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Originally posted Sep 26, 2015

I decided to build a warp-weighted loom a couple years ago.  I consulted a BUNCH of web sites (and Pinterest) and looked for sources (books) that I could look to, but most of the books I could find on warp-weighted looms is dated from before 1980.

Barber, Elizabeth Wayland.  Women’s Work:  The First 20,000 Years. W. W. Norton & Company; 1995.
Broudy, Eric. The Book of Looms.  Brown University Press, 1979.
Broholm, H.C. and Hald, Margarethe. Costume in the Bronze Age in Denmark. Arnold Busck, 1940.
Hoffman, Marta. The Warp Weighted Loom. Robin and Russ Handweavers, 1974.
Trychkare, Tre. The Viking. Carver and Co., 1966.

Yeah.  I looked for the Hoffman book, just out of curiosity, but the cheapest I can find is a used copy for $133 ($195 for a hard copy).  Not happening on my budget.  I’ll have to see if I can get a copy on inter-library loan.  There appear to be a couple of newer magazine articles, so I’ll seek those out as well.

There are a lot of web sites with some research (most based on the sources above) plus looking at extant pieces and experimenting with building their own.  There are differences with all of them, so other than the basic structure, there is a lot of room for experimentation and setting things up so it’ll work for the weaver.  I still need to do a little more research on weaving in general–I’ve only done inkle and card weaving, but this seems to be just like a giant inkle loom.  There are possibilities for doing multiple sheds, although the first couple of projects will be 2-shed only.

The other thing to keep in mind with this is that it is meant to be taken apart for transport to events.  None of the joints are glued or permanently attached.

Identifying the parts of the loom are the first step to being able to build it.

1.  Upright
2. Crotches
3. Top stabilizing rod
4. Warp beam
5. Tensioner
6. Warp threads
7. Heddle rod
8. More heddle rods
9. Heddle Rod Support
10. There are two things that are numbered 10…one is what looks like another heddle rod, the other is the finished weaving wrapped around the warp beam.
11. Can’t find a number 11.
12. Can’t find a number 12 either
13. Warp weights
14. Bundles of warps
15. Chain stitched string to separate warp threads

(skipping 16-21)

22. Sword for beating

This was my process to building the prototype:

Take two 2 x 4s–I would recommend using two hard wood boards for a “finished” look, although Hemlock or Douglas Fir is certainly more economical and lighter for transport…I grabbed two boards from the rafters, only to realize later that the darker board was, in fact, cedar.  Low light in the garage…Whoops!

I was looking at several sets of directions in the process.  The first set said that I should cut two 2 x 4s to 7 feet long (84″).  Other directions said keep the 2 x 4s at 8 feet long and use a stool to reach when weaving (which I would likely need for the 7′ tall uprights as well).  To that I said, “What?!  Oh, heck no!”  I’m clumsy enough that I would likely fall off a stool, and being only 5 feet tall, I’d need a rather TALL stool for something 8 feet tall.  Or maybe some stilts.  I don’t need to risk injury on a super-size loom designed for a tall man.  At the time, I left it at the 7′ measurement, but later on, as I will explain in a minute, I decided that I really didn’t need to make it much taller than me.

Next, you take those 24″ pieces that you cut off and make the “crotches”, seen in the above image.  These are the pieces that the top beam rests in while you weave.  It needs to be deep and wide enough for the rod to rest in, and taper down on the end so it can be screwed into the wood.  Some directions suggest that you make it vaguely “S” shaped.  Vague, indeed.  Seems mostly stylistic, although the thinner end at the bottom makes it easier to attach to the boards with long screws.  These were shaped using the band saw…I love that toy!  The bottom of the crotch is 16″ down from the top of the upright leaving room for the top stabilizing rod.

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The next step was creating the shed rod, which is the cross bar that sits about knee height made from a 1″ x 3″ board.  This rod separates the front and back warp yarns; the back yarns go over the front, and the front yarns go over the back.  It’ll all make sense later….  The top beam I bought is 5′ long, which determined the minimum width of the frame, but it also needed some overhang.  4″ on each side seemed adequate, so I cut the shed rod 52″.  I drilled one hole through and secured it with a bolt and wing nut.  I attached it right in the middle, then realized that it created a pivot point.  I added a second bolt at the top, but they’re still a little close.  I should put another one near the bottom and leave the center hole empty…next time, don’t drill the middle hole.

