Fall weaving competition

Things got crazy for a while in here after I last posted, gearing up for the Great Competition of Babywearing Weavers on Facebook.  In September I was working hard on my submission but couldn't share anything, since all entries are anonymous.  I was still dealing with some late first trimester nausea but weaving was still something I could do, my normal knitting and spinning I absolutely couldn't.  (Even cooking was a huge challenge).

Pi helped me decide on my final draft for the contest, and it ended up being very popular overall, it was a fun process and exciting to see people enjoying it and playing guessing games as to who wove which wrap.

The theme for this one was "children's literature" and we decided to do the Hobbit, with a focus on the dragon Smaug.  My entry was this collage

I warped enough for a second wrap to keep for this next/last baby, and made the weft in wool I hand dyed.  What I ended up with was a lesson in exactly how much yarn crackle weaves suck up.  With a bit over a pound of yarn dyed, I expected a pretty long wrap.  I added red gradient tapers and even so, barely squeaked out 3.8 meters.  Sadly I still had a meter of warp left that was usable, but no weft yarn for it!  Live and learn.

Here are the gradient tail accents on the wrap I am keeping for the baby

And yes, I have a tag!  I've been printing my own for now, but I officially have tags and am compliant with U.S. regulations for babywearing wraps.  

Many firsts with this, my first woven in middle marker in the competition wrap, my first tail accents for the wool "sister", my first time weaving with tencel, my first attempt at crackle.  I expected many tragedies, but nothing really went wrong.  I fell in love with crackle and tencel both.   For now, I have the wool version out traveling, getting feedback on the weft.  So far feedback has been very positive, it's bouncy and very grippy.  I had expected it to weave up much softer, but hopefully it breaks in enough to be very soft by spring.

The state of the Bergman Loom

Once we got the loom set up into its most basic shape, a few things became evident.  The heddles were a mess.  The owner's husband told me that there were a "lifetime of heddles" in the box, but there were hardly any on the loom itself, less than 100, most were knotted and tangled, and there were just a few bundles in the box, I wouldn't have guessed more than 5 or 600 total.  I told him I currently kept about 1100 on my jack loom and he acted astounded, so before I even had it home, I knew heddles would be an issue.

The ad on Craigslist had also said that a partial conversion of the tieups had been done to TexSolv.  I didn't really know any better, the treadles were disconnected for travel anyways, and I knew nothing about countermarche tieups, so I just figured I'd learn from what had already been done.  I put it on a back burner, while I researched countermarche tieups, particularly Bergman.

A friend on Ravelry suggested getting underneath and just tying up like I would on my jack loom, and then assigning the rest of the spots after.  Well, that made sense, more than anything else, so I decided to climb under and see what I could make of it.  Aaaaaaaand... I discovered that the "conversion" was actually texsolv HEDDLES just hanging from the lamms.  No measurement had been done.  The old rope was actually still in the treadles.  I was starting with truly nothing, not even a clue of how the rope HAD been connected, once upon a time.  Panic set in.

I really couldn't make sense of the decision to use heddles.  There wasn't even a way to connect them to the treadle.  I learned from posting this picture online though, that I had actually put the treadle assembly in wrong.  The knots were the old bottom of the treadles, I had to pull off the bar, flip the treadles around, turn the bar 180 degrees and put it back in.

Once it was switched, I could see loops on top, which the old cords had been knotted to, and the little tape labels marked 1-10 to keep track of the treadle sequence.  One issue solved, but the bigger problem remained of what to do with the ties.




Many thanks need to be given to the Bergman Looms group on Facebook for the next part, because I was totally stumped.  The idea of countermarche looms being totally foreign, things weren't clicking.  My jack loom, you press a treadle, it lifts the appropriate shafts, and that forms the shed.  On a countermarche, you depress a treadle, and part of the shafts rise up, and some are pushed down.  In a nutshell, you do an initial tie up, to the lower lamms, and then go back and all of the blank spaces on a draft, you fill in with the upper lamms.  The lower lamms raise the shed, like a traditional jack loom would, and the upper lamms lower the shed creating more depth.  Once that was decoded, things started looking much clearer.

