Waiting to dye...

It took a little while to get the final skeins of wool dyed to make up the yardage for the weft of CF#1 - so I tried some 'different' spinning in the interim.

I made three ply very thick (not sure of the 'grade') yarn with the 3 colour (dark blue, light blue and white) batts Anne had made while experimenting with dyeing batts.

The two skeins (about 50 yards)

Close up of the three ply

And today we also managed to get the final wool dyed - so once it is washed I'll be ready to start weaving.

Light and dark wool (the dyepot is still good)

Dressing the loom - pictorial

Chained warp

Warp tied on to back apron rod

Warp through raddle and lashed to apron rod

Long warp - creative solution to allow winding on

Wood 'brake release'

Yarn separators - made from old business cards

Lease sticks through the cross

Heddles threaded

Reed sleyed

Tied on to the front apron.

Anyone who has read Deborah Chandler's excellent book 'Learning to Weave' will recognise these steps for warping back to front.  That's the way I used to warp on the loom at home so it's the way I have started here. 

CF1 Ammened design

After looking at the design in greater depth - I realised there were a couple of flaws in it.  The broken twill design had a treadling pattern that hit a duplicate tie up - meaning you would 'unweave' the shot that had just been woven at that stage.

So keeping with the block nature as much as possible I've gone through several redesigns - this is version E - and have the following that I think will still work OK.

Warping

This time around I hung the warping board on the wall vertically and moved mostly up and down - said to be easier than side to side.  I didn't note the difference really!!

The stripes went on pretty easily and I didn't have too much trouble tracking the 12 threads per inch, and 16 threads of each colour - although I did have to recount a couple of times!  I've also worked out that I will need more dyed wool to finish all three scarves (my 'guestimate' calculation was low).  I have enough skeins to do the dyeing so will try and get that done in the next couple of days - I have enough to start but will wait for the newly dyed wool to make sure I have it close enough to match the original.

The stripes (10) with each at 16 threads

Warping board on the wardrobe door - warp all tied up.

Loom maintenance

After completing the merino/angora scarves (and discovering some squeaks and rattles) - I thought it worthwhile to give the Macomber a good clean and fix the small problems.

The cleaning was simple - a quick vacuum with a brush to get rid of the fluff and static clinging 'fur' from metal and wooden parts alike.  AND under the loom on the floor where the fluff turns out to be exactly the same colour as the carpet!  Mental note to put a coloured rug on the 'soon to weave' list.

Fixing the squeaks was also easy - it turned out to be heddle number 2 that was squeaking - and in fact the lam associated with it was binding slightly in the slot on the side of the castle.  Some dry 'slide all' in the slot solved the problem.

With that it's all ready to be dressed with the CF warp.

CF #1 design

Here's a draft of the design for the scarves.  I'll just have to recheck that I have the amounts correct for the three colours.

Snip from WeaveDesign. (It doesn't show 'texture' too well)

Scarf #2

Almost all the wool is used up; less than a bobbin full of white left after the expected loom wastage.  The second scarf turned out about 6 inches longer - it wasn't due to, as I had a 'short loop' of warp connected by string to equal the length of the others (I'm not sure what I did to end up with one loop (two warp strands) shorter than the rest). That loop would not go through the heddles, so was the hard stop I expected, but in the end I cut the loop and tied on some extensions and was able to weave for a further 5+ inches (I just had to slip the knot through the heddle eye - which wasn't a problem).

Both scarves

The loom is now ready for the CF scarves after a quick wipe down/dust.