As I mentioned earlier, I attached a top stabilizing rod above the crotches.  Some of the looms I’ve seen don’t have them, but it also appeared that the warp beams were very robust, but narrower where it fitted into the crotches, creating its own stability.  For this project, however, I thought it was necessary to anchor it.  This was also cut to 52″ and bolted in…just one bolt at each end, attached with wing nuts for easy assembly.  Initially, I had the wing nuts to the back, like in this image, but the bolts were very long and scratching the walls, so I turned them around to the front.

The heddle rod supports were shaped from scraps in the bin, I think cut from leftover 1″ x 3″ pieces.  They are about 8-10″ long and roughly Y shaped.  I used the band saw again to shape this piece.  I drilled a hole into the end and into the frame and used a piece of dowel to mount it onto the frame.  These, likewise, can be easily removed for transport.

The heddle rod was the next piece.  The plans I was following called for 7/8″ dowels, which I looked for at the hardware store, but they only had 4-foot lengths…I needed 5 feet.  I realized that these don’t need to be particularly heavy or strong, and I just happened to have 3/4″ sticks that are more than long enough (leftover from the yurt project).  More scavenging means more money savings for the prototype project!

For the warp beam, where you attach the selvage band, I bought a piece of 2″ doweling.  In some of the old-school looms I saw, like the one pictured above, the selvage band is sewn right onto a very large beam.  In other images, it’s sewn into a bar that is somehow attached to the beam.  I decided to attach a thin piece of wood into the dowel to sew the weaving onto.

Referring back to the Saami/Norwegian video of Mary Mikalsen Trollvik who was demonstrating how to set up the loom, she is weaving on a loom where the warp beam is at her head level.  The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.  Anything out of reach is just silly, so it was at this point that I decided that the top beam needed to be sitting at about 62″ instead of a ridiculous 78″.  I disassembled it and cut it to size.  Now she feels right.

Here she is, standing up!  Maybe it seems weird, but at this point, she was starting to feel alive!  She even told me her name.  Frigga, named after the Norse Goddess of weaving and wisdom.  There were a few more steps to complete my girl, but it was wintertime and it was just a few degrees above freezing in the garage, so this project was put on hold until warmer days.

Fast forward several months…

The Saami weaver, Mary Mikalsen Trollvik, started with a woven band with weft threads that become the warp threads of a woven piece.  I had a bunch of Fisherman’s wool that was given to me and this seemed like a great project to use that yarn.  I wove the selvage band, just the same way as Ms. Trollvik, and tied it onto a thin piece of wood–about 1/4″ thick and almost as long as the width between the uprights.  At first, I had just tied it onto the dowel, but eventually, I put a couple screws into it to keep it from sliding around.

Then I set it up in January 2015 at Ursulmas and worked on the set up for several hours over the weekend, in between making beads for passers-by.  By the end of the weekend, it was still no where near ready to weave on.

One of the things I hadn’t figured out was weights for the warp-weighted part.  Ms. Trollvik and other Saami weavers use oblong rocks to weigh down the warp.  Coming up with easy to transport weights was a bit more time consuming (I was still working on them up until the day before the Arts Unframed event). I needed it to be the right weight, easy to take off of the loom during transport, and not too heavy overall.  Extant weights ranged from 1/2 lb. to 5 lbs.  In my research, other weavers said that they have used 1/2 lb to 1-pound bags of sand or gravel for weights instead of clay circles or rocks.  Some even used water bottles.  I decided to go with bags of gravel–easy to make, easy to add or subtract weight as needed, and cheap.

I started making muslin bags with 5″ x 12″ pieces of fabric, folded long ways to make 2 1/2″ x 12″ tubes with an opening in the middle.  I filled them with 1/2 lb. of pea gravel, evenly distributed into both ends, and hung it over the knotted lengths of yarn.  I was planning on leaving it open, but decided rather than end up having gravel spilling everywhere during transport, I sewed them closed.  I can always open it up and adjust as necessary.

Heddles were made from Maysville cotton warp.  I thought this would be ideal since it would be less likely to get caught up in the wool fibers.  The warp yarns are from “natural” color wool yarn that a friend was giving away.  She got it from somewhere else and is allergic to wool and thought I’d get some use out of it.  Why, yes I can!!

So finally, at the end of September, nearly a year after starting this project, I took the loom to the Arts Unframed event in the Barony of Wyewood.  It took 3/4 of the day, but I got it up and running!  I had to chain stitch the strings (two chains, front and back), bundle the warp to make half as many bundles, and then put the heddles back on.

Here it is all set up and ready to weave!  You’ll now see that the back warps come forward through the heddles, then back behind the shed rod.  The front warps lay down on the front of the shed rod.  As you pull the heddle rod forward, the back warps come forward; you throw the weft, beat it into place, then put the heddle rod back.  The back warps will hang behind and you can throw the weft again and beat.

