Restless Knitter

The past couple of days have found me more loom obsessed. I’ve made all kinds of excuses why I can’t weave. I don’t have a warping board. I don’t know how to get the warp on the loom even if I did have a warping board. I can’t get it on there alone even if I did know how. You know that saying Either shit or get off the pot? It was time.

Short version: I did nothing for the last day and a half but work on getting this going. I used random pieces of fake wood trim for lease sticks, paint sticks to smooth the yarn on the back, a dental tool for threading the reed and heddles, a dowel rod/peg as a shuttle, and a homemade warping board. I also got sore arms and hands from using a hacksaw and screwing pegs to boards, and a sore back from winding and threading. It was all worth it.

Long version below. If you want to know the full scoop and see pictures, they’re below the bump. If you aren’t interested in weaving, it will be boring so feel free to skip. I’m just a tad proud of myself though so it’s here for me.

It started two days ago. I went to the storage unit to attempt to get to some paperwork. I couldn’t get to what I needed but I was able to get to some of the yarn in there. Unfortunately not the yarn I’d like to get to, bleh. Anyway! There was a cone of yarn I’d bought a couple of years ago at R&M Yarns, when it was still in Georgia. I could use this on the loom. So I brought it home. Now I needed something to wind it onto. Off to Lowes to buy a dowel rod and a piece of lumber to make some pegs. The nice man at Lowes cut a 2×4 into 6 inch pieces for me. He attempted to cut the dowel rod too but it kept splintering. “I can hand cut it for you.” I told him that I was a big girl and would do it myself I didn’t want to put him to the trouble. Another man helped me with screws and suggested these funky looking two-ended screws, one end to go in the dowel and the other in the 2×4. I came home and that very night, I took the hacksaw to the dowel rod and had five 6″ pieces. I drilled a starter hole into the dowel pieces and on the end of the 2×4 pieces but I had a hard time with the funky screws. I found deck screws in the toolbox and used those instead. Quite proud of myself, I clamped the pegs on the coffee table and began to wind yarn onto them. After I’d wound a bit, I tied the yarn and took it off the pegs. While I was quite proud of my accomplishment, I was also disappointed. The length was too short. It might have reached from front to back, but I’d only get to weave a few inches. This wouldn’t do but it was late and nothing I could really do about it then.

When I woke up yesterday, I knew I had to do something different with the pegs. I only had 4 clamps and it was obvious the coffee table wasn’t big enough but what else could I put them on? The table in the kitchen! Again I wound. And again, I knew it wouldn’t be long enough. I needed more pegs. New idea: instead of having one peg on each piece of wood, what if I put several pegs on one piece of wood. I went to the internet and looked for dimensions on purchased warping boards. I had noticed while hacksawing the dowels that we actually have some spare wood in the workshop so went in search of what I could use. A couple of 1×2’s caught my eye. I cut them into two 20 inch and two 40 inch pieces.

Tada! I can clamp these bad boys on any size table. I first tried the kitchen table, too big. I then moved back to the coffee table.

Wow, just look at that warp. Go me!

Time to get that bad boy on the loom. I don’t have any lease sticks, and I don’t have a fancy tool for threading the yarn through the reed or heddles. Back to the workshop. Thank you to the people who lived here before us and left all the spare trim, wood, etc. I found two pieces that I thought would work as lease sticks.

Now I just need some kind of hook for threading. I remember buying dental picks some time ago with the intention of using them to get knots out of yarn. They ended up in a drawer, never to be used. Until now.

Armed with my around-the-house tools, I got the yarn on the loom, going front to back. I threaded the heddles 1 2 3 4 all the way across. I got the yarn tied to the back and realized that again, I was missing something. I needed something to put between the yarn and beam when I wound. I don’t have the cardboard nor old venetian blinds suggested, but I did find some unused paint sticks. I wound. And I wound. And there was still a LOT of yarn to be wound. I’d run out of paint sticks and I’m also impatient. I wanted to weave! I cut the warp and tied it to the front. (I still have a huge warp chain left, proving that I need to actually measure next time.) Now, what to use for a shuttle? You know, if I wind some yarn around one of the pegs, I could use that. And that’s what I did. Not ideal, and I had to do some fancy handwork, but it worked in a pinch.

I played with different treadle combinations. *1,2,3,4*. *1&3, 2&4*. *1&2, 2&3, 3&4, 4&1*. *1&2, 3&4.* How exciting and fun! Must take a picture for the blog before going to bed.

But I was having so much fun that I didn’t want to go to bed just yet, so I continued on a little bit further.

I know that it’s not perfect but I’m still very happy with what I accomplished. The edges got better as I went, but still need work. With practice, I’m positive I’ll get better. And I did it all by myself! I need to figure out why the piece is waving. And why, when I started with the pale green (3rd picture up), it’s not straight across. I’m guessing that the tension isn’t even. I didn’t have any paint sticks left over for the front so when I wound it, the yarn didn’t wind evenly with the knots being there.

Today I want to weave from a real draft, which means I’ll have to rethread the heddles. And I may try using a selvedge. Fun stuff!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 11:35 am and is filed under Weaving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.