My neck and shoulders are better, but it’s taken two weeks to get to this point. Two weeks away from computers, looms, crafting in front of the tv, driving, etc. Though I admit, in the last half of this week I’ve been doing short bouts of all but tv craft, to test how well I’m healing up.

Keeping away from computers is not easy, especially when you want to look something up. I turned mine on to do a quick search in eBay and stumbled upon the same model of loom that Paul had rescued. This one hadn’t been renovated ever, from the looks of it. So I downloaded the pictures, and there was a close up of a label.

It said “Dyer & Philip Pty Ltd” and an address.

So I googled the maker and found two blogs by women in Melbourne who adopted the same loom a few years ago. They, too, replaced the string heddles with Texsolv. They also replaced the reeds. I don’t want to spend the money on a new reed unless the loom is nice to work on.

Before my back started playing up I had started putting a warp on it. Since the reed can’t be removed, it’s a bit cramped for warping. Bit by bit – about 16 strands a day in two batches – I finished warping it. On Saturday I finally tried weaving.

Within a dozen or so picks the sticks that hold the heddles fell out of their straps. I fixed that by tying the straps on, but I’ll have to come up with something more permanent.

So far so good. You need a tall chair to work on it if it’s on an ordinary table, as it sits so high above the table surface. I’ve moved it to the top of my drawing board, set in a flat position, so to put it at a comfortable standing height and to free up my craft table.

It has a nice clean shed with the new heddles. I read somewhere that the best looms for warp rep weaving are those that pull all threads up or down, rather than just raising the ones required. Since this loom does work in that way, the next project I’ll try will be rep with 16/2 or 8/2 cotton I think.