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Two of my father

Just off my Old Loom

A friend recently said how much they enjoyed my weaving posts - I checked, and except for yesterday I haven't posted a picture of any of my weaving for quite a long time.  Maybe that was a hint.  So I will try to catch up with posts of my recent weavings.

Just off my loom is the following two scarfs.

They are from the same warp but the first uses a wool crepe that shrinks in the weft and the second used a regular wool instead of the crepe.

These are for the exhibit the Cross Borders weaving guild at the Michigan League of Handweavers summer conference.

The two year topic of study the guild had was titled "Off the Grid - A Study into Deflected Threads and Distorted Weaves".  Both the scarfs fits into that description.

Finally Weaving on the New Loom

It has certainly taken me awhile.  This winter my new loom arrived.  An AVL 24 shaft comp-dobby (means it is computer aided).   It arrived in 3 large boxes.  It took me awhile to put it together.  It had one broken piece which AVL had to ship another piece for.  Then one of the factory installed gears was installed backwards (that took awhile to figure out).  

Needed to purchase and install the upgrade to my computer software to get the drivers that run the loom.

Finally got the loom warped and since this was the first time with 24 harnesses and I did not yet know how to have the computer raise the harnesses, I had many threading errors.  Then I also had crossed cables.   (Also during this time I was weaving samples for two weaving groups, scarves and towels on my other loom).

Once I got that fixed I started weaving.  Did not work correctly.  Shaft 15 raised every time.  Finally Nancy Peck (who has the same loom) came over last Thursday and she showed me how to go in with a screwdriver and re-line up the solenoids to the cables (I swear you need to be an engineer to be a weaver).

So today I finally sat down to weave.  Instead of shaft 15 acting up, shaft 21 did the same.  At least this time I was able to fix it myself.

The picture above is what I have woven so far.  It is on a hand-painted warp and I found the pattern online (I was not adventurous enough to design my own warp for my first piece - my current loom is 8 shafts).

So far I do not love my new loom yet.  I hope I will in the future.

It has a sandpaper from beam that you have to be careful about.

It has a very narrow "sweet spot" for the weaving.

My current stool is not the correct height so I need to go look for a new one that is adjustable since my back started hurting with very short weaving time.