So I gathered some bravery, some texsolv, ordered some arrow pegs, and got to work.  The most important thing to keep in mind was really the jacks at the top needed to be locked.  We both did some minor adjustments later, after I had unlocked the top and it did NOT go well.  The cutting took time, but actually placing the pegs wasn't too awful.  Somewhere I had seen people putting one peg through both of the cords that went through each hole in the treadle, but once I started weaving, the arrow would slide out of one on some of the treadles, I found one peg per cord worked better than one peg per hole.

Tied up!

Shaft envy, looming up, and restoring a vintage loom

I really am hoping to document this process here, because it's been a fantastic learning experience for me and I hope to save some time for anyone else trying to do something similar.

I think most weavers have experienced what I refer to as "shaft envy", which sounds dirty, but really comes down to coming across a pattern or structure that is gorgeous, calls their name, and requires more shafts than their loom is capable of doing.  Probably part of why looms tend to breed so much.  While I hadn't even touched the tip of the iceberg on 4 shaft patterns to try, I kept stumbling into 8 shaft drafts that I wanted to do.  For the most part, I pushed it to the back of my mind, and continued to enjoy my Nilus.

I will get into the story later of the ill-fated warping reel/mill another day, but I had approval from Carl to find a warping mill and purchase it, because he wasn't going to make me another.  The biggest issue I'd been having with the Nilus though really was in warping.  Not only was I having a beast of a time getting longer warps on front to back (which I really feel like the Nilus is better suited for) but getting it packed appropriately to maintain tension on the selvedges was proving to be challenging.  So I kept going back and forth - should I try to upgrade my loom to a sectional, or should I look for one with more shafts that might potentially have a sectional or better warping setup?

During my time of debate, I came across a vintage Bergman loom on Craigslist.  $550 for the loom, 36" weaving width, 8 shafts, and it came with a warping reel.  I knew nothing about Bergmans, but I called and set up an appointment to come see it and make sure it would work for me.  I talked to the husband of the couple selling, he made sure I was a weaver, saying that it was complicated to set up and they wouldn't be able to help me after buying.  I explained that yes I was and that should be ok.

I went and just checked it over for damage, it had some reed rust but nothing I was concerned about, so I made arrangements to pick it up.

So now, not only did the loom take over my entire craft room, but now I lost half of my living room.  Sigh.

The new loom mostly "assembled" - unfolded at least to its full size.

Boat shuttles that came with the loom.  The 2 towards the front appear to be Bergman shuttles, from what I am finding around the internet.

A photo of my LeClerc Nilus for size comparison

The Bergman folded flat.  It's pretty ingenius, it gets tiny and is really not heavy.

Me next to the Bergman.  Taller, but with a much smaller footprint than the Nilus, not only in weaving width, but in depth.

The GIGANTIC warping reel, and the extras, including reeds that need some de-rusting.

Down the rabbit hole of weaving

Last year, as a reward to myself for getting into shape, I got a rigid heddle loom.  If you know me, or know a fiber artist in general, you can understand why this is a bad idea.

I'll just make some placemats.  Some scarves.  Little useful things for around the house.

I got my little loom, took a craftsy class.  Did a couple of things, and then had an epiphany.

See the Baby Banshee, she is very clingy.  She is worn constantly.  She loves her wraps and she loves being up.

When I realized how much fun weaving is, and that I could actually weave WRAPS.  I immediately went looking for a used multi-shaft loom.  Oregon is a rich crafting area, it took a couple weeks of watching Craigslist for me to come home with a beautiful 4-shaft Nilus loom with all I needed to weave wraps.  (Shuttle, winder, bobbins, tons of heddles, bench, warping board, etc.)  You can see how this is escalating rather quickly.

Before I knew it, I'd taken another craftsy class, ruined one warp, but managed to gather myself and weave a length I would chop up into headbands.

Completely hooked.  I still haven't even done placemats, or more towels, like I originally planned to make for the house.  All in good time, I suppose.