Old Lady Learning New Things 🧶🧵

I have been steadily weaving away at a slow tartan yardage and it will appear here once I have it to a finished end result.  In the mean time I have been doing a lot of grown up type things such as taxes, medical appointments etc.  

This time of year saw both Hub and myself reaching birthdays with a zero in them so we celebrated both times with friends.    I turned 70 and it sorta bothered me some as it really feels like a slippery slope now.   Time to clear away the distractions and attend to what truly matters.  Well, that's the plan anyhow.....

Our local guild has a lot of great talent and one woman, Katherine, generously held a 4 hour afternoon workshop on making raffia wrapped coils on a ceramic base.   Her sister in law made the bases and they are lovely!

Here's Katherine explaining  the process to us newbies and we all selected our length of rope to wrap.

Here's mine underway and it doesn't look anything like the teachers finished bowl! 😳

Here's Ben who sat across from me just racing along. Another Katherine is working on her basket in her lap.  She makes beautiful Indigenous baskets so this was sort of like a 'busman's holiday' for her. 

At the end of the day, mine looked like this and everyone admired my cute scalloping. I blamed my arthritic fingers!  I had plans for it when I got it home. 

So here's my end result.  I checked through my bead collection and found some suitable candidates and some fine, tough line linen thread. (Having a stash is great at times like this!) I needle wove through the coils and secured the bowed portions and added beads at the ceramic hole sections. It tightened everything up. I then shaped it carefully and then dipped into warm water for 10 mins to soak.

The result after fully drying was that everything tightened and feels stronger.   Sort of a metaphor for Life I guess......

Anatomy of a Hand Towel

Its been just over two years now since I walked into my first Midnight Shuttles Guild meeting on a "dark and stormy" November night.  Being completely new to town, I had no idea where I was going; the wind was howling and the rain was coming in sideways and I was trying to find a little blue house down by the seashore.  Its called Sybil's cottage as that is where famous artist Sybil Andrews had lived.  I blew in a few minutes late and have felt at home there ever since.   A warm and caring group of people...

I have shown them some of my weaving as show and tell at meetings and one member asked if it was possible for me to do a small program on finishing details and techniques.  Reasonable enough request but it would mean having a variety of finished samples on hand, and some in mid progress to show them. Since I do all my work on floor looms, and finish things to completion (no WIP's), how could I demonstrate this in as a small program?   My work is done on finished items and then usually sold and gone. I have posted blog posts here that show different techniques I've used but that's meant for the solitary browser, who at best, may share the link with a friend or two.

Then I got the idea of setting something up on a table loom to demonstrate and show them..... then it evolved into a group project where the loom is passed around.  So the birth of the guest towel project was hatched.  🐣

I got ahold of the guild's 8 shaft Dorothy table loom and found it needed a good cleaning and tune up.  I cleaned it with Murphy's oil soap and some diligent scrubbing and took some corrosion off the metal bits.  All the lashing cords came off and were washed and rethreaded back on. 

I noticed it had some bits missing and some rather elderly and sparse wires heddles. Not enough for my project ( and there were no heddles at all on shafts five to eight!).  I was given approval to purchase some new inserted eye heddles from Leclerc and one member's husband kindly made some beautiful oak lease sticks. The old girl was looking rather grand now!

I had planned a four shaft Swedish lace project, found in The Handweaver's Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon (page 191),  to do a small hand towel each, using 10/2 cottons, and featuring hemstitching details.   So I wound a six yard warp, sett 24 epi and Hubby helped me beam it.

Here's the loom being threaded. Its a bit of a reach to even the front four shafts!  (There are holes predrilled in the sides so I suspect this could be added to to make it a twelve shaft. It would explain the reach.)

The new heddles just slip along nicely.....and being Swedish lace, its a heavier count for heddles on shafts one and two.

As you can see here in this close up below, the inserted eye is nicely open and smooth for any yarn type with out fear of snags or pinching. Being stainless steel, there's no corrosion to deal with either.

