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!