Scramble

It's been a bit of a slow motion scramble, but about all I can manage right now.

Trying to shut a business down as you continue to run said business is a...challenge...

Everything takes longer than expected.  Everything becomes more complicated than anticipated.

Then something happens and you snow globe all your plans again because something else has cropped up that needs to be done on a priority basis.

But I did finally - just now - finish the fringe twisting.  Doug and I had discussed the week and what needed to be done on Monday, then Tuesday those plans fell apart so we adjusted and he said he could go pressing on Thursday.  Not his first choice, but.

Moving pressing to Thursday meant a bunch of things had to be moved around and things I had wanted to do had to be shelved, but it also gave me an extra day to get the fringe twisting done in a way that would reduce the stress on my body, letting my back and hands rest more.

Tomorrow part of the priority is to do a video conference with someone interested in possibly purchasing the press so in the end scheduling pressing for Thursday actually worked out well.  She will be able to see how to start the press up and how it works.

I have managed to post some of the tea towels I have for sale but I also need to take photos of loom parts.  Once I've got those posted to my blog, I will put a notice on WeaveTech - both the group and the FB page, just in case someone can use them.

When I decommissioned the AVL, some people spoke up right away requesting parts.  Some of those have been re-homed, but I still have replacement gears and other things that could serve elsewhere.  Shipping is always a challenge with large items, but gears are only heavy, not big.  Those could easily be mailed.

Doug has pulled the gears plus I need to rummage to see what else might be of interest to other weavers.  I did have a box of industrial shuttles - part of a weaver's estate that I couldn't use in the AVL, but didn't know what else to do with them.  Someone asked about the Honex tensioners - a couple of them have something similar - or perhaps the shuttle as is would work for someone.  But where DID that box of shuttles go????  (my studio has been snow globed - a term I coined for the kind of disarray of completely and totally tossing everything into the air, not sure where things have landed.)

We have decided that the cables probably aren't worth anything but scrap.  Over the years we replaced or repaired them, but they are most likely stretched or at least aged enough that they probably aren't usable.  Doug will go through the air assist parts box and decide if he can sell those bits locally.  But there are foot air switches (need oil, not oil-less), and various other things that could be used elsewhere.  Not just for a loom, though, so might be easier to try and sell locally.  (They are not the same equipment as supplied by AVL.  We upgraded about 13 months after installing the original AVL air system - larger air hoses, different foot switches, adding an oiler.)

Hopefully we will be back on track next week and there will be another set of shelves installed.  Then more boxes of yarn can come over while several boxes will get delivered to one (or more) of the thrift shops.  Once that has been done we will have to do a serious examination of what is left, what we need to keep, what needs to be tossed.

My original deadline of 'out of the annex by Dec. 31' has also been snow globed.  The new deadline, written in stone, not to be moved, is Jan. 31.  By then the business will be officially shut down and I do not want to be paying rent on a space that isn't actually useful anymore.  2004(?) until 2019.  It was a good run.  But it's over.

Rest in Peace AVL 181

I wove on an AVL at the 1981 ANWG conference and - after reading Allen Fannin's book Handloom Weaving Technology from cover to cover on the bus home - ordered this loom.

It was more mechanized than the one I'd woven on - I was told I could order an auto-cloth advance and double box fly shuttle.

When it came time to ship it, I was informed that it would not have those two features as they would be coming later.  Thus began my relationship with AVL.

I did get the loom with the double box fly shuttle finally in February of 1982 but the auto-cloth advance didn't arrive until much later - August, as I recall.

It took me a year to get fully comfortable with it.  It had the manual dobby at that point.  I waited until a year after the introduction of the Compu-Dobby before I invested in that.  Then in the late 1990s I added air assist to the treadle and fly shuttle.  And upgraded to a four box fly shuttle because my primary client routinely used 3 or 4 different wefts for stripes.

When the new fly box assembly and air assist were on the loom, I asked Doug to design an air assist to change the fly shuttle boxes.  In spite of everyone telling him it couldn't be done, he managed it.

Long story short, I could not have accomplished nearly as much as I have done if I had not had this loom, this tool, in my studio.  Doug made other tweaks to the loom to tailor it specifically to what I was doing and how I wanted it to work.  There have been - quite literally - miles* of cloth come off the beams of this loom.  It has served (for the most part) well and faithfully.  As we replaced parts when they wore out.  For the better part of 37 years this has been my primary loom and at times my only loom.

However.

