New loom!

After a nice Christmas break away, we picked up the new loom on the way home. It took a little bit more fiddling than I expected to fit it into the van, but that was mostly because we already had a wood lathe and workbench in there (yes, this was the Christmas of Large Toys). After clicking the 'Buy' button, I had had a few second thoughts - what if it turned out to be a mistake (for one reason or another). I spent the last couple of days clearing out the loom corner, and evicting the table, and stacks of fabric and junk. And then this evening I started to build the loom.

It is a 48" David Thorpe 8 shaft Countermarche loom with a second back beam, which looks like a much more serious piece of machinery than my mother's small jack loom. From a bit of hunting online I get the impression that it is very similar in design to a Glimakra, but built in NZ. The ad had said it was 6 years old (which I doubted even at the time), but I can categorically say that it is at least 20 years old, although probably not much more. There is a letter to the original owner from 1988 answering some setup questions, and the phone number on the plate on the side of the loom only has three digits...

From carrying the pieces in from the garage to getting everything attached that should be took about 4 hours (although there was a dinner break in the middle of that). It appears that it is possible to assemble the loom singlehanded, although it is a bit interesting to start with - trying to balance crossbeams on shoulders and things to get the second side on...

It's a very solid loom, and I mostly enjoyed the process of assembling it. It would have been a bit easier to do the first part with a bit of help (see previous paragraph), but I'm nothing if not stubborn. It would also have been more fun if it was a bit cooler (got up to 28°C today - probably not too hot by many standards, but still far too hot for me to be comfortable).

I still need to adjust all the lengths of everything, and really come to terms with how a countermarche works, but I got through far more of the building than I expected to (aided by finding some instructions, even if it was only a single A4 sheet). I'm guessing that the previous owner never actually used all the shafts, so the back four were missing some of the strings. I've replaced them with other bits, but I don't know what I'll run short of later... I think having to assemble the back four shafts was probably useful for getting a better idea of how it works.

And just as a bonus, with the way it's constructed it looks like it shouldn't be too hard to upgrade to having more shafts. Getting too many more pedals in could be interesting, but there is physically room in the frame for at least 8 more shafts should I decide I want to go that way.

The disadvantage of this whole floor loom thing is that I no longer have a table to store my boxes of yarn and dye stuff under, which means I'll probably have to keep them somewhere other than the lounge. I guess really I'm just lucky that our lounge is big enough to fit a (fairly large) loom in the corner without really noticing it too badly.

I have a zillion things to take photos of to post, so I will try to make tomorrow photography day so I can show off my new toy.

I am also planning a post on my warp weighted loom, since I've had a few questions, so I'll try and get that properly written up sometime in the next few days.

Making of Christmas stuff

For some reason I find myself trying to make a set of six napkins for Christmas, as well as knitting a scarf and possibly a pair of socks. The knitting is not implausible, since it's nice and portable. I hope to be nearly half done with the scarf by the end of today, and I only started it on Sunday night. The socks are still debatable, although I'll have to decide soon so I can buy the wool I want...

The napkins will be interesting though. I'm going away for Christmas - leaving home on the 21st, so that's my self imposed deadline. (I say self imposed because I don't think it will matter if I don't get them finished before New Years...). I just finished threading the loom last night, just needs tying to the front beam. I hope to get at least half a napkin woven tonight. I have a feeling I may be deluded in thinking I have any hope of doing this.

Project details:
420 ends, 18epi
Fairly plain summer and winter design, just with patterned borders. I'm vaguely considering doing a pickup motif in one corner on each napkin.
Warp is the same cotton I used to do the tea towels, wefts will be blue and natural cottolin. I'm not sure whether the pattern weft will be blue in all of them, or if I want to do some with the natural weft. I'm going to start with pattern weft blue, tabby weft natural though, and take it from there.

I think the (almost) 60cm width of these napkins is pretty close to the limit of what my table loom can handle. Luckily I've just bought a floor loom. I don't get to pick it up until Christmas though, and then I'll get to have fun working out what makes it tick. It's a 48" 8 shaft countermarche, and I've only seen one picture. It looked like what I was wanting though, so I gave into temptation.

And on the theme of looms, the aprons were attached before I started setting up for napkins. They're just stitched onto the beams through the holes that were already there, and are possibly not quite perfectly straight. I'll have to see how they behave when actually weaving, but tying onto the back beam was definitely more pleasant than without the apron.

I should have photos of various things, but they're still sitting on the camera. I expect I may not have time to do anything with them until holiday time, when there will be no loomy distraction...