While I didn’t get a lot done on the weaving (only about 2″), it broke down easily into three long pieces and a box of rocks (weights).  It took about 10 minutes to take it apart and wrap it up in a sheet.  It looks like a mummy, which makes sense since it was secured in this fashion by an Egyptologist.

When I got it home, it set up again in less than 10 minutes.  I LOVE IT!  This makes it easily transportable and I look forward to taking it to events like Ursulmas or even an outdoor event in the summer (weather permitting).

You note that the warp is darker than the weft…I ran out of the natural yarn and had to switch to the white yarn.  I don’t know how many skeins I’ll need, and since Fred Meyer doesn’t appear to carry the yarn anymore, I may have to source more online, if need be.  The blue yarn, just so you know, is the same Fisherman’s yarn that I dunked into a Kool Aid dye.  Yep.  Kool Aid!

My plan is to (very soon) obtain some wood in a more natural and rustic state to make a loom that looks a little more like this:

I hope you enjoyed reading about my venture into building a warp weighted loom!  If you are inspired to build your own, please send me a picture of your finished product!

Originally published May 25th on my first blog, then Oct 1, 2015 on the more recent blog, and now here.

I discovered in my attempt to research fillets and barbettes, that  if you Google “Barbette” you come up with images of a drag queen from the 1920s.  Not exactly what I was looking for, but interesting nonetheless.

 

 

 

Originally published Oct 9, 2015

A couple of years ago, I was all anxious to try natural dyes.  I got a bunch of onion skins and made some lovely yarn!  I got some tumeric and made some more lovely yarn!  (Which is fugitive, by the way, so it fades over time).  I also tried a tansy dye project to see what would happen.  I picked tansy ragwort as well as common tansy to see if there was any difference, I tried the leaves separate from the buttons.  I even tried splashing a bit of ammonia into the dye bath…but I can’t find any of the images or results from that project.  I’m starting over and I hope to try other locally found things, like algae, apple leaves, and more, as well as ordering some other dye stuffs, like brazilwood, indigo and woad.  I also want to try to use some different mordants–all I’ve ever used so far is alum.  I found that it’s pretty easy to do iron, but it takes a couple of weeks to prep, so I’m going to work on that in the next week or so.

Today’s dye project was common tansy!

As the weather grows colder, I knew that if I wanted to do any tansy dyeing this year, I had to jump on it quickly.  I dropped the middle kid off at Scouts and found a bunch of tansy along the roadside across the way.  This is actually my photo…not a stock photo stolen off the internet.  Sometimes that scuzzy phone camera actually takes a good shot now and again!  Now, you should note that this is *common tansy* (Tanacetum vulgare), not Tansy Ragwort, (Senecio jacobaea), which is also amusingly called “Stinking Willie”.  Both are considered a noxious weed in Washington state, so there is no problem with me picking it along the roadsides.  (Then again, Himalayan blackberries are considered a noxious weed and no one is doing anything about those except happily picking the berries in August and September and cursing loudly when they snag their ankles on one of the runners.)

Here is the yarn I started with:  100 grams of KnitPicks Bare wool/nylon.  I usually prefer to use 100% wool yarn for these projects, just because it takes the dye so much better, but this is what I had on hand.  My plan is to use it to make some socks for SCA wear.  I prepped it by soaking it in a couple gallons of water with a half jar of alum and a quarter jar or so of cream of tartar (about 2 oz of alum and 1/2 oz of cream of tartar).

I ended up picking a grocery sack full of flowers in just 10-15 minutes.  I tried to avoid putting any leaves in the stew, thinking that it might turn the yarn a little more green, which even the stems may very well have.  Here are the buds simmering in the water.  I let it sit on the warm stove for about five hours.

I took the very wet wool and placed it gently in the dye bath.  I removed most of the flowers before putting it in there, but I think next time, I might find a nylon or net bag to put all the vegetable matter in so I can easily remove it before putting in the fiber.  There are a few sticks and leaves still in the yarn.

In the end, it turned into a rather nice butter yellow–a little bit of the brown tones in it, but still quite lovely.

I soaked the yarn in the resulting bath for about an hour, keeping it warm, but not boiling.  Boiling can do horrible things to the color, like leave splotches on your yarn.  That’s not a good look.

