Snail Spirals

Look what came to live at my house yesterday!



A 18" two-harness table loom! A friend recently bought a Baby Wolf loom, and had to get rid of one of her other looms in order to make room (I suspect her husband may have had something to do with this...) so she asked if she could give it to me. Ummm... let me think...

It's only two harnesses, so it won't do a whole lot more than my rigid heddle loom, but it sure is easier to use, and it does have the option of different setts (spacing of the warp threads), which the rigid heddle lacks. It came with a 12-dent reed and about 200 string heddles. The reed is changable (yay!), so it will accomodate lots of different size yarns.

I had intended to work on the daffodil crochet piece (and ONLY the daffodils) this week with the goal of completing the project by Sunday night, but needless to say, when this loom showed up at my house, I was immediately distracted.

I measured up a three yard log cabin warp (the long-awaited placemat project that I've been thinking about for more than two years), sleyed the reed, threaded the heddles, wound the warp onto the back beam, tied the beginning to the front beam, wove the header, and wove about 6 inches of the log cabin fabric last night. All that took about 6 1/2 hours, split between Emma's afternoon nap and after she went to bed.

I wove about another foot today, and really need to measure what I've done so far. In my excitement, I may have overshot what I need for the first placemat. (oops)



This is the first "fancy" weaving I've done. Some warp-striped placemats were my first project on the rigid heddle loom, but that doesn't really count. The log cabin pattern is neat, because it's just regular over-under-over-under plain tabby weave, but you place the thread colors in such a way that they supposedly create the basketweave look- the "log cabins."

You know what? It really works!!! It's like magic, plain weave producing this intricate pattern.



Fascinating.