Louet Spring Loom Maintenance

It is the beginning of a new year so its a good time to do some loom maintenance.  

The first thing I did was walk around the loom with a screwdriver and wrench and tightened up all the bolts and screws.  Don’t forget to do the bench also! 

Next its time to check if the shafts and lamms are even.  As the Louet Spring is a countermarche loom I start the levelling process from the bottom lamms and work my way up to the shafts.  At the end of each lamm and shaft is a black and white end cap that we call the ‘biting penguin’ and in the centre is a roller that you can adjust to lower or raise the lamm or shaft.  Usually there isn’t any need for adjustments.

I then removed all the lamm tie up cords to make sure that they hadn’t stretched out of shape or frayed.  I measured each cord against a new one and removed any that were too long or too short.  For my loom the short treadle cords measure 35 cm long (13.5 inches).  The long treadle cords measure 55 cm long (21 inches), so measuring was a good indicator of stretching.  I marked each one with sharpie to indicate which hole to button.  I also check that the screws that line the treadles are even because if a screw is too far out it can catch on a treadle cord which can halt the action of the treadle.

Next job is to unfurl the cloth beam to check the condition of the texsolv cords and to ensure that the bar is still balanced.  On the Louet Spring the apron cloth is replaced by three doubled over texsolve cords which are snitch knotted onto a metal rod.  The rod is 36 inches long and there are 3 sets of cords, so there will be 4 spaces between the cords; 36 divided by 4 gives 9, so there should be 9 inches of rod at each end and 9 inches between the cords.  When I measured mine they were slightly off because I nudge the knots to one side or the other when I tie on my warps. This could make the cloth beam pull the newly woven fabric onto the beam unevenly. A fairly quick fix to mark these spots and re-centre the cords.  I do the same for the warp beam at the back.

I check the spring tension apparatus and the texolv cords for any wear or stretching of the cords or springs.  

I also check the condition of the texsolv cords at the top of the castle down to the bottom of the lamms.  

And check the brake mechanism for stretched or frayed metal cord.

Lastly I replaced the beater and made sure that it was level.  If your beater is crooked, then your web will beat on an angle.  If it had been off true I would have used the adjustable pivot points at the base of the beater to get it to level.  Then I vacuumed and then lightly wash with just a damp cloth and dry the loom.  I’m always shocked by how dusty my loom is.

So now the loom is clean and reset for the New Year.  I can’t wait to start a new project, and as its January its tea towels.  I have a new tea towel weaving draft for sale, Zinnia Plaited Twill Tea Towels.  It is a 12 shaft twill in fiery hot colours of orange, purple, gold, red and brick.  For Sale.

Final garden photo is the seed heads of a grass, up till now, we have had a mild winter so the grasses are still standing proud in the garden but today we may be getting our first snow!

Ink Blue Crackle Scarves

The newest warp that I have on the loom is warp of 2/8 Tencel in ink blue, a lovely rich colour.  There is enough warp for two scarves and the pattern is one of Moms original Crackle weaves called Helix Nebula, it is available for sale.  

One of my favourite parts of weaving is auditioning wefts and in this case it was surprizingly hard to find a weft that would go with the rich ink blue colour.  I tried white and silver and I also wanted to try tone on tone again after the success of the teal scarf so I tried different shades of blue Tencel, blue/purple and blueberry.   

The blues didn’t really show off the pattern, the silver looked dirty and the white was OK but I wasn’t really sure about it.  So I tried some more colours in blue this time more blue/green colours, peacock and aqua marine.    

I went with a gut feeling and chose the white Tencel.  I wasn’t really sure about it but having woven two pattern repeats I think that the pattern looks a little like snowflakes.  The eagle eyed of you may have noticed that the pattern looks a bit different from the original.  The original pattern is for a 7 inch wide scarf, I wanted an 8 inch scarf so I added extra bits to frame the original pattern.  

It is a lovely pattern to weave and it quickly wove up into a scarf.  The pattern is 6 shaft and 6 treadles which is a little unusual.  My muscle memory would sometimes have my feet reaching for treadle 8 and oops! not there. 

For the second scarf I thought gold would be a nice contrast with the ink blue.  I tried straw, gold and antique gold, they were all quite brassy looking against the blue.  

Next I tried purple, green, red and yet another blue, azure.  It can be hard to pick the right colour for weft, especially in the grey rainy months.

I went with the azure blue Tencel.  And I also tweaked the pattern to get a more elongated droplet shapes so the pattern looked a little more like raindrops, I think that there is a theme going on here.

In the last post I forgot to include Moms latest scarves, they are ruby red Tencel warp with black or iris purple weft.  They are a fancy twill pattern and are quite striking.

For Sale.

For Sale.

Final Garden Photo is the catkins on the tangled mess of the contorted Hazelnut, Harry Lauder's walking stick (Corylus avellana 'Contorta').  This is the time that the tree shines, once it gets its leaves in the spring it is hard to see the twists and turns of the branches.  And yes it does produce edible hazelnuts, it is a race to see if we get them or the crows do.