The new oak lease sticks are doing a fine job!

Finally, I trussed up the beater bar assembly to stand upright and sleyed the 12 dent reed.  

Ready to lace on. I'm being economical with the warp as there are 11-12 participants. I might even need to do a second warp if some want to weave more than one.

I had used my Fiberworks program to work out the project width and number of lace repeats. At 12.88 inches in the reed, its using a great deal of the loom's width.  I had  planned a rough outline of how the towel will be proportioned, but only weaving one up will tell you the final result.  Below are two pictures showing hem allowance of six inches done and the motif border is complete and hemstitching is under way.

I found this diagram on line which shows the steps nicely too.

Then I changed from the cream  10/2 cotton (same as the warp) and used a slightly deeper beige called Shell and wove the main part of the towel doing eleven repeats of blocks A and B and ended with a final A to balance.
Block A:  (do 3 times)
1, 3
2
1, 3
2
1, 3
2, 4

Block B: (do once)
1
2, 4
1
2, 4
1
2, 4
1, 3

This progressed along nicely and with a final block A and 8-9 pics of plain weave, it measured roughly 13- 13 1/2 inches and I switched to the cream 10/2 and wove an inch of plain weave.   Then using my colour change as my 'bottom line', I did a row of Italian hemstitching (or box hemstitching as I have also heard it called).  The entire box is in the cream section. You can also find diagrams showing this in  Finishing Touches for the Handweaver by Virginia West (page 24) .  This book should be in every weaver's library.

step one: choose the size of the box, here its 3 x 3 threads.

Step 2: bottom right hand corner to to left hand corner and make the 'floor of the house'

Step 3: Go from top right corner to bottom left corner to make the 'roof of the house'

Step 4: Go from top right corner to three threads left into new territory, and make the 'wall of the house'
...and repeat. 😊

I resumed weaving the five inch hem on the towel, and also added some fine scrap yarn to hold my edges and cut out off the loom! Why five inches and not six as the front was done? I like the look of a slightly smaller back hem and it places all the emphasis on the front where you did all that pretty stitching! The Italian hemstitching on the back hem gives it a neat treatment and emphasizes the colour change.  I machine straight stitched the edge of the cream hems to secure them and washed by hand.  While still damp, I gave it a good steam pressing with my Singer press.

The hems were folded into thirds, pressed and then hand sewn  as shown here.  Voila! the towel is complete.

Now: what would I do differently?   The over all length of the towel is just a tad bit too long for the narrow width so perhaps reduce the lace repeats to ten instead of eleven?  I feel it would have a better proportion.

I also struggled with getting a good tension on the loom and so my edges are not to my usual standard.... but as I have heard said many a time, that's a Dorothy loom for you.   I cranked it up as best I could but still end up laying the weft in pic by pic which meant it took a long time to weave.

Also it was difficult to get a good tap with the beater if you advanced that bit too far (spongy feel), so there really is a 'sweet spot' of only two inches with the table loom. You would advance the warp and then fight to get the tension right all over again.

 I considered using a small temple to help reduce draw in but reckoned my students may not have one to hand so best to work without it.  The end result of this is the lace portion draws in further than the hems.  I decided this is a teachable moment to discuss drawn in.  It produces a full sized towel sample of Swedish lace and its unique little windowpane look, and features  hemstitching techniques  and (for many) using finer threads than they normally do.  Lots of new things all wrapped into one project!

.... but give me a floor loom any day!

So here are some beauty shots....

My notes to travel with the loom are almost set and I will be in touch with a student shortly to take the loom.   I think this loom may be circulating for awhile given everyone's schedules!

Running into the Learning Curve

There's the loom line up.  A beautiful day with patio doors and windows open for the warm breeze, good tunes on the player and the room freshly tidied.    There is a possible offer on the Woolhouse down at the far end and I won't know for sure until July.  (The loom is available again ) The Louet Spring in the middle has a silk warp under way.   Yes, that is a live weaving program on the screen there next to the Megado and weaving is once more under way!

