Well, I finished everything on my finishing list except the crochet project. And then after Sunday the urge to finish suddenly vanished and I had a bout of startitis, beginning a pair of Firestarters in what may be my new favourite sock yarn: The Knittery Chubby Sock, and a teapot cosy from Yarn #6.
But to be honest, nothing is thrilling me right now. Those two little pawls haven’t arrived yet, so I have a $800+ loom sitting on the workroom floor, unusable but taunting me with possibilities. The loom took ten days to arrive so I feel I need to allow ten days for the pawls before ringing the shop and seeing if anything has gone amiss. That means Friday.
If they do arrive Friday I’ll still have to wait to use the loom. This weekend we’ll be hiring a trailer so we can move some furniture. I’ll be too busy and exhausted to weave. The following weekend I’m off to a convention in Canberra. The depressing thought that I won’t get to play with my new loom until six weeks after ordering it had me feeling a bit down these last few days, so I started trawling the web for inspiration. In particular, clever things to do with an Ashford Knitters Loom in case those pawls have gone astray and I have yet more waiting to do.
I found this and this. Both use pick-up sticks. (I need to get/make me some of those.) There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of information on using pick-up sticks on the web, but that may be because I hadn’t found the magic combination of words to search with on google.
I’ve also been dipping into my weaving books. My knowledge of weaving is so patchy. Sometimes what I read is almost annoyingly familiar and basic, sometimes it’s utter mumbo-jumbo. But when I went back to the general weaving book I bought a year or so, suddenly I was having little light bulb moments, thinking ‘I’ve heard of this!’ or ‘So that’s what it looks like!’ or ‘So that’s how you do that!’ and the inevitable ‘Hmm. I wonder if I could use that technique to make something a bit more attractive than the example project’.
Tabby (plain) weave is starting to look a bit boring. I want to try overshot and huck lace and double weave. And I keep looking at yarn intended for knitting and crochet projects and thinking ‘I wonder if I could weave something with that’.
Those pawls better arrive soon, or my poor head is going to explode.
just an idea – could you cannibalise your knitters loom for parts until the extras arrive from ashford? Some of the looms at Tafe are ashford 4-shafts and they look to use the same pawls as my standard rigid heddle loom does. Or did ashford do something new and tricky with the parts for the knitters loom??
Oh – and I understand your pain to get going on the 4-shaft. I *love* weaving twills 🙂 At the end of the semester I think I may have to upgrade. (I am searching rather unsuccessfully for second hand looms. I envy your brand new one!)
I'm moving up to melbourne in a month or so and plan to start attending the S&W guild – any chance I'll see you there?
I did consider cannibalising the Knitter’s Loom, but decided to wait because if I broke something I wouldn’t have the RH Loom to satisfy any weaving cravings.
I also considered making pawls out of wood or getting the beau to fashion some from metal, but the rachets are plastic and could be damaged.
Now that I have them, I can see the pawls are quite different between the looms, too.
Good luck finding a second hand loom. I gave up looking for one, but out of impatience, mostly. I wasn’t trying particularly hard, and should have rung the Guild. Turns out there’s another loom company in Australia – Noble Looms – that I could have investigated, though I am happy with buying the Ashford.
You might see me at the Guild if you come along to the Sunday get-togethers. First Sunday of the month, 11-3. I won’t be making the next one, but hopefully the one after. And I’m hoping they do a Summer School weaving class, too.