Rode Hard...

...put away wet.

My loom is approximately as old as I am.  It was 'rescued' from an art centre where it had languished for a number of years, getting used for anything anyone else wanted to use it for - none of it related in any way to weaving.

We drove to Alberta, through the Rockies (because that's the only way to get to Alberta) in February.  Not the greatest time to be driving through the mountains, but the art centre was anxious to get it gone.

We brought it home, Doug cleaned it up and retrofitted a newer style brake (friction fit instead of dog and pawl), changed the antique cords on both the rollers and the tie up/treadles and she has been my faithful sidekick for - well, more years than I can remember.  1999?

I had worked my way through a number of other looms, none of them quite what I wanted.  This elderly Leclerc Fanny counter balanced loom and I became fast friends very quickly.

On her I have woven hundreds of rayon chenille scarves, hundreds of painted warps for scarves and shawls, hundreds of place mats/table runners, samples galore.

Over the years she has been modified as my needs changed - first to use a warping valet, then live weight tension.

She saw me through my recovery from a broken ankle (breaking many of the adhesions the very first time I tried to open a shed - OW!) and my by-pass surgery.

She is frequently sprinkled with dust from weaving, sometimes, in fact, coated with it.  (I don't have dust bunnies, I have herds of dust buffalo.)

Yesterday I took a good look at the upper cords and noticed the wear on them.  With all the miles they have travelled as I opened and closed shed after shed, the polyester is actually beginning to wear.  

Seems I am as hard on my equipment as my body.

Currently reading Sylvanus Now by Donna Morrissey

Eye of the Beholder

My Leclerc loom is a 'rescue' loom.  It came with bumps, dents and dings along with some design issues that I needed modified.

But I love my little loom, it is a true work horse and does almost everything I need it to do.  To me it is beautiful because it works well and allows me to work efficiently.

I have woven on a great deal of looms - not all of them, but most of the major manufacturer's offerings.  There are a few more I would like to try out, just so that I have a point of reference when someone asks me whether or not they should buy this or that loom.

To me a loom is not a piece of furniture, it is a tool.  As such I am much more concerned about how well it functions than how 'pretty' it is.

I am also more than willing to make modifications to any piece of equipment - or have Doug make them, truth be told - in order to make it work more to my liking.  I do not hesitate to drill holes, add clamps, or whatever, if that will improve the performance.

Quite frankly I do not want to pay a premium for decoration that does nothing to enhance the function of my tools and may, indeed, hinder it.  I won't give examples because I don't want to annoy anyone, but not all looms or spinning wheels are created equal.  Some really do function 'better' than others.

I would love to have a long discussion with a loom manufacturer about what I think makes a good, well functioning loom.  I'd love to have input into the creation of a new 'portable'/workshop floor loom.  Anyone want to have my free advice?  (You know what free advice is worth...)

Dating Fanny

the holes are from the new bumpers Doug attached to the outside of the castle to keep the beater farther away from the shafts...

Fanny arrived in my studio after being 'rescued' from an arts centre.  She had been used - and abused - and at the time I didn't really think about her age too much.  Doug retro-fitted a brake cable instead of the ratchet brake system she came with and as soon as she was ready to go she went into active service and I never really looked back.

But I belong to a group on Ravelry called Leclerc Looms and there is a thread there about when various loom models were manufactured.  After seeing the various iterations of the decals used over the years, I knew that mine did not fit into any of those categories.  So I became curious.

From the amount of wear on her we knew that she was 'elderly'.  Also from the fitments - e.g. no shed regulator possible - the top roller just sits in slots in the top of the castle and the heddle bar keepers are just hooks, not the spring clips seen nowadays.

In a fit of procrastination I took a photo of the decal and emailed Francois, not expecting any sort of answer for a few days.  It is Saturday, after all!  And the end of the holiday season.  I knew there were people at work as I'd sent in a yarn order earlier in the week and gotten acknowledgement of that.

Imagine my surprise when, within an hour of sending my question, Francois replied!

My little 36" Fanny is venerable, indeed.  He couldn't give a precise date but says prior to 1960.

Apart from the modifications we did when we got her, it looks like everything except the treadle ties, also replaced recently, is original, including the aprons.

Weave on, old girl!  Weave on!

With a Little Care

From time to time someone will casually mention on a chat group that 'you can't weave unbalanced weave structures on a counter balanced loom'.

Unfortunately they rarely qualify this statement to say that on a cb loom with horses you can weave anything you want to weave.  The injunction is mainly aimed at cb looms with rollers like my Leclerc Fanny.  And even then, if you have a Leclerc Fanny or Mira and a 'shed regulator' you only need to adjust the level of your warp and again you can weave pretty much anything you want to.