It was quite a process to get it to this point. First of all you avoid dealing with it for months, then you make a feeble attempt just before you have surgery and Christmas and it was obviously doomed to fail. 

Then you have two friends who gently, very gently embarrass you into looking at it again.   :)

I worked on getting the sixteenth shaft aligned properly.  Then next up was making my mind up as to which version of Fiberworks I was going to use.    PC or Mac.   Having seen both versions of the program, I decided Mac all the way, in both design and weaving operation.   

I think part of my previous 'rut' was that I designed in the Mac program and wove (or tried to) in the PC on a tiny notebook and I was trying to learn and run two programs and two operating systems.    Double the Fun!  (Um, not really.)

This Megado is one of the earlier models from 2002 and so it uses a serial port to USB cable between the interface and the computer.  That requires loading a driver onto your computer to run it.  Simple enough to do right?    Not really...   My Mac Air has no disc drive internally and so I must add one externally. But after buying an Apple external hard drive,  it would not accept the small mini cd, only the normal sized cd's.    So then  you plan to take it to the local technology store and get them to load it onto the computer.   Simple right?   not really...

The chain of stores ALL closed their doors as they under go a reorganization and will remerge as another chain of technology stores.      "We thank our customers for their patience".

Finally they got the stores re-open, and my computer and mini disc all together at the computer 'geek'  desk and it took one really nice tech guy five (5)  minutes and  no charge.   Geesh....

Next up in this little drama is the various diagnostic testing to see if everyone is happy and shaking hands with each other!    Found the right comm port right away!   Since I only have two USB ports I had a 50/50 chance of getting it right.     Yeah me!

Then I ran the solenoid test. The solenoids are like little 'wack-a-moles' that fire when the computer tells them to, from the pattern it has in the draft, pic by pic. They jump out and hit the back of what looks like piano pegs and then a knife like blade moves up and down as you treadle and collects the screw heads on the other side of the pegs that are sticking out proud and then releases the screws  when the blade moves past another sensor.

Well its supposed to....  the treadling sensor diagnostic test failed.  

So it wasn't the computer at fault,  and all parts of the loom were functioning properly except for the blade and the magnet.   The magnet is what tells sensors to release the 'pegs' at the right time.   Its small, very strong and apparently in the wrong place. 

So my next test is to double check the sensors to see if the fault lies with them. So off comes the interface and I run the magnet by them and ....presto.... they work!  Huge sigh of relief!   They would be very expensive to repair or replace and involve a road trip to be fixed to eastern Canada.    If I can't get a holiday there, they sure aren't if I can avoid it!  :)

So? place the magnet on top of the blade or underneath?   A simple question right?  no....      I had to read through the older manual that came with my loom. A second newer manual for later models, surf You Tube in vain for Megado how- to videos, join a multi shaft  comps / dobby group on Facebook and spend time browsing on the internet looking for pictures.   

Finally I found a how to guide in Dutch for the older model interface  on the Louet European web site and found that the magnet goes on the inside of the blade.   They show a white magnet in this picture, but mine is black on a black bar.

You can see the piano pegs that the solenoids hit and below you can see the interface (like mine) placed back on the side of the loom. The magnet is tucked behind the cutaway.

photo credit: Louet NE

Except on my loom the blade and magnet won't freely slide by  the sensors and it jams up.  The fact it would not slide freely is what caused my confusion as to which side it belonged.

So we undo two small dark screws at the bottom of the interface out by one small turn and put it back on and the bottom edge is now out a smidgen  and the blade / magnet combo clears!    

But it still didn't work.

We had a break and a discussion about the various possibilities.  Bruce had mentioned something about positive and negative polarities and so I just reached in and flipped the magnet over.   

