Looms, Looms Everywhere!

(Originally posted on WP 7/27/20.)

This detour into weaving (although, more accurately, it is a u-turn!) is borne by both necessity and the fact that I love to weave, and have long missed it.  Just as I love to spin, so I *had to* find the style wheel I had decades ago, and did.  Life is way too short not to do the things we love.  

Desire doesn’t necessarily translate into having the wherewithal to purchase new equipment.  And anyone interested in these particular crafts will know exactly how large an investment one can make!  Knit design just required good needles, which, for me, meant Addi Turbos and dpns.  

But I was, and still am, intent on acquiring and hacking all the necessary equipment, without needing to sell off my children and maybe even my grandchildren.  All it takes is Patience and Persistence.  I’m really good at the latter, but am not known for the former.  Amazing how a bit of monetary crimp can allow us to develop a faltering virtue.

My all-time favorite loom is the Glimakra counterbalance. 

I just find it to be near heart-stoppingly beautiful.  If ever one makes its way into my life, hubby will need to peel me off the thing every night.  One won’t be coming any time soon, however, which I am fine with.  I need to earn it, and that will make it all the sweeter.  

What I do have is a circa 1978 Hammett 45” counterbalance rug loom.  

And it’s a fine loom, works well, maintains tight tension, has a nice deep shed, and deep weaving area.  It also came with a sectional warp beam.  I only had a jack loom with plain beam once.  Once was more than enough.  When I sold it, it would only be counterbalance and sectional beams thereafter, for me.

And it was Patience and Perseverance which allowed this loom into my studio, the room formerly known as the Dining Room!  It required 6 months of daily searching all the used fiber equipment sites, the Ravelry weaving forums, Craigslist, and Ebay.  Like a bloodhound that got a whiff of something he likes, or one of those truffle dogs!

But no loom does everything equally well.  There can be a reed size glitch.  There can be a heddle opening size glitch.  Then there can be a floor loom yarn waste glitch.  And  a tension/shed glitch.

Once the glitches start to pile up, sometimes the best solution can be to get another loom – one more suited to the yarn planned for the project.  To this end, a small RH (rigid heddle) loom will shortly be making its way to me.  They’re easier on certain yarns than floor looms, and the heddle sizes drop down further than a floor loom’s reed.  Been thinking about getting a RH loom for so many months, talking myself into it, then talking myself out of it, until I was getting dizzy!

Finally, I had it with this internal argument.  I don’t like to spend $, as I’m SO used to making do, but I have ideas to flesh out, and ultimately, oddly enough, I can be more productive with 2 looms.  I know, sounds counter-intuitive, but I can’t be at the floor loom all day.  My health requires more time with my feet up, than when I was younger,   where the RH loom can still allow me to weave, and weave certain ideas more easily than on the floor loom.  So, that was the winning argument.  Case closed!  

Hubby says I should have been a lawyer, to which I respond, as Jo in Little Women did, that I could have been a great many things.  But, as I tend to see both sides of issues equally well, I think I’d just end up arguing with myself!  And that is worse than arguing with another person, as it tends not to clarify things, but, fosters self-doubt, beating that horse until it cries Uncle.

This doing something because I want to is new for me, haven’t been able to live that way in decades.  But, new work = new life, and I’ve been desperate for a new life for far too long!  Or, as hubby is known to say, Think Big or Go Home!  Thinking big I can do.

Onward,
Dawn