Kyle Rankin @kyle@librem.one

My son completed his first weaving project (he's 10). This white and red striped wool scarf was woven on a rigid heddle loom.

#weaving

One towel down, two to go! From this angle you can see both sides and the reversible nature of this doubleweave pattern.

#weaving

10. Don't Be Afraid to Talk to Yourself

OK so for the most part I am talking to myself only in my head, or an inaudible whisper, but even when I only am remembering a four-number sequence for treadling or threading I still repeat it like a mantra while I'm doing it. I've caught many mistakes by noticing what I'm saying and doing don't match.

I think a "top 10 list" is a good place to stop. If you made it this far, thanks!

#weaving

9. Always Stop at a Stopping Point

You can't always predict how long it will be between weaving sessions. The worst is to sit back down, wonder where you were, and guess wrong. I never stop weaving in the middle of a pattern, I always go all the way to the end (whatever that means for a repeating pattern). If I have to get up briefly, I weave at least to the end of a logical block and move my magnet.

#weaving

8. Use Magnets to Track Pattern

The bottom of my beater bar is metal, so I attach my treadling pattern to it with magnets. Instead of marking off where I am, I group blocks (typically 4 picks) and then slide the magnet to the next block when I complete one.

This is faster than pulling out a pencil and makes it easy to visually see where I am and what's next.

#weaving

7. Throwing Side Matches Treadling Side

Whenever the pattern allows a walking pattern, I also make a point to throw my shuttle from the *same* side as I'm treadling. That way if I ever lose track of where I am, I can look at the combination of shuttle location and foot position and figure it out.

It also means if I ever depress a treadle on the right side, but the shuttle is on the left, something is wrong.

#weaving

6. Use "Walking" Tie-Ups

My center treadles are always tied up for tabby. The rest, whenever the pattern allows, instead of 1-2-3-4, I tie up in a "walking" pattern where I always move from left-side treadles to right side, and back again.

This isn't just better for ergonomics, it helps catch mistakes when you lose track of where you were. If my foot was on a left treadle, I know the next treadle must be on the right.

#weaving

5. Tying Threaded Groups Together

After threading a "round" number of heddles based on WPI or natural end of a pattern, I tie them with a temporary knot to separate from other groups.

This protects me against losing track of where I am in my threading, as I can always count the number of tied bundles.

This also protects against mistakes when sleying the reed, as I only deal with "round" numbers of threads at a time.

#weaving

4. Staggered Heddles When Threading

I, at most, separate only four heddles at a time from the rest when threading, and I stagger them in the order they are to be threaded so there is visible distance between them.

This not prevents threading mistakes, I can visually see the current 4-thread pattern in order and confirm where I am when threading a long complicated pattern.

#weaving

3. Unique Heddles

When threading your loom, it's easy to mix up a heddles from different harnesses as you are often only relying on depth perception.

I have a 4 harness loom with metal heddles. When buying more heddles for a rug project, I bought a different style, and then set up odd harnesses with one style and even with the other. This helps me catch threading mistakes as each harness is distinct from its neighbor.

#weaving

2. Maintaining the Cross

Lease sticks maintain your cross while dressing the loom to prevent counting mistakes when threading, but many instructions have you remove them after threading, I (like some Scandinavian weavers) leave them on to the end of the project.

This saved me in this project when I notice threading mistakes after I start to weave, and when a warp thread was missing entirely.

#weaving

1. Measuring Warp

When measuring warp I literally say the count over and over as a mantra as I run a thread the length of the warping board.

I always use a counting thread so I don't have to count the full number of warp threads, only smaller values (typically 10 or 12). This also means when I inevitably get distracted and lose count, I only count the warp threads on the outside of the counting thread.

#weaving

Weaving takes patience and attention to detail, at least if you want fabric that matches your plans. Mistakes are inevitable and you either accept them in the work or possibly spend hours correcting them.

All it takes is a distraction to lose where you were. Ideally you catch mistakes as soon as possible so there's less work to undo/redo. In this thread I'll describe some of my practices that help me catch errors.

#weaving

The second attempt is looking good for this 3D printed case for my knitting clock. Along with fixing some mistakes in my design, I also modified it so that it could print for the most part without supports. There was one area where that was unavoidable, so I added in basic supports. While there is a little cleanup where it bridged there, it's much less than I saw when I enabled internal supports in the first print.

#3dprinting

See if you can spot the treadling errors! I managed to make the same mistake three different times in pattern repeats so far. Combined with the threading mitsake from earlier, this is rapidly becoming the "warm up" towel where I hopefully get all of the mistakes out of my system before the next two.

#weaving

I had to cancel the print. There were a few flaws in the model that I couldn't ignore and that I wasn't able to see in the model itself. In particular the button mounting brackets were not attached to the sides of the case but just floating 1mm from the case. Rookie mistakes.

It's ok. This will allow me to make a few other refinements that I noticed when printing, but that weren't important enough by themselves to cancel it.

#3dprinting

We are 40 hours in and the structure that holds the knitting machine itself is completed. All that is left are the walls which also have button and motor mounts in them.

#3dprinting #knitting #electronics