I'm LOVING using my drawloom so much that I decided, "if not now, when?" and bought myself 20 more shafts and the parts to make her a combination drawloom. Play time! Remember cat's cradle? Well, this is cat's cradle for grown-ups!
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| Funny, on Ravelry people are always complaining about having to get on the floor to adjust their looms. That's never been much of a problem for me. However, when the instructions say to just reach up and thread the cords... Uh huh. Here I am, standing on my bench. Luckily, this set up only happens once. |
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| Do you see the little handles? And now, there are 30.! |
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| At the back of the loom, a tangle...organized chaos. |
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| What with reading and re-reading the instructions, watching and re-watching the video, taking sanity and life breaks, it took me about two weeks to get everything ready to go. |
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| Looking from the back of the loom, you can see the direction the pattern heddles move along the warp threads. Starting at the far left, follow them from left to right, left to right, then right to left, right to left. Scroll five pictures down from here and the same movement is seen in the pattern design. |
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| The locking pin keeps everything still during set up. Finally! Time to pull the pin! |
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| Here's the pattern. Time to start pulling handles! |
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| Drawing the handles let's me make a repeating pattern across the width of the fabric. |
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| Stepping on a treadle at the same time as the handles have been pulled gives me pattern and ground cloth at the same time. To me, it seems like I'm embroidering on the cloth while the cloth is being made! |
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| Looking from the side of the loom, you can see what it looks like when the pattern shafts (on the left side of the picture) have been raised. The ground shafts (on the right side) will weave the background fabric. These will be raised and lowered as I tap on the treadles. |
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| It's like magic! |
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| And for a footnote *wink*, more socks (stash busting ones at that). Take note of the yellow and pink ones. They're the first ever pair of socks that I've knit from my handspun! They are the rainbows colorway of merino and tussah silk from Anzula. |