The last three years it has not been behaving well.  After multiple tweaks, money spent on replacing worn parts, more tweaks, way more 'seconds' or 'rags' than was really tenable, today I declared this loom not just retired, but deceased.  Dead.

If Doug and I cannot get this loom to run reliably?  It's worn right out.

It has worn right out just as I am fully accepting that I, too, am worn right out.

The loom is large - 60" weaving width - made even wider by the fly shuttle boxes.  It's noisy.  I've always worn hearing protection when weaving on it.  It became even noisier with the addition of the Compu-Dobby and then the air assist.  The compressor is in the next room, but still.

So I have quietly (mostly on this blog) been saying that I was going to get rid of it.  Several people have already contacted me about buying parts and they will be able to do that as soon as we get the loom disassembled and we can arrange for shipping.

There are more things that will be sold, but I don't have a lot of time to shop them around right now so that may have to wait until after the craft fair season is over.

But I have things like industrial fly shuttles and pirns, AVL fly shuttles and pirns, and heddles.  Boy Howdy, do I have heddles.  Probably over 2000 although I will have to go through and count them out in bundles of 50.  I'll get Doug to make me a  jig to do that job.

The wood will be offered to a wood turner.  If he wants it we can deliver it on our trip to Salt Spring in July.  The wood can be dropped off, then the van filled up with the silk yarn I've accepted from a weaver's estate.

Before anyone contacts me about buying this loom?  No.  It is not functioning reliably.  I will not sell a loom to someone that I cannot make work my own self.  Especially a loom that I know as well as this one, having woven on it for 37 years.

So the wood will be offered to a woodturner and the loom can be reincarnated into something else.  Something useful and beautiful.

And as for me?

I have ordered a new loom because I'm not done weaving.  Yet.  I chose a Megado because it has a smaller footprint, is quiet and much easier - less physical - to weave on.  It arrives the end of August.

I am hoping I can make friends with it quickly because I am extremely low on inventory.  Too much fighting with a loom that wasn't working properly, creating seconds I cannot sell.  Even so I don't know how much I can get done given my travel schedule.  However, after today I can switch to the small loom and start pumping place mats and rayon chenille scarves out.  Hopefully.

My hand is still going numb when I hold my arm in certain positions.  Today I concentrated on figuring out how to lessen that and have some ideas to take to the Leclerc and see if I can put them into practice.  Proprioception.  It's a thing.  Apparently I have it.

*During my most productive years I was routinely pulling 240 or so yards off of this loom every month.  For the best part of 9 years.  I wove the samples for Magic in the Water mostly on this loom.  With the standard fly shuttle (single), prior to adding the air assist I was weaving approximately 90 picks per minute as my standard weaving rhythm.  I was averaging approximately 1 million picks per year.  I stopped telling people any of this because I was so frequently met with disbelief.  I can no longer do this, nor do I want to.  Which pretty much tells me I am ready to ease into the next phase of my life, whatever this is going to look like.  Rest in Peace AVL 181.  You have earned it.

Moving Parts

When I ordered my AVL in oh, 1981, a number of weavers informed me that I could no longer call my textiles hand woven.  But I do.  Because the loom does exactly nothing if I'm not there to make it happen.

The thing with a loom with so many moving parts is that it will fail more often than a loom with fewer moving parts.  

After ignoring the AVL for literally months over the winter, the wood had shrunk, nuts and bolts had come loose, and alignment was altered.  

Having a loom such as this perfectly aligned is critical or the loom also makes mistakes for you.  As mine has been.

Over the past few days I have been tweaking it and now it is almost behaving - but not all the time.  As a weaver, I need to be aware and alert for when the mechanics of the loom are going 'wrong' and causing problems. 

Fortunately this warp is long and if something goes awry it's not terminal.  It just means one of the panels may be cut into tea towels immediately.  That means that I can actually have some hemmed well before the conference begins,

So when the loom tosses a cable or a critical piece breaks, I heave a sigh, fix the problem as best I can and see if it is now happy.

Currently reading Swimming in the Sink by Lynne Cox

Minor Surgery

Surgical tools to fix...

Cables wear out, yes, they do.  

We invested in the correct size plastic coated airline cable, bought by the yard at a local wire rope supplier and the tool for cutting it/compressing the knurls.  The loop broke on shaft 14 so one end, dropping the shaft suddenly.  Fortunately the warp isn't 'tender' and no warp ends broke.  From break to fix was about 30 minutes...