Even on my elderly Fanny without a shed regulator I can still weave an unbalanced weave with a little care.  I'm weaving samples for an article for Handwoven and chose to weave a couple of weave structures with 1 against 3 or 3 against 1 lifts/sinks.

The Fanny is much happier lowering 3 than raising 3, but I still managed - with a little care - to get my samples woven - waffle and huck lace.  A low profile shuttle would have made things a little easier, but I was too lazy to go to the other loom to get one.  A wider warp would have been more of a problem, but for this narrow 10" sample warp, I managed just fine.  :)

The photo above shows one shaft being lowered, 3 being raised.

Currently reading Best Defense by Kate Wilhelm

Cold Remedy

Not sure how this raucous variegated got into my stash - lime green isn't one of my fav colours, after all - but it was time to use it up. The rust red weft seems to be taming it quite nicely.

After 5 days of languishing I was getting antsy. My cold has settled into my chest so my brain is functioning - sort of - and I decided to try to sweat my cold out by weaving. Rayon chenille is straight forward to weave anyway so thought I'd get cracking. There are 4 more wound warps ready and waiting for me, and I'd like to get them all done before I set the Fanny up for the tea towel warp for Tien (who is arriving next Thursday!)

Not feeling well my patience is at a low ebb and I got a bit exercised over a thread on one of the chat groups I belong to where people were, once again, decrying the use of mechanical assistance and when the line can be drawn about a textile being 'hand' woven or not.

I suspect the chasm between hand weavers and power loom weavers began during the Industrial Revolution. Hand weavers were being displaced by power looms, losing their jobs - and during an age where there were no social safety networks (or not many other than the church or the poor house) losing your livelihood to a machine must have been horribly frightening.

I suspect the chasm was widened further during the Arts and Crafts movement when useful items that were made by hand were extolled as being superior to items made by industry. Something that may very well have been true during the early days of mechanization taking over from hand work.

But let's face it - we have all seen inferior work produced by hand as well as by machine, and quality work produced by hand and by machine. The fact that something is made by hand is no guarantee of quality. Unfortunately.

Since I chose weaving as a career, I have from the get go been concerned with working efficiently, both in my actual hand movements and in the choice of tools that I have purchased. To my mind buying a loom with a dobby, cloth advance and fly shuttle just made all sorts of economical sense. Without my AVL dobby loom, I could not have been as productive as I have been over the years.

But the loom does absolutely nothing on its own. It is a hand loom and always will be so long as I own it.

The Canadian government (in its wisdom) came up with a legal definition for 'hand woven'. To paraphrase - each and every action of the loom must be initiated by the weaver.

In other words, I cannot flip a switch and walk away "to have a cup of tea" as one person put it recently. No weaver, no weaving going on.

I'm tired of having people who don't understand how a dobby loom (computer aided or mechanical) works, have never seen a fly shuttle let alone used one, or come to the realization that an auto-cloth advance does not take control away from the weaver, point their finger at me and cry "not a hand weaver".

I disliked it 30 years ago, and I dislike it now. But I remind myself that these crys of 'impostor'
are being made out of ignorance. These people simply don't know and don't understand that the addition of mechanical assistance takes nothing away from the weaver. In fact, the weaver actually has to know a lot more because they need to know how to operate the equipment, and when something goes wrong, how to fix it. They need to know how to adjust it so that they get the results they want, just like they need to know how to adjust their technique when weaving on a loom without all this mechanical assistance.

Many people don't realize that I have more than one loom. One is the AVL equipped with computer assist, 4 box fly shuttle, auto-cloth advance etc. But my other loom is a 4 shaft Fanny counter balanced loom.

I love both of these looms - the AVL for it's complexity that allows me to efficiently weave very complex designs - the Fanny for it's very simplicity.

Today when I'm still feeling so sick, my tool of choice is not the AVL - I need way too much mental acuity to weave successfully on that loom. My tool of choice today is the Fanny.

And I will always consider myself a hand weaver, regardless of which loom I am weaving on.

Coaching Weaving

Having Syne come to the studio meant I spent some time analyzing what I do in order to try and come up with the language needed to convey the skills being shown.



You can read about Syne's perspective here: http://3.ly/B3x



One of the things that new weavers don't understand right away is that the relationship between the weaver, the loom and the materials being woven is a three way conversation.



For example, the warp I wove today was a bit of a challenge.



(I apologize if the picture isn't in focus - I'm still getting used to my new glasses!)

This weaving is not my best work. The yarn is a wool/silk blend, very softly spun and therefore a lot more elastic than what I'm used to. Given that elasticity, it should have been set at 12 epi not the 10 I chose, especially given the weft that was used.

But this is a sample warp, and these are things I needed to learn about the qualities of the yarn in order to plan a 'real' project.

