January | 2013 | The Straight of the Goods

A Day in the Life of Looms, 2013

January 1, 2013

Once again, Meg hosts a New Year’s peek at a bunch of people’s looms!

Here are my contributions.

Heddles:

I counted, bundled and washed these loom-components yesterday because they stank the with stink of the former owner’s sprayable de-stinkifier. I don’t really believe in washing heddles, but let me tell you, I had no choice. They are drying on the sewing machine table out of the reach of the cat.

Above center: Varpapuu Kothe Nordia 8-shaft table loom with cracked floor stand, circa 1970’s, 31.5 inch weaving width . . .

. . . which is still recovering from it’s de-stinkifying ordeal by soap and water. Those cute Finnish shuttles on the sewing machine table came with the loom as well. Also the plastic bed-lifters. Ah, craigslist! I bought it the day before yesterday, now all that’s left to do is to put the shafts back together and string ‘er up.

Above right: Bergman 8-shaft countermarche.

Also known as the moveable hat shelf, as you will notice it has moved from one side of the room to the other since last January. 2012 was a year of pain and illness. My back is not improving. I can’t treadle this loom unless it does.

Standing inkle and Pysslingen 4-shaft table looms:

The standing inkle loom has another 20/1 linen band on it. I made three others in 2012, maybe I will blog about them some time.

The Glimåkra table loom of last year is still incomplete. It turned out to be surprisingly hard to find the right size of lumber for Pysslingen heddle bars, for so many reasons. After a failure with warpy oak I scrounged the last straight pieces of some clear Douglas fir at a restoration millwork place and made the bars. That is where I stalled out: my next step is making a jig to accomplish the precision drilling to add the hardware to the bars, and you know what? I don’t really like to fix looms. I’m tired of it. I would rather weave. That is why I decided to get the Varpapuu. Plus, the price was right. Plus, it has eight shafts instead of four. And it’s wider. And deeper. I do still plan on finishing making the Glimåkra heddle bars, just not right away.