The first snowdrop, the first daffodil and a mystery solved

The first snowdrop is outside the front porch:

On my other blog I have a label for the first snowdrop. I haven't had that label for more than 4 years, but it sure seems as if they start earlier and earlier...


"The first daffodil" (which may come to be the title of what is on the loom):

(but I plan to have one complete with petals a little higher up)


And the mystery:
I have noticed that hand-throwing shuttles on the AVL makes me tired much faster than on weaving on the old CM.
Today it dawned on me: the shuttle race is in the way!
On the CM I can hold the beater away with the thumb of the catch-hand, and put the hand with the palm under the shed opening. This way the shuttle flows right into the hand - but with a shuttle race, I have to catch the shuttle as it comes along the "shelf".
Also, the AVL beater is heavier than the other, so the thumb has to stay in its "holding-away" position a tad longer. So to catch the shuttle, I have to do the actual catch with the fore-finger on top, which in the next instant means I have to shift the grip on the shuttle to be able to throw it into the next shed...

(I tried to get a pic of this, but would have needed an extra hand for the camera)

Traditional warp tensioning systems

There has been a discussion on WeaveTech about warp advancing systems for Swedish looms, and now I have some pictures from "then" to "now".

When I learnt to weave, I went to a school with only "modern" looms – mostly Glimåkra, but also some Öxabäck. All had the now most ususal ratchet-and-pawl system for both warp and cloth beams. Several showed signs of the cord arrangement for releasing the warp beam, but the cords were all gone – "they never functioned well, anyway", said our teachers.

Grenander-Nyberg shows some old "pre-ratchet" arrangements, in the book Så vävde de (ISBN 91-36-00596-7):

When I bought my first loom, it had another system: it had a "crennelated crown" on the warp beam, and a long handle that was maneuvred from the weaving position. (I have long replaced that warp beam, so the picture is taken in the attic – beam only)

The handle, at the weaver’s end, rested in a, well, hook, I suppose:

(If you look closely, you can see the "loom-foot Stadig" under the loom. I love them!!!)

At the cloth beam, there is a ratchet, made from an old saw blade:

The system worked well, once I had adjusted to the fact that the shortest warp-advance was on the long-ish side. (Maybe it would have been better to have several hooks, as on the diagram above?)

Later, I wanted a double warp beam, and ordered "the whole caboodle" from Öxabäck. That included the back uprights, two warp beams and two back beams.

The old warp beam was mounted with an odd arrangement – it was sort-of hung up with two removable brackets on the back of the loom. Here is the inside of the frame:

The bench that came with the loom was ok – but one day I found this:

The seat is triangular, slightly concave and padded. The height is adjustable. And the best: it rocks!!! I can lean over a bit, and it leans with me. Unfortunately, it can’t be used with the AVL, as the foot rest is too low (or the stool has to sit too far back).

Thoughts about looms

No weaving going on hereabouts, but lots of weaving-related tinking.
I have spent some time deciphering old-ish handwritten drafts. This has made me wonder about lots of things...

One of them is: can we draw any conclusions about looms used from drafts/tie-up used?

The most standard of all Swedish looms is the 4-shaft counterbalance, with one pulley and two horses (on each side of the loom, of course!). (Horses - in Swedish those are often called "nicke-pinnar", "nodding dowels". I don't know any other English word than horse - pls help?) Lamms have been used for a relatively long time. No lamms did not necessarily mean "direct tie-up" - it was pefectly possible to tie more than one shaft to one treadle. To prevent the shafts from moving sideways, one could use a ring of some sort (a piece of cow's horn, it says in one book) to keep the treadle cords together.

Countermarches were is use in the early 1800s, but how common were they?

The most common (I think) way to add more shafts was to use "lunor" - ie two-level pulleys (left) or dräll-pulleys:

From all the extras that came with my loom I think that, maybe, a 3-level pulley was used with horses, thus giving the loom a capacity to use 12 shafts, like this:

(Seen from the side: 2 shafts connected by horses to one cord that goes over the pulley and down on the other side - thus 6 shafts on the back of the pulley-contraption, 6 (not pictured) in front of it)

I have used such a set-up a couple of times, and it is... - well, let's say it can be done, but it takes lots of patience to get the whole thing balanced. However, I fully inderstand why one can prefer to use dräll pulleys (or countermarche) instead.
Dräll pulleys have one drawback: the tie-up has to be on opposites: what goes down in the one end must come up in the other:

So: can I draw any conclusions as to the type of loom was used, when I find several 8-shaft "not-opposite" tieups in one manuscript? As the majority of weaves are 4-shaft and of many different types, I'm not seeing the legacy of a specialist weaver (I think). There are a couple of opposite tie-ups, and as many not-opposites.
Am I seeing a weaver with lots of patience, or one with a countermarche? (From all the extras that came with my loom: maybe I'm seeing a weaver with a loom that is on its way to be upgraded?)

I asked my guildmates, some of whom have learned to weave 50 years ago, (then) using their (grand-)mother's loom. They all believed in the two-or-more-level pulleys, possibly with elastics to help balancing.

Any thoughts?

