Cotton and Ward Loom

On the spinning wheel is more cotton.   All of it is naturally coloured, commercially prepared sliver.   I'm not sure how much sliver I have left, but I'm pretty sure that I'm spinning up the last bit of the sliver.  That means the rest of the cotton needs to be carded and rolled into punis before I can spin it.   This means I may take a bit of a break from the cotton, because I'm not sure I want to spend a lot of time carding right now.

The new loom is an overhead jack loom made by Ward.   It needed a little bit of work to get it up and running.  I was lucky in that a N.A. rep from Glimakra gave me the pertinent information I needed to understand how this loom worked, otherwise, I would have struggled for a bit before I figured it all out.  (Glimakra has pretty awesome looms!)

The Ward is a really sturdy loom but it uses texsolve heddles, although I have the bit of equipment for making string heddles, which were likely the original ones.  I'm not sure how I like the texsolve yet, but they are quiet, for sure.  There is absolutely nothing on this loom which makes noise.  It is super quiet. It is also made for people just a tad taller than I am.  I'm not sure how to deal with this yet.   I'm thinking maybe a rocking loom bench would help, mainly because I've found myself rocking forward on my current loom bench - tall loom, short legs - not really the best combination.

This is my test bit to see if I had my tension working.  This wove off so quickly and so nicely.  The yarn is wool from the rug company which went out of business.  It makes fairly soft blankets.   A gal at our guild suggested a sett of 8.   I found it a bit loose, so when I made blankets a couple of years ago, I used a sett of 9 and it was perfect.   However, I only have a 6 dent reed and for some reason, the sett chart I checked, gave me a threading for 8 epi, in the 9 epi column.  Instead, I went for 10, which in hindsight was too much.  It is a very sturdy sample.   

I've only sett up 4 of the 8 shafts right now.  I thought  it might be easier to get 4 up and running first and then just adjust the tension of the last 4 shafts to match.

I had the warp wound for the gamp project for the design class.   I wound it for the Fanny loom, which I dress from front to back.  Unfortunately the Ward has to be dress from back to front, which created no end of issues in dressing the loom.  Argh, if I could have afforded the extra string, I would have trashed the first warp and rewound it.  However, instead I just pushed through all the stupid stuff and got the thing on the loom.  There is a threading error, which I have checked and checked.   From what I can tell, it's actually threaded correctly and there are no crossed threads.  I've been totally stymied trying to figure it out.  Eventually I said to hell with it and started weaving.   I'm not thrilled enough with this project to spend anymore time crawling under the loom figuring out which thread is doing something stupid.  There is supposed to be a red band between each section, but I've misplaced or used up the last little bit of red, so I'm using the end of bobbins that I had  leftover from other projects. Unfortunately, the light brown doesn't have enough contrast to actually be very visible. 

A busy start to the New Year

I've been spinning more cotton.  I've tried to do at least a few yards every day, although some days are definitely more productive than others.  The brown is the last bit of coloured cotton - I have some samples yet to spin, but this was the last 100 g bag.   It's boiled up and is more of that lovely soft brown.   I'm super happy with this yarn.  The white above it is a bit inconsistent in a few places, mainly due to lack of attention: hockey games, Dirk Gently, more hockey and the latest Star Trek movie, which was in my stocking.

This was the coveted present from my husband this year.  It's a vintage bobbin winder, which works like a dream!   It is fast and smooth.   I almost think it is faster than the borrowed drill I was using.  It escaped the water damage from the fallen tree thankfully.   I chose it - there was a new Leclerc bobbin winder there, but this one seemed faster and was definitely quieter. (Prettier too, but apparently that is no reason to purchase items like bobbin winders and cars)

New Year's Day had us out and about to pick up this.   I had to time it so that we'd be back in time for the World Junior's Hockey game.  It was tight, but we got home just as the game was about to start, so all was good.  
The rest of the week, I've been replacing worn out weird bits - like 18 yards of elastic tape and resetting the shafts because they were way too high and rushing off a test piece, so that I could adjust the tension.   Once I got it set up, the old gal turns out to have a fabulous shed.  The brake took a few minutes to get used but it holds an amazing tension for a jack loom.   I'm not sure about the texsolve heddles yet.  The move in weird and different ways than the metal heddles, but they work perfectly.  As well, they are so light that it takes no effort at all to treadle and quiet - I don't think I've heard a loom that quiet.   The test weaving was only 14 inches wide, so we'll have to see how a large piece does.   The next one though, will likely be the twill homework gamp, so I can get it done and out of the way.

Gratuitous picture of Kevin being cute -