I put together my new loom – very exciting! I actually botched a part of the assembly, and had to recover by using a power screwdriver and forcing a screw into its spot. My lesson: Haste, even haste due to enthusiasm, does not always result in speed of accomplishment. The loom, however, is none the worse for my error, and nobody except Terry knows about it.
On advice from various internet forums and from the folks at The Fiber Factory, I chose a Kromski Harp 24″ Rigid Heddle Loom. I also bought the stand for it – I don’t have a convenient stable table to use as a lean-to for the loom, and I like the idea of a self-supporting loom.
Here’s a not-great-lighting picture of the assembled loom in my “weaving room”:
I know that my Eames wire chair doesn’t go well with the loom, but both the loom and the chair are beautiful and functional in their own ways, and the chair is now a comfortable old friend. I hope that the loom becomes a comfortable old friend as well.
The loom comes with an 8-dent heddle, so my intent is to use that heddle for a while, and refrain from any loom embellishments until I get some experience and perhaps form a better opinion of what I really want to do. The 8-dent heddle, same as in the loom in the classroom, means that I already know the approximate style of yarn that I will work with for awhile.
My goal for a first project on this loom was simple: I wanted to reproduce the positive experience I had in class, on my own loom. I wanted to make a full-sized scarf, relatively simply, to see that I knew how to do all the activities necessary, and to see how it felt to work at home, mostly alone. And I wanted to do something with more than one color.
My artistic and tactful daughter Emma helped me pick some yarn for this project. The (I think good) results are a testament to her gently guiding me away from some odd choices, towards some cooperating colors.
Here is the yarn I chose: Blue for the bulk of the scarf, with a red stripe, and some yellow and light blue accents. Red and yellow cross-stripes to experiment with some patterns.
There is one yarn sticker missing from that photo – I forget which one.
I took some pictures along the way. I tried to do good clean work, and along the way learned a little bit on how to make the edges (selvedges?) better. So the beginning of this project, edge-wise, is not as good as the ending.
Here are some progress pics:
Warping and winding, preparing for weaving:
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The first set of cross-color weaving, thick areas:
When done, I washed it gently. It is 75% acrylic, 25% wool, so I expected some shrinkage and was hoping that the shrinkage would mask some of my early edging errors. Result? Some masking, and some still-visible errors. But I will learn to not call attention to the errors when showing a piece to somebody, unless that somebody is a weaving instructor. 🙂
Drying:
And a few pics of the finished product. I think it turned out well for my first project on my own loom. As you will read later, this scarf ended up in Florida, in my mom’s “collection”.
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Not the best pictures, but I hope you get the gist of it. It feels good to hold. That’s a bonus to me – I made something that I like to hold and to drape around my neck. Cool!