It is the first Sunday of December, the 2nd Sunday of Advent, and we spent the day at http://www.heritagehillgb.org/ (Heritage Hill State Historical Park). We started this almost 18 years ago, although there was a time in the middle when our group had had a falling out with park management that we weren't there. In any case today was very nice. All of the "usual suspects" from Gorrel's Company, of the 60th Rgt of Foote, the Royal Americans, were present. Usually I weave, or something, but today I brought my brown bess musket, and I did all of the soldier type interpretation. I must have fired off about 20 rounds (all blanks) from the bess, and gone through the firing order for almost 200 people. I do so enjoy explaining the history of our area, and the British Colonial involvement with our part of Wisconsin. It is such an unknown bit of local history.

Anyway, we had a lovely day, and a great dinner in the "court house". So wonderful to be with old friends.

Louet Loom

Here it is the Saturday after Thanksgiving and I am finally sufficiently along with the new loom to make a few comments. First, as Sgt Friday would say "Just the facts". The loom has been here about 2 weeks now, I won't go into the long sad tale of the delivery, suffice to say that the trucking company and I were not great friends.

With assistance first from Sassy-Cat, and then from the lovely and gracious Judi, I managed to get the loom assembled in the first weekend after it arrived. As can be seen in the photos here, the loom came in two rather large boxes. The big box contains the "castle", the pre-assembled part that has almost all the strings, and which holds the "shafts and heddles".

It took most a Saturday to do the physical assembly of the loom. Not quite finished until Sunday. And then on Sunday I started organizing the loom to actually use it. The assembly proceess was not particularly difficult, but it is tedious, and requires close attention to the instructions which are in the manual that comes with the loom.

Putting 12 each tiny screws into the predrilled holes of all 14 treadles was a really tedious part of the project. But now that I have done a bit of weaving, I can safely say that that is nothing compared to the "PITA" of tying up the shafts for a pattern, but more on that in a little bit.

One more picture of the assembly process and then we will get on to looking at the first weaving project.

I learned to warp a loom from a book, not from a class or any live teacher, so I have been warping "front to back" since I first started weaving. Louet sends along a nice DVD with each loom showing how to warp this particular loom. Of course it shows the "back to front" method. For my first warping of this loom, I decided that I would follow what I know how to do and go front to back. It is what I am comfortable with.



I had a warp already measured for a scarf that I planned to make on my Ashford table loom, but I wound that onto the new Louet. This is for a winter scarf, woven out of Harrisville Design's highland weight wool.


So above you can see what looks like a tangled mess of yarn already through the heddles and waiting to be tied onto the back beam. Next you can see that same warp all combed out straight and tied up.



The weaving pattern here is straight twill.



So now that I have woven one project what do I think of the Louet Spring Loom, was it worth the small fortune that I paid for it?

I am not 100% sure yet !?!? I have noticed some differences in how I do things, and it will take me a bit longer to get used to this newer - not yet better nor worse - but certainly different way of weaving.

More later as I think about this some more...

A couple of things on my mind this evening.

I just posted a thought on facebook, but that will go away within a day as other things come flitting by quickly on there. I was honored this evening to be a member of and Eagle board of review for the Boy Scouts. This is the third time that I have sat on an eagle board of review, and all have been interesting. I am happy to say that all three of the boys, over the course of a couple years have received their Eagles. Tonight was Ryan Simonet, I guess I only got to know him and his family through scouts, and now that we met them there, also through church. But Ryan was very impressive in the board of review this evening. He really does deserve to be an Eagle scout.

Secondly, I am impatiently awaiting the arrival of my loom. Got an email this morning saying that it is in transit. It must have come thru Canada, because the freight tracking shows it in upstate New York, yesterday mid afternoon. I've watched the tracking on line, as it moves west, last seen in nothern Indiana, and scheduled for delivery here in De Pere (the trucking company says Green Bay) tomorrow some time. So I will work from my "super secret secure location" tomorrow so that I can be here when the truck arrives with the loom, all 165 lbs of it, how the heck I'm supposed to get that off of a truck I don't know yet.

It's November 4th! Does this constitute "mid" November yet?
It seems not. I checked with Dawn, from whom I ordered the new loom, and she has heard absolutely nothing yet on shipment of the loom from Lochen, The Netherlands. And since it will probably take a week or more for a boat to sail from somewhere in Europe to somewhere in the US, and then its probably got to go to a distribution center to be taken out of the container and then LTL or FedEx or UPS shipped to me. My guess now is that "mid" November means the day after Thanksgiving.
I suppose that means I can finish up the set of towels that are on the Ashford loom right now.

Here I am on a mid October evening, sitting at the computer, thinking about weaving. Now that I have most of my software moved from the laptop pc to the new desk top model, I can start to think about some of my less common software. One of those programs is PCW-Silver from Fiberworks. Who ever heard of that one. It is one of the possible choices of software for handweavers. And that of course, is one of my other hobbies. I am currently very impatiently sitting around waiting for my new Louet Spring Loom to ship from the Netherlands. It will be 12 shafts, 14 treadles, 43 inch weaving width. A significant upgrade from my current 24 inch 8 shaft direct tie up Ashford table loom that I have had for the last eight years.

Waiting, waiting.

Ok - it has been a full year since I blogged - and it may well be that long again, but I was lookin' at some one elses blog, so I quickly signed in just to say hello.