Square loom finishes

Weaving is finished. I left long tails on the yarn so I could weave them to the same corner.



Then I used a four strand braid to make a hanger loop on the piece. I tied it to the corner.


I hooked the loops together one after the other all around the edge as shown by Noreen Crone-Findlay on her video.


Here is the piece with finished edges and a braided loop!

More to come!

Have a good day!

Square loom

Once I finished the first piece with loopers, I decided to follow Noreen Crone-Findlay's advice and I ditched the loopers. Then I watched Noreen's youtube video on weaving the square loom with yarn.

See "How to weave with yarn on the potholder loom "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FC9_LpTLZs

Okay, second piece was started last night at home and continued on the commute to work. Above you see the work mostly finished. I'm using the wire hook because it comes with the kit. I did squeeze the hook with pliers to make it narrower. I am using 4 ply cotton yarn, a variegated color pattern and I lost the label so I don't know who the maker is.

Above I've laid out the yarn on top of the warp so I can be sure the next loop has the correct length.



Then I will move the end of the loop from the right side to the hook on the left side before pulling the yarn across.




The loop is pulled across. Following Noreen's advice I have kept some slack in the piece to prevent the weave from getting too tight to work.

And here it is all woven. Now to work on finishing the edges.

One thing worth mentioning. Usually people will ignore me when I weave on the train or the bus. This time when people saw the the potholder loom they wanted to talk about it. People had them as children or they just bought one for their children.

These little looms have touched people lives and they react emotionally when they see it.

Fascinating.

Have a good day!

Pop goes the potholder

As I tried to finish the edges of the piece, it popped off the loom and some of the loops are unweaving themselves.


Having seen Noreen Crone-Findlay's video on weaving on potholder loom I noticed Noreen used a chopstick to help stabilize the piece. So I thought I would use a chopstick to recover the piece. Here I have restored the weave using the chopstick to catch/hold the loops.



Here is the completed piece. As we see, the elastic of the loops reduces the piece about 50 percent. Time to start the next one.

Have a good day!

Avalon loom pics

Playing with the Avalon loom. Following the instructions I have been using the hook to weave through the loops and stretch the loops over the pegs.

I took a picture at the computer desk under a fluorescent light bulb and I did not like the colors. So I took the loom outside and took a picture outside on the grass in the shade (indirect natural light).

I like using natural light whenever possible.

Have a good day!

Saturday Guild 4/23

At our recent Saturday meeting of the Sacramento Weavers' and Spinners' Guild, Deborah brought her Ashford Traditional spinning wheel, and Linda brought her new Sequoia.



Rita has a Turkish style drop spindle, Tanda is knitting, Linda is working on her loom, and Susan is spinning on a Schacht Ladybug.



Kathy is spinning on a Nagy wheel, Sue is spinning on an Ashford Traveller.


Our theme for this month was Looms and Loren brought her brand new Ashford Knitters rigid heddle loom and look at the cool stand! She did not know how to warp it. So Will moved the loom to a table and showed how to warp it.


As you can see, Loren chose a variegated yarn for the the warp. She'll use a solid color warp and let the warp color serve as the pattern.



This is a Louet Klik 40 8 harness loom with plastic (texsolv) heddles. You can see a double weave pattern on the loom. This is an very clever way to work 8 harnesses on a tabletop loom.



Cathy brought some yarns from her latest batch of dyeing. The blue yarn is from the indigo pot. The yellow yarn is from using daffodils to dye. The greenish color in her hand is from over a yellow and blue yarn in the indigo pot.

There was also a Structo 4 Harness loom and a Schacht Cricket rigid heddle loom on display.

For more info visit the Guild website
http://www.sacweavespin.org/saturday

It was a fun day!

Birds, yarn, loom

My bird blinked when I tried to take a picture!


Good purchase at the thrift store. 7 ounces of cotton yarn for 2 dollars US!


Great purchase! Avalon Weaving Loom #9922 for one dollar! Plastic loom, a bag of loopers, yarn, instructions. Looks like it was never used. Instructions are copyright date 1977. This is gonna be fun.

Have a good day!

Sunday at the river

Water at the river is still running high with runoff from the recent storms. There are three Embden geese which are escaped domestics and two Canadian geese that are wild.


These black butterflies are flying over the bike trail that runs along the American River. These look like Pipevine Swallowtails. The upper side wings have a row of white dots along the back edge and groups of orange dots on the underside (orange dots are not really visible in these shots). But you can see the little protrusions on the wings (like a swallow).


Here are the Pipevine Swallowtails overhead.

Have a good day!
Franco Rios


Water at the river is still running high with runoff from the recent storms.