Loose warp

I spent a couple of hours this morning researching the loom problem. I think I have figured out exactly what is going on and a potential work-around. When the shed is open (the shed is where the weft goes through the warp, it is opened by pressing one of the treadles) the threads on top are the correct tension but the threads on the bottom are loose. Doesn't matter which treadle is pressed.

The warp is supposed to be level from the breast beam to the back beam but it is not, it goes up from the breast beam to the heddle eyes and then back down again to the back beam. When I try to make it level by raising or lowering the shaft frames holding the heddles it no longer passes through the middle of the reed, which it is also supposed to do. What I have to do is somehow get the warp to be level and also passing through the middle of the reed. I can't adjust the reed height and adjusting the frame height creates other problems. However, if the back beam were higher it could work. I think I can do that by adjusting the metal rods that hold it in place, but that adjustment interferes with the free movement of the beater holding the reed.

A Leclerc counterbalance loom

So looking closely at pictures of an equivalent Leclerc loom, I can see that they put the metal rods on the inside of the vertical loom posts and on my loom they are on the outside. Inside the loom posts they wouldn't affect the beater. I think if I just drill through the existing bolt holes to the other side of the vertical posts of the castle and back beam and move the bolts from the outside to the inside, that would do it. My only hesitation in doing that is that it would shorten the distance between the frames and the back beam and I don't know if there is a downside to doing that. I'm just thinking out loud here, have to ask my old instructor.

A Leclerc jack loom, with the metal bars on the outside

Apparently my warp problem is fairly common on jack looms but none of the suggested solutions work on a counterbalance loom. Jack looms are more common in North America because they are cheaper to buy, by approximately a thousand bucks. I like the look of a jack frame loom but it comes with issues. My loom is a counterbalance loom which is considered a better type, but my loom is not a good example of the type.

I got an email from the instructor, she said it had not occurred to her to use those metal bars in the way I was proposing. She thought they were just for folding up the back beam but on looking more closely at them the extra slot in the middle just hadn't registered with her. So she suggested that it couldn't hurt to try it out, I could always go back to the way it was before.

Race to the finish

Chicory weed, one of my favourite summer flowers

Hapi can no longer climb the basement stairs on her own, she waits at the bottom while I go down and arrange a towel sling under her rear end. Sometimes we manage it smoothly, sometimes not. Those stairs are tricky, sometimes I lose my balance and fall on top of her, sometimes I move too fast and she stumbles. The new normal. A friend asked me if I could increase her pain meds but I don't think pain is the problem, it's muscle wasting.

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Big excitement at the Reservoir the other day, a few of us standing around the beach when three eagles appeared overhead. One eagle attacked another, they locked talons and grappled in mid-air amid much whistling, then all three flew away. Two returned to the tree they usually hang out in and whistled for quite a while after.

One of the people on the beach happened to be a naturalist who had a camera with a big telephoto lens; he tried to get a photo of the event but he says it's not very good, it all happened too quickly. However he did have a recent photo of the two baby owls at the Reservoir which he showed us. I had seen one of the babies a couple of weeks ago and then it disappeared and I feared the worst. Not so, he said, the two babies are now adult-sized and flying around a bit. It takes a lot of practice to fly through dense forest.

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We got a new member in our writing group and one person wrote that we should give her a copy of our "guidelines". Once again I voiced opposition to the idea—I really dislike that document, it doesn't reflect what we actually do and now that we are totally online it is kind of irrelevant. Nobody responded to my objections so I thought that meant that no one agreed with me, however one member did eventually write to say that she was in total agreement and was glad I had spoken up. I would like that document just to die of neglect, I am not really up for the turmoil of yet another revision process.

Fireweed: harbinger of fall, the higher the flowers on the stalk the closer it is

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I took my car to the garage yet again for a final repair to replace a broken transmission mount. The car has been making awful noises for over a year now and this was supposed to fix it. I don't doubt the broken mount, however the noise is still there. I arranged to go out for lunch with a friend at a place across the road from the garage while they did the repair, this is the first time we've gotten together since mid-March and we had a great time. The garage phoned me to say the car was ready and they would leave the key in the car because they like to take a two-hour lunch. After lunch I drove my friend home and a couple of hours later I called the garage to say I was coming back to settle the bill.

I told the mechanic the noise was still there, he was sure he had fixed it so he wanted to take another look. In the end, by process of elimination, he is deducing that the problem is the transmission itself. His recommendation is not to fix it, too expensive, and start looking for another vehicle. He gave me a discount on the cost of replacing the transmission mount. Transmission might break, but it won't fall off! So there we are, dying dog and dying car.

