Look what arrived on my doorstep today:

Only took a couple of days to arrive. When I opened the box, this was inside:

It’s green!

It’s a cardboard carry box. Nifty. Pretty soon I had the contents arranged on the floor:

There’s a little bit of assembly required. More challenging for this novice weaver was setting up the warp. I was taught to weave at primary school but the process was very basic, where you had to ‘sew’ the weft thread through a warp that was static.

Most amusing was the bit in the instructions telling me to get a friend to hold the free end of the warp while I wound the other onto the loom. No way was I waiting around for the beau to come home. So to keep the tension on the warp, I tied it to a free weight.

Once the warp was ready, the really fun part started:

Here I encountered something about the loom that initially seemed like a fault. The reed support block has two positions on the top: up and rest. There are two ones on the bottom as well: down and travel. When the instructions told me to put the reed into the ‘down’ position, it promptly fell out. The slot is upside down, and quite loose. Maybe it’s supposed to hang on the warp, and mine wasn’t tight enough.

But pretty soon I had settled into just holding the reed in both ‘up’ and ‘down’ positions, swapping it and the shuttle between my hands as I worked back and forth. In about two hours – what the advertising predicted – I had a scarf finished:

Which is about the same time it would have taken me had I knitted the bulky wool with big needles. Still, I think weaving suited the yarn better.

I’m sure this is the simplest kind of weaving I could tackle, equal to knitting a chunky scarf in garter stitch perhaps. I think I still prefer to knit garments. For one thing, I hate sewing. I have several other weaving projects lined up: pillows, blankets, table runners and placemats. (Nothing that requires sewing.) But I have to admit I found myself thinking the fabric I was making would make a wonderful long jacket…

I used only one and a quarter balls of the chunky yarn. There’s plenty left over for another scarf. Only this time, maybe I’ll use a different colour warp thread instead. Hmm, I’m going to be looking at my stash in a whole new light now.

Verdict so far: 4.5 out of 5