Cultural differences and looms

It is interesting how many ways there are to think about weaving on a shaft loom.
I am from Sweden, where we have woven on floor looms since... a loong time. Those looms were of the counterbalance type. In the late 1700s countermarche looms begun to appear. There is also the "middle" type - counterbalanced multishaft looms. The ordinary CB loom could easily be converted, one just added a multi-level pulley (drälltrissor, in Swedish) and some shaft bars.
Drawlooms existed, but were for "experts".
Above is a picture of my first loom. It is by now probably 100 years old. It is unusually deep, but otherwise typical. When I bought it, I got three generations (incarnations?) in one: there was one set of pulleys for 8 shafts and some horses, one set of dräll pulleys for 10 shafts and a countermarche.
Some sticks and things had been lost over the years, but I could set up a 20-treadle, 13-shaft CM loom without problems. It has got yet another incarnation from me - I replaced the tatty countermarche, and also got a double back beam. It now has 16 shafts and (the original) 20 treadles.


Above is a collage of pictures harvested today from one Swedish second-hand 'net site. All of these looms are old, some very old - and all are typical. (Click on the picture to enlarge)
In the peasant community spinning and weaving was concentrated to the winter season, so warping mills and looms were constructed to be easily dis/assembled.

Modern Swedish looms are still built in this pattern:


Above left is a Glimåkra standard, above right is an Öxabäck Cyrus.

From what I have read, all warping was done "back-to-front" - ie one wound a warp on a vertical warping mill, chained it off, and by the help of a reed or a raddle (and a friend/child/husband) wound the warp chain on to the warp beam. Then the warp loops were cut, the heddles threaded, the reed sleyed, the warp was tied to the front rod. The warp rods were attached to the beams with cords.

When the warp was in place, and under tension, the "upper tie-up" was done: the shafts were attached to the superstructure by the help of pulleys and horses, or the dräll pulleys, or the countermarche mechanism. After that, it was time for the "lower tie-up", or treadle tie-up. Both tie-ups were done every time, for every warp. When I went to weaving school we had to strip the loom(s) down to the bare frame when a warp was cut off - no shafts, lamms, treadles left in place. Why? - because this warp required 6 shafts/treadles, and the next might require a different number...

If the loom did not have lamms, there were several ways to facilitate tying several shafts to each treadle. The easies way was to put the treadle cords trough a ring of some sort (often, I have read, a piece of a cow's horn - but it could also be just a "ring" of yarn). Another way was to attach "shaft horses" under the bottom shaft bar. (This "shaft horse" is just an extra stick, giving better room to attach several cords to the bottom shaft bar. It also helps the geometry, some, by distributing the downward pull over a longer length.) I have never heard a Swedish weaver use an expression like "direct tie-up loom", even though I have known weavers who preferred to use both feet.
(For lots of interesting reading on traditional Swedish looms and weaving practices, see: Grenander-Nyberg: Lanthemmens vävstolar, ISBN 91-7108-076-7, printed 1974. The book has a summary in English.)

The first time I came to the US was for Convergence 1990. I saw so many ...things I could not properly relate to. I mean - I was a weaver of more than 10 years, I should know a loom when I saw one, right? And yet, here were all these small things: narrow, short (shallow?) and about knee high - surely they must be meant for children? Or do all Americans have extremely short legs?


The wolf above is just an example of what I mean with "knee high" - Swedish looms tend to have the breast beam sitting 20-30 cm - 8-12" - taller... and of course they also have a "castle" some 170-180 cm - 6' - tall.

In 1996 I started to hang out on internet lists. There were so many discussion threads that I just could not understand. I understood the words, but they had some strange meaning: why would one need/want a "manual" for a loom, for example? By then, I had woven on, oh, I don't know, a dozen or so, looms. I could dis/assemble any one of them in less than an hour. They were all constructed to the same principle, even if some had the ratchet-and-pawl mechanism to the right, others to the left. Some had both warp and back beams, some had no back beam. Some had the treadles hinged at the front, most had not.
But a "manual"?
(Little did I know... some years later, I was thankful of the manual that came with the AVL, a loom that takes more than an hour to assemble - maybe even for a veteran.)

Another thing I could not understand was the idea of a "universal tie-up". It must be so much more efficient to do a tie-up that suited the project and its treadling order? And why on earth would one try to tie the treadles without a warp on the loom? Surely, it would have to be re-done, or at least adjusted, when the warp was in place, anyway?

Then there were the always reappearing discussions on warping - B2F, F2B. Huh? At long last I found out what F2B meant. To me, it sounded like a recipe for disaster: to cut and tie the loops before the warp was safely on the loom... surely that was asking for trouble? (I still haven't dared try that method, even though I have an idea that would depend on it... because I am not confident that I could tie the knots at the exact place.)

And the winding of a warp... Imagine - there are weavers out there that, apparently, never use more than one end at a time? And who are nervous about how to keep the warp order, if not using a one-by-one cross? When winding on a warping mill, I usually have 4 ends at a time - but it would not even occur to me to pick a thread-by-thread cross... and I have never had any problems. True, I have never made a warp longer than 26 meters this way.

Over time, I have learned to disregard some discussions, but now and again I can't help marveling at the fact that the seemingly "same" tools and procedures can be so different... and yet produce the same results.