Yet another way to play with wool

Until today, I’d never ventured into weaving.

I always thought “Geez, looms look like such big, complicated machines” and “Man, it must be a bugger to warp one of those things”.

I’d looked at some of the small rigid heddle looms that a lot of spinning wheel manufacturers have on the market,, but they run about $200, and that seems like a lot of cash to drop to just “give it a go”.

Then other day I was poking around on the web, and I happened upon a plan for a simple loom.

I read it, and it actually made sense to me (helped that it had pictures). I thought “Hey, I could do that just just materials we already have around the house”.

And so I set about doing it. I present Exhibit A:

This is just the frame with the warp yarn wrapped on it.

Before you can do any weaving, there are a couple more steps you need to take-

First, you need to tie the warps together so they are all laying in the same plane (at least on the end you’re working from)

Then you need a “shed” board-

and a heddle, so you can easily lift every other warp yarn to create a plain weave cloth.

The shed is easy- just place a lath-type piece of wood in the opening between the warp yarn layers on the far side of the frame. The heddle are a little (but not much) more work. You cut and tie loops of string for each of the lower strands of warp,

and then load them on a dowel (or PVC, if that’s what you’ve got hanging around),

Then magically, when you lift the bar, the lower strands rise too, and create a nice little space for you to pass your weft through! Neat, eh?

You also need something to press your newly-passed through weft yarn down next to the last one. For this, I’ve been the using the tine end my diz, who happens to also be a spork (seen in a couple photos above).

Who’da thunk that this modest little lunchbag utensil would have such extensive fibercrafting potential?

That’s all for now-