(What I actually wanted to use was for weft was wool but the only yarn I had on hand that was the right colour was a silk. The silk was a bit too fine and very slippery, so my beating is not as consistent as I wouild like. )

One of the reasons I wanted Syne to weave on the four shaft loom was to evaluate the physical skills she came to me with already. After giving her time to get used to the strange (to her) loom, I video taped her while she wove. We were then able to look at what she was doing and tweak her physical movements.

I then video taped her again after she had time to incorporate the changes and reviewed her movements so that she could again see what she was doing. After that we worked on how to figure out the choreography of the various treadlings with suggetions for how I remember the sequences.

Unlearning muscle memory in order to learn new muscle memory (changing treadling sequences) is also a skill. We have to put our minds to the task of over riding what we have learned in order to learn the new information.

Some people are more open to being able to do this than others. Dancers, for example, are constantly learning new dances - new choreography - new step sequences. Not so different from weavers, really.

After finishing the tea towel warp and feeling comfortable with the loom and that particular warp, I radically changed gears on Syne and we set the loom up with a very open weave. The yarn was a silk boucle warp and weft, and the set was 10 epi. The challenge was to control the beat and create a gauze fabric.

When we weave we must do that in co-operation with the equipment and the yarn we are using. We must be open to feedback from both so that we can choose the manner of how we use them in order to create the quality of cloth we desire. Learning the limits of the equipment and the yarn is an important step in becoming a proficient weaver.

After weaving with the Silken Twist (available from Yarns Plus http://yarnsplus.com) I now have a much better understanding of how it behaves e.g. it stretches under tension so I have to weave longer in the loom in order to get the woven length required, the set to use and which yarns I would like to combine with it. The fact that this particular cloth isn't my best work doesn't mean that it isn't perfectly acceptable as it is. But I now have the information I need to continue on to create a fabric that is good, instead of just acceptable.

And therein lies the on-going challenge, and what keeps me fascinated with weaving.

Scarf #3

This morning I started weaving the third and last scarf on this warp, and wish I'd gone with the teal sooner!

Oh well.

The warp is off the loom, and now I'm wanting to work on something else - something other than the AVL - and not sure what to tackle. Maybe knitting on the sample shawl would be good?

I've got massage and doctor tomorrow afternoon - I could leave winding the next warp for the Fanny for Karena to do......... :)

Time for dinner anyway - think I'll make soup with the bits and leftovers in the fridge and clean that out.

Seeing Red - Again

I seem to be having a red-fest. :) In the past week I've woven a couple of red shawl warps on the AVL, a red shawl on the Fanny, a red chenille scarf warp today and am just now dressing the Fanny again with a black and red warp. ;)

Red - the colour of energy. Perhaps my week of rest has allowed my energy to come back and my colour choice reflects that.

Don't know if I will finish weaving it before I leave tomorrow, but that's okay. The AVL is (gasp!) naked and destined to remain that way for a couple weeks. Well, not quite naked - the last warp still needs to be stripped off, but somehow a completely naked loom always looks so - hmm - pathetic? sad? :^)

I will go away and think about my priorities for when I get back and then decide what to weave on the AVL next.

A huge priority will be to get the studio cleaned up to the point where one can walk without the do-see-do between boxes. I have students coming this summer, and the studio has to be able to hold more than just me!

Another priority (sub-priority?) will be to finish skeining the yarn to be dyed and get that dyed this summer. Once I've done that I will have to decide if I continue to purchase natural yarn and dye it to sell and for my own use. I could get rid of a lot of stuff if I stopped doing that. OTOH, with my Art Fire store, perhaps I can sell it on the internet.

So I will be doing a lot of mulling over options and thinking about how I really want to spend my time for the forseeable future.

That's one of the nice thing about long road trips - lots of time to think without too many distractions.

When I come home I have a number of medical type appointments - I need new eyeglasses, a crown on one of my molars and a meeting with my family doctor to discuss changing my cholesterol medication (and find out what to expect in terms of my blocked arteries in terms of symptoms/treatment).

Bette Davis had it oh, so right - getting old is not for sissies! Who knew I'd reach that stage in my late 50's! ;^)

I Love My Fanny!

Leclerc Fanny, that is! :)

Finished the warp on the loom this morning. Here's a picture from the front.

While I don't recommend weaving this close to the reed generally, on this loom and with these yarns I can push beyond the 'sweet spot' in order to get the woven length I need. At this point if I start having a problem with stressing the selvedge threads I'm nearly done, so it's worth the risk in order to get the length I need for my project. :}




And here's the reason why I really love my Fanny - you can see how close to the apron I can weave if I have to. Tension isn't great, but again, worth pushing the equipment and the yarn in order to get the length required to finish my project. :D



It's also good to know just how little loom waste you can get away with if you are working with very expensive - or scarce - yarn...........