My friend's vision is completely gone now, she is much worse than she was in March. But she's a barrel of laughs and it's good to spend time with her, we laughed ourselves silly. At the restaurant the staff were all masked. At one point one waitress started yelling at a man to get out, get out right now. The man left and we were staring at the waitress wondering what just happened. She laughed and said, We do this all day, I yell, he leaves by the back door and walks around to the front door and comes back in again. He's here all day. She was just making space for the noon hour custom.

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I am having some problems with my loom so I phoned my old teacher for advice. We had a nice chat about this and that but she couldn't really advise me. I have come to the realization that this loom is defective and perhaps I should look for another one. A loom that fits the bill will cost me three or four grand new, less if I can find a used one in good condition. Having had the experience of using better quality looms at the classes I used to attend, I know it will be worth it, even if I have to order one new. And I'll be able to re-use some of the parts of my existing loom. It was handmade by a gentleman in Ontario and it looks good and appears well put together, but the devil is in the details. It was intended to duplicate a Leclerc loom, so I am looking for a 'real' Leclerc loom. But it's a lot of money, a new loom or a new car? Don't know that I can do both.

Rolling, rolling, rolling: bins and warps

Preparing the warp for winding

On Friday afternoon I invited a couple of women friends for an afternoon beer in my back yard. My back deck is large enough to accommodate three socially distanced chairs, and covered so even if it had rained we could still meet. Since neither of them had been in my back yard before we wandered around a bit to look at the various flower and vegetable gardens. The previous owner of the property planted a lot of perennials so I cannot take credit for how beautiful it is in the summertime, but I do like to show it off.

Both of my visitors live a couple of blocks away; on a map our home locations would make a triangle. It just so happened that it was garbage day. One of my visitors, S, lives in a duplex and the person in the other half of the duplex asked S to put her compost bin out for collection as she would be away for the week. S agreed to do that, but she forgot. When she saw the garbage truck go by she suddenly remembered but it was too late. So she rolled her neighbour's compost bin down the street to a cross street where the garbage had not been picked up yet, and left it there with a note attached explaining why.

On her way to my place S passed the compost bin and saw that it had indeed been emptied so she rolled it to my place and parked it in the driveway. She didn't want anything to happen to it while she was visiting. When she left she rolled the bin back home with her. She is a tiny woman, the bin is almost as big as she is. What a funny sight: S and her compost bin rolling up and down the street!

My other visitor agreed to come by again in a couple of days to help me wind the warp on my loom. With great difficulty one person could do it alone, perhaps it would take an entire day that way. But with one person to help it takes about an hour. One person sits (or stands) at the front of the loom slowly advancing the warp toward her with a lever, while the other person stands at the back of the loom holding the warp tight and combing out tangles in the fine threads. There's a lot of stopping and starting to deal with tangles.

Now I have to tie the warp to the back roller and then wind it back from the front roller. According to my instructions I won't need a helper for that. This method of preparing a loom for weaving is fairly unique as far as I know, it was developed over years of production weaving by my former Halifax teacher Nancy Boyne. This method is good both for having numerous opportunities to check that the threading is accurate and for ensuring the tension is even due to winding the warp twice before tying it down permanently. It's not fast but it almost guarantees accuracy.

First winding completed

My warp winding buddy commented on how meditative the process was, a lot of repetition and concentration, with a little coordination thrown in for good measure.

Weeds and errors

The "weed" in yesterday's post is Musk Mallow—Malva moschata—and it is considered an invasive weed. It grows on dry but fertile soil, flowers profusely and is considered an edible "wild salad" plant. It was brought to eastern North America by early European settlers. It is a relative of the hollyhock. 

Years ago I had a small clump of daisies by the driveway, and it has since spread all along both sides of the driveway and into the back yard. I've let that one go too, this daisy is not the cultivated variety but the wild one, I see it everywhere. So between the forget-me-nots, the daisies, and now the mallow, my property is being overrun with wildflowers. There are also buttercups, dandelions and yellow hawkweeds growing in the lawn; years of lawn mowing have encouraged these plants to flower low to the ground, below the level of the mower blade. Smart plants. 

