4th in a series on The Sprang Hairnet. Start reading from the beginning here.) Now that we have a simple loom, the next logical step is putting some thread on it to work with, also called warping … Continue reading Sprang warping on a simple loom
I mean to go look at this diamond twill… Sounds like a re.seller who buys from these guys. I got mine direct at great prices, they do bulk as well if you can be patient and wait if they do not have enough in stock. on them to put the order together. Usually a couple of weeks for 10 or more. But well worth the wait and the blankets are great for cloaks. LOL. Here is the direct link. Shhh it's a big secret kept by their re-sellers. LOL. http://www.loricamos.vizz.pl/tkanieuk.html Sandy On 2/08/2010 10:17 PM, LEWINS SHELAGH wrote: > I … Continue reading Requoting diamond twill source
RUM was held less than an hour away this year, so I got to go. The Royal University of Meridies is the annual big teaching event for the kingdom of Meridies, and it also hosts meetings for many of the kingdom's service groups, resulting in the usual problem of too many places to be at one time, and difficult decisions for someone like me, who has her hand in too many Yahoo! lists. So I chose according to Most Pressing Responsibility, which was first that I'm the new chatelaine of Glynn Rhe, and there was a series of How To … Continue reading RUM 2010
Remember this project? From July? Well, seeing the Wood and Woven merchant at Gulf Wars reminded me that I was OH-SO-CLOSE to having my own 5 yards of 20" wide diamond twill, without paying $30/yard for it. It is cotton, but still… Magical, watching the pattern appear. If one didn't know about all the painstaking threading, it would seem easy. Though, see those loose threads? They're loose because I'd made a threading error, and at first the pattern showed up like this: Can you see the error? Hint, it's dead center. Look for where the diamonds don't line up. Here's … Continue reading I can haz diamond twill!!
(not my pic, but the seller's) My little Dorset loom gets the vast majority of email questions, and I'm going to start answering them here also, in the hopes that the surprising number of loom researchers and hopeful weavers can find what they're looking for more easily. The latest asks particularly (I paraphrase, the reference is to the blog post where I got to try out an Oxaback loom): Did you ever go to Vavstuga for a weaving workshop? I am getting interested in learning to weave, and still choosing a loom. Many people want me to get a jack … Continue reading Mailbag – About my Dorset loom
Since I took Thora Sharptooth's wadmal class at Pennsic (see that entry here), Grainne and I have been saying we ought to get together to work on her warp-weighted loom. She had one, but it had been little more than a coat rack since its creation, and I was a great catalyst to get it going. (I do this frequently – I show up and people get courage. It's a wonderful thing.) So this was yesterday afternoon. In a bit less than three hours (and with much gabbing and giggling), we got a Pretty Durn Wide(tm) warp spaced out on … Continue reading Trying it out on someone else’s loom…
This will be an incomplete post, as I arrived on site too late for the first installment of Thora Sharptooth's class, but as the cloth in progress was very similar to the construction of my string skirt, I feel I can muddle through that on my own. Thora's page on the warp-weighted loom; if you're interested in Viking stuff at all, look at her filing cabinet. Wadmal is apparently 2/2 twill from Iceland. It's woven on a warp-weighted loom. We all got to do a bit of the process. When I got there, the loom (and Thora) looked like this: … Continue reading Wadmal class, Pennsic 2009
(Metal tubes on, and as hoped, taking care of the fraying issue.) These were fun to figure out, and not time consuming to do. Here's some photos of the extant tubes: I just sort of guessed that a nice size would be an inch long, and the pieces I cut to make the tubes are 1/4" wide. If I had gauge measurements for the Egtved skirt (or actual measurements of the tubes) each would have informed the other, and I'd have a much more precise idea of how far I'm off. I like making things in sizes of an inch … Continue reading String Skirt 7 – Metal bits on
Here's how the skirt looks now. It's 144 cm by 38 cm, fringed area, with ties of 27 cm and 40 cm. Here's the Egtved original again, for comparison. (hey look! the original ties are very different in length, too! Hmmm…must think about this, in the backstrap vs. extended weaving configuration issue.) I took the skirt off the loom and despite having used a jig to get the fringes all the same length, the deviation from the mean was more than I expected. However, the fringes all have to be connected still, and loops constructed, and that will change the … Continue reading String Skirt 6 – Weaving done.
(the skirt progresses. I've got overtwisted doubleplied weft on the spindles, and am extending the weft beyond the tabletwoven waistband by passing the spindle around the dowel on the right. Periodically I pull the loops off the dowel and allow them to twist up, creating the fringe of the skirt.) One of the things about weaving that I really enjoy is the ebb and flow of the creative work. There's a crazy dense bit of planning at the beginning – much of the structure has to be figured out just to get started. Then the repetitive work begins, and a … Continue reading String Skirt 5 – Weaving, and deep thoughts