Blue Ribbon Country Fair

My day in Townsend started well with a very easy drive north on the 411 through Maryville to Townsend where I arrived early enough (as planned) to visit the Artistic Bean coffee shop (see: http://theartisticbean.com/) before my first meeting at the studio to look at the donated loom.  Anne and I had found this coffee shop when we were here for the wool festival in spring.  They have very good fresh roasted coffee and even know how to put a fern design on a latte (rare over here in SE Tennessee).

Once suitably caffeinated, I headed back down the main street to the studio where I was able to have a close look at the loom that had been donated to the Townsend Artisan Guild.  They wanted me to do so and see whether or not it could be restored so that they could use it in a 'working display' mode at the Heritage Centre some time in the future.

That first quick look (I had only seen a couple of photo's previously) was enough to pack it all up in the truck, reasonably confident that it could be put back into service.  More on that topic in a future blog.

From there I headed to the Smokey Mountain Heritage Centre to set up the weaving demonstration that I was to man for the day.  I was lucky in that someone else had dressed the loom, a Harrisville 24" 4 shaft jack loom (see: http://harrisville.com/weave/22-floor-loom-4-harness-6-treadle/), so all I had to do was open it up from its folded state and set up a display of some weaving odds and ends before the first visitors began arriving at 10:00 AM.

The weaving display

The loom was set up with a cotton warp in blue and white stripes and was (I was told) about 3.5 yards long.  The person who had set it up had woven about 6 inches to check it out then basically left me to weave as I pleased.  As I had two shuttles I decided to do weft stripes at the same size as the warp.  After four stripes of tabby I then moved to a twill and did 4 stripes to the left, then 4 more tabby and 4 twill stripes to the right.  After another 4 tabby stripes I then began zig-zagging the twill left and right each time the color changed.  As I didn't have floating selvedges I had to plan the 'entry' side carefully for twill and especially the zig-zag to ensure that the outermost thread was caught on each pick.  Added a level of complexity that I don't normally have!

The weaving so far...

I had a steady stream of visitors who enjoyed just watching at one end of the spectrum right up to a few who were willing to have a go at weaving a few picks.  I didn't finish the whole warp so I guess I talked rather a lot.  I do recall being able to give some tips to a couple of beginner weavers, and had quite a few (mostly males) questioning 'how it all worked'.

I packed up about 4 and was safely home just after 6 after a busy but enjoyable day.  The loom was easy to weave on and the ability to pack it up (with warp still on) and throw it in the back of a car is a definite plus.