And then there's the Creeping Charlie, once that gets onto your property you're done for, it can't be exterminated without heavy duty chemicals. I've got it everywhere. The only weed I actively try to control is the False Bamboo, which grows all over this town. I pull it up every time I see it (on my property or growing right in the road nearby) and if I can't pull it up then I strip off its leaves in hopes of starving it. Somebody introduced that plant thinking it was a nice ornamental, but it chokes out everything. Like the Creeping Charlie only much bigger. I'm prepared to live with Creeping Charlie but not False Bamboo. Unfortunately my neighbour has a big clump of False Bamboo which they allow to go to flower, I think that is why I am fighting off an invasion of the stuff. I politely suggested they cut it down but they are from out of town and don't really see how invasive it is, they like the flowers. I wish we had False Bamboo Police that I could complain to.

I got all the threading done on the loom and the next step is to wind the warp onto the front roller. Unfortunately I discovered two threading errors late yesterday afternoon; I decided not to tackle them at the time because of the receding light and my growing tiredness and hunger. I know where they are so that will be the major task for today, to get those threads sorted without breaking them. It's annoying to have to backtrack, but it's also to be expected. 

When this project is completed, I'm thinking about moving the loom into my living room, that way I can continue to weave in the winter time. The loom room is not heated in the winter. It'll look kind of weird but not being a big home entertainer that shouldn't matter. I've done some measurements and it will fit if I move some other furniture into the loom room.

Nova Scotia had its first new case of covid-19 in three weeks yesterday. It's so easy to let down one's guard when there have been no new cases in that long. I was telling my son that our provincial premier is a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, very risk-averse, cautious and conservative. Never thought I would hear myself saying this, but I like him for it.

Various life threads

I started working on a new(-ish) weaving project yesterday and I'm sure feeling it today! Last fall I wound a warp and tied it to the back beam of the loom and just left it sitting there. I'd walk by the doorway and see the warp hanging off the loom and then look away, not now, not today. But two days ago I thought, maybe now, maybe today. Yesterday turned out to be the day.

Threading the warp through the heddles and reed is the most difficult and time-consuming part. Bending over the loom to do it is the back-breaking part, being able to see the threads and slots clearly enough to actually do the threading is the difficult part. This warp is 320 threads wide and that means threading it through 640 tiny slots in the heddles and reed: the time-consuming part. I did 80 yesterday and my neck and back feel very stiff and sore today. It is 2-ply cotton, very fine threads, but I couldn't resist the colours so I bought a whole bunch of it.

While working on it I was thinking about my last weaving teacher, I really should email her. She was making a living selling her work and teaching, so I'm guessing she took a massive hit in income this spring. I hope she is okay.

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The heat wave is supposedly still going on but around here it backed off two days ago. There was a moment in the mid-afternoon when instead of climbing yet another couple of degrees the temperature suddenly dropped a couple of degrees, and never quite regained its momentum. So for the last couple of days Environment Canada's forecast has been rather inaccurate. Not complaining!

During the last big rainstorm (eons ago) I collected as much rainwater as I could from downspouts off the house and shed, I am down to the dregs now. A lot of seeds I put in the ground just peeked above the soil surface, withered and died. The old standbys, tomatoes, onions and potatoes are doing fine, peas and beans look like they will survive too. Squashes are looking iffy. Already harvested all the spinach and replanted that plot with some rapini and bok choi; that's a third attempt for both of them so we'll see how it goes. I may plant some carrots, I don't know. Not a big fan of carrots. Sadly my cherry tomatoes are not doing so well. I love them, they are like candy. Not this year I guess.

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My next door neighbour rents the house out to students and periodically shows up to do repairs. He wants to dig up along one side of his shed which borders my property. Have at 'er I said. There's a huge rosebush in there that I quite dislike. My horse chestnut is scraping his shed roof, he wants to trim that back too and that's also fine by me. The tree used to have a lovely ball-shape, but I've trimmed some of its branches to bring in more sunshine for my garden so it's already a bit lopsided.

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It has been almost two weeks since there was a new case of Covid-19 in this province, currently there are no active cases. It has been well over a month since there was a case in my health zone. We never had any cases in nursing homes in this area. My friend B comes out of quarantine tomorrow and she will be allowed visitors outside the building, so I will need to book a visit for Hapi and me. She has not seen Hapi since Christmas and she always asks about her.

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This afternoon I went out for a drink with a neighbour, we went to a local pub that has a very nice patio. Before entering we had to answer a couple of health and travel related questions and then wash our hands. The tables were all well-spaced. Not quite back to normal but close enough. We discussed the various styles of face masks and where to buy them, the state of our gardens and our dogs. Her dog loves people but hates all other dogs. I forget the breed name but it is one of those lapdog breeds that don't just get their fur trimmed but styled. My neighbour said she looked at pictures on the internet of various styles for this breed and picked out one she liked. She showed me pictures but warned me I was going to laugh. She was right.