Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Weaving in the near future?

I suppose you could call me a ‘lapsed’ weaver. Once upon a time I did a lot of weaving. In fact, I did it for a living, hiring myself out to local and not-so-local designers to weave yardage for their creations, and weaving items for sale and a few creations of my own to enter in shows. Along came a hefty dose of Real Life, and I had to get a job with medical and educational benefits for the boys. I sold the loom and all the accessories and left the weaving world for 20+ years.

One of my spinning students bought a loom years ago and asked me to teach her to set it up and weave. And I was bitten by the weaving bug again, found an old loom, bought it and brought it home back in 2005. This loom was built under Osma Todd Gallinger’s brand and somehow ended up stored in a hen house! It was rescued sometime later, used to weave rugs and passed on to a studio in eastern Pennsylvania. They sold it to help finance their troubled youth program and it came to live with me, all in pieces, with lots of notes, diagrams and photos to help in it’s re-assembly.

I finally found the time last week to clean it up (yep, found hen house straw in the oddest places!) with Murphy’s oil soap, give it a good coating of orange oil, and put it together. After Sunday’s marathon re-assembly, it really is surprising that hubby is still speaking to me!

So, here she is–42" weaving width, 8 harnesses, 14 treadles.




I still need to give the castle, warp drum and harnesses a good cleaning/oiling, figure out how the brake chain goes on, and buy Texsolv heddles and reeds. But I’m hoping to be weaving with my handspun yarn by some time this summer. I'm looking forward to re-acquainting myself with those complex twills! Yay!

5 comments:

Doris Sturm said...

Oh, my - that's serious stuff - it's like playing a pipe organ or something - you've got to be ambidextrous and use your feet probably at the same time...looks like you'd burn up some serious calories working that thing LOL - I'm very impressed! Can't wait to see what you will be weaving!

(so nice to hear from you again - I've been thinking about you wondering how you are)

RMK said...

Exciting!

Annie said...

Great to see you're (almost) weaving again! Any plans what you'll make first?

Feisty said...

@ Annie --> Probably a complex twill, I love the variations you can weave just by changing the treadling.
@ Doris --> Not so hard to work as there are 'assistants' to help raise the threads. First you raise the threads, then you pass the weft yarn over them, then you lower the threads and push the weft yarn into place with the beater. Not hard at all!

Unknown said...

Hi, did you ever get the back brake/ chain figured out? One of these looms landed in my lap, and I can't figure out the back bean and brake, how does it all go together with the spring?