The Pulleys

Back in June when we retrieved the loom out of the attic of the OCGH craft house, sadly the harness pulleys were nowhere to be found.  When I first posted my blog, Craig Evans of Brookfield NH saw it and offered up some pulleys.  He sent me photos of 8 different pairs and ended up sending me 2 pairs to check out with the loom.  Here are the ones that looked the best with the loom.  They are 7.75" tall and made of yellow birch.

You'll notice in the photo that one is missing the wheel.  We have a wonderful thing in our house called "Wifely Sanctioned Shop Time".  Since for some reason most weavers' husbands are woodworkers, I'm sure many of you can appreciate this.  "Honey, can you go down to your Happy Place and make me one of these?"  It's a win-win situation.

The pulleys with new wheels and one new pin

It turns out (no pun intended) that the hole in the one original wheel was a little uneven, so Dan ended up turning two wheels, but was able to reuse the one original pin.  The new wheels are also yellow birch.

I still needed to return the second set, and since we were going to be camping up in NH only about 1/2 hour from Brookfield, I set a date with Craig to visit his house, which is really more like a museum for antique textile tool fanatics.  Craig showed us all his cool textile stuff and lent us some treadles to use as a template.

I had originally met Craig at a Great Wheel Spinning Bee we held at the Westford Museum.  (There will be another in Feb 2013!)  He's a genuine appreciator of old textile tools and is a great resource for researchers.  Thanks so much, Craig, for your help with this project!

BTW, Craig is planning to have a sale of many of the items from his collection on 14, 15 and 16 September, so if you're interested, feel free to be in touch with him. castor74@roadrunner.com

The Heddle Puzzle

As promised, a discussion of the heddles.  This YouTube video shows what they look like.  Once I looked closely, they weren't at all what I had expected.  I've heard the term "knit the heddles", but they don't really look "knit".  I haven't been able to reverse engineer them, and I haven't been able to connect directly with anyone who knows how to make them.  

My friend Diane Howes sent me a couple pages from Luther Hooper's "Hand-Loom Weaving".  (Thanks, Diane!)  It was first published in 1910, so the lingo is kind of out-of-date, but I get the general idea. However, that's not to say that I'm ready to sit down and make some. The figure in the book shows a tatting shuttle, and the directions describe what we would consider "knotting," not "knitting." (But it's not like nålbinding, for those who might be familiar with this type of not-knotted, one-needle knitting.)

So what's next? Maybe I really do just need to sit down and try to do it.  Wish me luck!

Here's what the harnesses looked like when I first took them  off the loom.  The heddles were still on the harnesses, but they were in poor condition.  A slight tug would break them.

Here's a closeup of the heddles, although they are hard to see since the twist of the linen makes them coil.  Under tension on the loom, they open up to about 10" measured on the outside edges.

This shows the ends of the heddles, where they are tied onto the harnesses.

This is a photo of the harness pieces themselves after removing the heddles and washing them.  The score marks every 1 1/2" are used to ensure that the correct number of ends per inch (epi) is attained in the warp. As you weavers know, the correct epi is also dictated by the reed, but when the heddles are knit continuously, they can't be stretched out or compressed together, so they also have to be at the correct sett.  I imagine this means that a weaver would need multiple sets of heddles in order to weave goods at different setts.

Coming up is the story about the pulleys and our visit with Craig Evans.