Thank heavens for friends. Gay Sinclair loaned me her reed, so I'm back in business. I just finished threading and I'm getting ready to sley the reed. While I'm at it, I thought I'd share a few pictures.
One of my favorite things about Louet looms is the built-in raddle on the castle. But my favorite use for it is shown here - I hang cords on either side of the loom from the raddle, and use the cords to hold my lease sticks, or as you can see here, the stick with velcro that I use for sectional warps. Nice and compact. When I'm done warping, it's easy to slip the cords off and put them away.
And here's another of my favorite "found" tools. One of our dearest friends is a Frenchman named Alain - whenever he comes to visit, he brings the most wonderful champagne, and it comes with these ribbons on the bottles. I've got a drawer full of them, and they are SO handy!
One of the great hints I learned from Kati Meek was to lay the reed horizontal so it's easy to sley with an autodenter. Previously, I've used sticks across the front and back beams, with the reed laying on the sticks. This loom has a hanging beater, and I wondered if I could just secure the reed to the bottom edge of that, using the champagne bands. Voila! It worked! I used some long purple rubber bands to bring the beater forward to a vertical position. Since you can remove the breast beam on this loom, I expect sleying to be very fast and very easy.
I love found tools. I love finding ways with each new warp to make things faster and easier. I love rubber bands. Actually, I love plastibands - rubber bands get brittle too fast here with the frequent Santa Anas that dry things out so much. I like boxes and bags and finding the perfect container for things. I love the iPod shuffle I recently got, and listening to podcasts while I work at the loom or walk the dog. Life is good.
3 comments:
Do I spy a new header on your blog? Love it!
The very idea of ribbons from champagne bottles being used in weaving is so fun!!
I haven't tried sleying horizontally yet, but a few other weavers raved about it at the workshop this week, so it's on my (rather long) list of things to try. I still feel barely proficient at just getting the loom warped with even tension...so anything to make it easier or faster is good!
You commented the other day that to you, color and structure are inter-related and fascinating. I agree with that idea. I'm interested and inspired by both....and it's really cool when some one gets both color and structure to work well together.
Looking forward to seeing where this warp leads you!!
Sue
Yep, new header - playing with Photoshop a bit. I'm still such a novice at that - there's so much to learn.
The Kati Meek workshop I took a couple of years ago reinvigorated my weaving life. The stuff I learned from her was priceless.
And not to worry, with each warp I still think of things I could do better or faster next time --or more likely, mistakes I promise not to make next time. :-)
I'm finally trying out sleying my reed horizontally today and it does seem more comfortable and easier on the eyes.
I wanted to find pictures of how people set up their reed to sley horizontally, and here's the answer!
Thanks for the tip!!! (I actually had in my notes that you, and two weavers I know in real life sley horizontally....so I knew just where to come to search for pictures!)
Sue
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