....* and it worked!* 

We cautiously smiled to our success as we were worried about what was next to go wrong. Earlier that day I had dropped my iPad onto a tile floor corner point down and it was not turning back on.  It was a "black screen of death" for hours until I gave up on it.  Of course later the same day when I took it in to be looked at by a techie, it worked perfectly like nothing was ever wrong. In fact if it wasn't for the slight ding at the corner, you would never know. 

So was it worth going to all the this trouble and steep learning curve?   Yes.... the Mac program and its commands are much simpler than the PC version, well at least to me me that is.  I was able to set the ranges for what portion of the draft I want to weave right away and  now I have to learn the finer points of un-weave  vs. reverse and few other points.   

I have a narrow 2 inch warp on the loom for 12 shaft twill book marks and the neat thing is I can start and stop where I need to as I learn and makes mistakes.  If I do get a full one all woven up, then its a bonus!    I'm already thinking of what to weave next on the Megado and I think it might well be more towels as they are a great fresh start experience until you get all the nuances of the loom and the way it feels as you operate it.  

On a personal note:

My Dad is still with us and is enjoying a new, more modern, brighter hospice, but the fact remains that its a hospice...

The grand kids are growing:

Ethan's first haircut

Thomas the Tank bicycle for  Ethan's 3rd birthday.

...and little Madison is now 2 1/2 months old and very much all girl. 

I hope your 'April showers' brought you 'May's flowers'.

Margaret's Debut

There you have the first bit of weaving done on the Megado! It even has a mistake. Not overly exciting but it sure felt good to me. Its been a bit of a journey to get to this point (besides the trip to go and get the loom).

I had ordered the update to my Fiberworks-PCW program before we left and it was in the mailbox when we got home. I like a physical disc over a internet download. Been through too many computer crashes in my time I guess.

Bruce helped me with assembling the loom as its not quite like any loom I've had before.  He also had taken the loom apart so he was the natural choice for help. There were some parts we got wrong, or used the wrong hardware. Correcting the assembly meant we now had nuts and bolts for other parts again.  Oops!
We did have some missing bits that Jane Stafford sent me replacements for. Some new parts, like bumper pads, are still on order from Louet in Holland.  Its fair to warn you that nothing with regards to this loom has happened fast. Jane was in the middle of teaching back to back full time workshops so getting information and the parts took time understandably.

Finally it was as together as we could do for now, so we turned our attention to the loom's module and computer. The module worked when plugged in as the solenoids all fired nicely in sequence. Okay, that's good. Now we are getting into foreign territory  and I was learning as I went.  I had to find either a small used laptop (which I couldn't find here locally) or find a small  newer alternative.  New computers have USB ports that you can simply plug in a cord and work with the external camera or other devise you want to use.
The loom's module has an older style serial port and the plug used for that looks like the old nine pin printer cords. I had to find something that would 'marry' them together. I wanted to talk with Louet Canada for their best advice and caught them away at Convergence, then closely followed by their annual inventory on their return! More waiting but I wanted to get this done right.

 I went to a local technology store, Future Shop, and found a young lady in their computer department who was simply great. I brought the module in with me so they could see the unit and what it needed. She carefully listened to me and what the goals were and then we set out to find all that was needed.  We got a (short) serial to USB cord and then found an extension 'USB to USB' cord so I can move the computer closer next to me while working. So far, so good!

We found a small Acer netbook computer with a ten inch screen in stock, last model and so on sale!  No choice on the colour but they did add in for free loading up the weaving program onto the new computer and clearing off all the factory preset programs as it doesn't have a disc drive.  I dashed home and brought in the Fiberworks disc! (see how a real disc  helped out nicely?)

I think I've shown this picture to you before but it really does fit in nicely at this point of the story.