The fun part of this is that it’s fairly easy to do, none of the ingredients are extremely toxic (although I wouldn’t recommend eating the tansy), and be sure to wash your hands after handling it.  It had been used as a medicinal herb in Medieval times, and is occasionally used on salads in some cultures, but the plant’s medicinal property, thujone, can cause miscarriage.  It is also a very effective insect repellent, and the herb can cause hallucinations, spasms, convulsions, and even death in large doses.  I have to admit that after making the dye in my kitchen with the windows open, I had a stomach ache and felt a bit queasy for a couple days.  So I would recommend using rubber gloves when handling it and use in a well-ventilated area.

Originally posted Oct 13, 2015

Finding out how to do natural dyeing is part math and lots of chemistry.  After much scratching of my head, figuring out how much I have in dye stuffs vs. fiber and how much of the chemicals (alum, iron, etc.) to mix in to make a mordant….well, I kinda threw it out the window and said, “That looks about right!”  Unfortunately, that means I won’t be able to absolutely replicate what I did, but that’s not the goal just yet.  As a beginning alchemist, I’m happy getting any results at all!

I started my dye projects several years ago with onion skins.  I was at the grocery store early one morning and looked around the produce section for some dinner stuff.  I walked past the onion bin and said to myself, “What a mess!  Look at all those onion skins!”  Then the light bulb went off and I said, much more excitedly, “WOW!  LOOK AT ALL THOSE ONION SKINS!”  I grabbed a clear produce bag and started picking out all the skins and stuffing them in.  The produce jockey came over and said, “Thanks for doing my job!  What are you going to do with those?  Make soup?”  And I said, “No!  I’m going to dye yarn!”  We chatted for a few minutes and the produce guy said I could have the skins for free.  Later, I discovered that they normally don’t do that, so later when I’d gather skins, I’d also grab an onion and throw it in so I’d pay the “poundage” for the skins (which weigh virtually nothing).

I used alum and cream of tartar to dye all my first pieces, starting with a very bulky wool yarn that was 3-ply.  I un-plied it to make 3 regular size skeins of single-ply (yes, they were too beefy to be sock yarn; almost the weight of Cascade 220).

That onion skin yarn is on the left.  Going to the right, it is followed by tumeric (very fugitive–see how it’s fading in several spots?), Common tansy heads, Ragwort tansy (just to see if there was any difference), common tansy leaves (a bit more green), and some mysterious thing that I can’t remember.  Granted, the colors are not very pure and may have had not had the right vegetable matter to yarn ratio.  That will likely come with time.

All of these used alum and cream of tartar as the mordant and were done in 2010, so even though they’ve been in a box for several years, you can see that they’re mostly colorfast (with the exception of tumeric).

Originally posted Oct 14, 2015

It came to my attention the other day that my neighbor’s dogwood tree is producing fruit.  I’m sure I noticed before but never thought to ask anyone about it.  So, doing a little research, I found out this is a Korean Dogwood variety, and it turns out that that fruit–besides being edible–*supposedly* makes a nice dye stuff.

The sources that I saw online (which I think may have just been quoting each other) said that the berries themselves would make a lovely blue-green yarn.  Unfortunately, they didn’t say what kind of mordant they used*, so it was time to do a little experimentation.  I first mordanted my yarn with alum and cream of tartar.

*They also didn’t mention that there are several different varieties of Dogwood that produces fruit, including one that grows a blue fruit, that, like the Oregon Grape, may create the blue hues.

I picked up a bunch of berries off the ground and off the tree as high as I could reach (there are still plenty I couldn’t reach), and put them into the dye pot.  I let them simmer for a while, which made a rather orangey-tomato-red colored sauce.  I took a sample of yarn and dropped it in there just to see what color it would be.  It came out not blue or green, but a slightly orangy yellow.

A few days ago, I found a reference to making your own iron mordant by taking 2 parts water, 1 part vinegar and placing them into a glass jar and adding rusty nails.  “Well,” says I, “Let’s do that and see what happens!”  I found some rusty nails (thanks to a kind neighbor) and dropped them in the jar with the vinegar and water.  The recipe says you need to wait a week or two, but I didn’t have that kind of time for this project.

So continuing on with the experimental part, says I, “what would happen if I added iron to the bath?”  So after a couple hours, I shook the jar and poured most of the contents into the dye bath with the yarn.  I probably should have started small and added more later, but I figured it was a weak compound having only been sitting for a couple hours.

I checked the yarn a few minutes ago and looking in, it looks like grape jelly.

The yarn, on the other hand, looks like rather blah grey.  Not blue.  Not purple.  Not green.  Blah.  Maybe heather grey…just a hint of blue hue.

I will let it dry a bit and see if the color improves, but so far, you can color me unimpressed.