Friday, March 23, 2012

more loom maintenance

I'm just starting to get a little tired of sanding rust.

Those are two of the eight lamms, all off my loom right now. I've got four done with the rust sanding for now, four to go. It's definitely annoying, but it feels good to give Lily a little tlc at the same time.

I also spent this morning helping a friend put a giant countermarch loom together. We measured the weaving width to be 80 inches, which is pretty damn exciting. The whole double lamm system had me confused for a bit because I'm so used to jack looms, but I got the tie up figured out soon enough. Loom loom looms, all day long. Not a bad day, if I say so myself.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Some of my hand woven scarves are now for sale at LOCAL in Lenox, Mass.

http://lenoxlocal.com/

They sell all handcrafted goods, made locally here in the Berkshires. Lots of other great stuff too, check it out!

Monday, February 20, 2012

One of the downsides of buying a used loom: sometimes things break. Back in December one of the rivets on the lamms severed right through.


See that one piece sticking out? Yeah, that's not supposed to go there.


I took it all apart down there and got that sad lamm off. With some great advice from a friend, I bought myself a rivet gun and got it all back together again. I think it took me a few weeks to get it all figured out and working again. Good as new!

Yet last night, another rivet did the same thing. So I took the bottom apart, got the lamm off, drilled out the old rivet, popped a new one in, and put it all back together again. This time though, I had it fixed and weaving again within an hour and a half. I really hope this doesn't keep happening, but really, an hour and a half. NOT F'IN BAD, if I say so myself.


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UPDATE: About 2 or 3 yards of weaving past that last post, another rivet broke off. :( I've been emailing Macomber for help now. Hopefully I can get to the bottom of this soon.

Friday, November 11, 2011

dyeing with the elements

Since getting my loom back in the summer, its been interesting figuring out ways to dye my warps the way I did in the studios at MassArt.


My first dyeing was back in August, just some skeins (probably for weft) immersion dyed.


This is when I learned that there's no better place to dry yarn than a sunny deck railing.





After this, I decided it was time to really get back into things, and dye a warp direct application.

This was a 9 yard warp of rayon yarn, all stretched out on the driveway. It wove up great, (after getting it on the loom with the help of an old childrens encyclopedia set...) but dyeing it on the ground got to be a little annoying.

For my next warp, I decided I needed to lift it off of the ground to make things easier for my knees. This week, I dyed a 12 yard warp, again on the driveway. I figured I should take advantage of this great weather while it lasts. If we get another freak snow storm I'll be doing this in the garage.


This time, I lifted the warp up by using saw horses with raddles tied to each of them to keep the warp spread out. The raddles were great, but even using the saw horses I was bending over too much. Still though, a 12 yard dyed warp is exciting! I have another warp ready to go on the loom before this one, because it'll take this one a few days to dry completely just hanging inside, now that the sun sets at about 4:30... It's actually still rinsing right now. I've been taking more of a hands off approach to rinsing, and just letting it sit in the bucket overnight sometimes.
It will be fun to weave once I get there!






Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Lily the loom



Back in the end of July, I brought home a used loom found through craigslist. It's a 40 in. 8 harness Macomber with 2 back beams and room to add 4 more harnesses. That is, if I ever want to spend roughly $800 on another 4 harness kits, which is more than I spent on the entire loom since I bought it used!




It needed a little tlc after sitting unused in a basement for about 10 years, but nothing too extensive. Throughout the process of cleaning her up, I named her Lily. For some reason it seemed approoriate :)

I'm now working on my second warp with her. The first one was pretty small, just one narrow scarf in point twill, but plenty for a good test!



My second warp is much more substantial: 9 yards long, 18 inches wide, and hand dyed. More on that soon!

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Knitted inspiration:
http://alicelemoine.com/collection/