Tuesday, April 27, 2010

New loom

Adam made me a new loom for my tablet weaving from plans I drew up. It's not an unqualified success, the design needs tweaking and the execution is a little...unrefined, shall we say, but it's a step up from a plank of wood with two bits of dowel stuck in that keep falling out!

New loom

The tensioning isn't quite right and every time someone speaks to me I lose my place in the turning sequence, but nevertheless, slowly but surely, I'm managing to produce a Birka strapwork pattern. Emphasis on slowly.

Birka strapwork

Meanwhile, the aforementioned plank and dowel combo has a Greek key patterned piece on the go for when my brain goes on strike and I can't count any more. I'm using my beautiful new timber tablets which I got in exchange for a couple of lengths of weaving when we were at Armidale over Easter. They're very nice to use, must get some more of them - I only have 12.

Greek key pattern

9 comments:

Deborah said...

The pattern is very compelling; I've spent quite some time following it with my eye, and getting absorbed in it.

Kazzy said...

I think that is one of the coolest things I have ever seen! And you are really good at it. Do you make clothing items too?

Anonymous said...

That pattern is really interesting Mim. Adam is truly the best hubbie a girl could have, right?

mimbles said...

@Deborah It has that great 3D effect doesn't it. The instructions for making it come with a warning to avoid blue/red or green/purple combos on account of possible headaches or nausea :-)

@Kazzy Thank you! Do you mean weave clothing items? No, I haven't ventured into anything like that yet. Maybe one day... I did see a loom pattern online that lets you weave a triangular shawl, that looked pretty cool. Also, I could steal my son's backstrap loom and make scarves or wraps.

@Cathy Yep, I'm so keeping him :-)

Hi from Ruth! said...

I am in total amazement that you can produce such things. The comment about this pattern being compelling is the perfect word choice. Wow. And how awesome to have a hubbie that can produce what you design - nice combination of effort!

Have a great day Mim.

Ruth

Ariane said...

Those timber tablets - could the larger laminex type samples do the job?

And that pattern is pretty awesome. It looks like you can make much wider pieces on this loom?

mimbles said...

Thanks Ruth :-)

@Ariane Yeah, laminex samples would probably work though getting the holes nice and smooth might be a bit tedious, but as the point of the exercise is to have historically accurate ones it'd kind of defeat the purpose - hacked up playing cards are the easiest non HA option. I'm pretty sure I've found the person who made the timber ones on Etsy so I will be getting more :-)

Mrs4444 said...

Very cool. How nice that Adam is as handy as you are :)

Evansmom said...

What a talented family you have!