The computer is all set up with the software and I'm mostly familiar with the majority of it....up to the part that governs the weaving process.  Before we get to that part I had to learn all about COMM ports (that's how they write that word... I'm not shouting :)   The COMM port is the door way through which your computer allows data in and out. Some doors work better and luckily for my little computer, there is only one ( and only one available) and its COMM port 3 and it works!  I like the way the computer proudly tells me the door is open.

Okay, so far, so good... next up is learning the steps for using the portion of the Fiberworks program for weaving.  It meant reading, and rereading the manual and sort of doing 'fake' weaving. There is no warp on the loom but you treadle along and the computer doesn't know you don't throw a shuttle.  This went okay but there's nothing like the real thing. So planned a warp for two scarves and decided on a simple point twill pattern that uses ten shafts. I thought for the first project I should keep the draft simple so I can concentrate on the methods and not get too complicated.

The first mistake I made was the silk yarn I chose. I don't know where my mind was at.  Its a cone of 20/2 silk I got somewhere along the way and its not as tightly twisted as my usual from Treenway silks.  I wound the warp in two large bouts, 6.5 yards long (two scarves both 72" long, 12 inches either ends for fringe allowance, take up, loom waste and some samples). I counted carefully and then  decided to wind a couple extra warp ends just in case.

Not having warped a Megado before, I decided to look at it like a larger Spring loom and I followed the same procedures, and it all worked nicely.

Here the two warp bouts are waiting to be spread in the built in raddle.

At the back of the loom now and I'm starting to wind on. I used a brand new roll of crisp brown paper for the inaugural warp. This is where the first mistake came home to roost. The yarn halo'd and grabbed its mate next door.  Crap.  I fought with it until I realized an easier fix. Separate the lease sticks!  Since they could slide on the support strings .....easy peasy!

The rest of the warp beamed on just fine and no more clingy issues.

Next up, threading. Its a simple ten shaft point twill.  Well, maybe the process will become simple in time as I get used to the shaft arrangements but for now, not so much!  The shafts are set *very* close together and so when it comes to reaching for heddles, its very hard to see where you are reaching to and what you actually come out with. I had to double check and count every one before and after threading and caught a mistake or three along the way. Oh by the way, mistake number 2 was, despite winding two extra ends, I was still one short.

Threading was finally done and sleying was up next. I used a 23 inch , 15 dent reed for my 30 epi.

That went much better except for the missed dent in the middle. Mistake number 3.    Fixed that up and then laced on. Then, I held my breath and turned on the computer and module and using 8/2 cotton, wove the header you saw in the picture at the top of the post.   Then I took out my weft yarn  and wove the border.  I didn't know how to shift from border to repeats so I deleted the border portion and then clicked on 'repeating loop' and got to work! It was going well!  So I called Bruce to come and see the loom in action. 

Mistake number 4:  showing off.  Closely followed by, I don't know why there is suddenly a mistake and then quickly learning the function 'unweaving'.   Well, it had to happen sooner or later right? 

This is where mistake number 1 came back to haunt me. The silk fused at the edges and so won't unweave.

So I let it sit for a day or two. Show it who's boss...

Next time I sat down on the bench I rolled the warp ahead and simply started over again.  I got quite a bit done until I saw a double weft shot in one shed. It seems the program suddenly decided to remove a tie up square. Why I have no idea!  Mistake number 5.

This is where I quit yesterday and went and wove on the Spring loom for a time. It likes me and behaves itself. Needless to say the learning curve has been steep, and complete with speed bumps that I placed there myself. I'll keep at  the warp and if it all ends up as samples, then its not wasted.

Before I close I want to show you a special loom bench pillow.   Margaret wove this overshot piece some years ago and made a bench pillow wrap of it using velcro and some foam. I clipped the velcro portions off and washed it. Then I took another pillow I had and sewed it over the top. Its very comfy and I added a small square of non skid matting to the bottom and so it doesn't slide on the bench. At least I got this right!  :)

Well its nice to know that if I need a time out, there are other options to play with in the studio. This has been a lot like going back to school!