CLEANING AND COUNTING

The piece with the notches does fit into the bar with the cutouts = foot rest. Thank you for letting me know it's suppose to be tight.


I've been cleaning heddles, bars and frames. The heddle still are white-ish, not shiny aluminum. but I guess I can live with that, it doesn't effect the yarn that I strung through to test them out.

So far I've clean three harnesses with 590 heddles some of the harness have more heddles than others, but I want to get through them all and then even out the numbers on each harness. I'm keeping and individual count on each harness and writing it on the bar with a white grease pencil so that I don't get confused or lose my notes.
This is as clean as I got the 15 reed, I strung some yarn through it and did a dental floss type of cleaning, I think that's about as clean as I can hope for.

I've placed my other looms on ebay and hope to sell them, once that happens I will order the missing pieces for the Macomber and she will be permanently placed inside the house. Then my friends we'll have our maiden warping session.

Some Mystery Parts and Answers

I called Macomber yesterday and spoke with a really great gentleman, he informed me the my loom was built July 1967, it's actually only two years younger than I am. I will need regular lamm hooks because the super hooks will not work. I have a list of items I need and when I get ready he told me to just give him a call.

This controls the lamms which are connected to these side bar which lift the harness with the levers at the top of the high castle. I took this pic from the back of the loom to get a good shot of the assembly. It's been cleaned up and oiled, I'm posting for Kimberly who had a question.

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This is the crank that when I depress a corner foot pedal releases the back beam and a pic of the controls from the side of the loom. That rusty bolt, I'm assuming it's missing a piece so that I can manually turn the back beam to warp.

This is one of my mystery pieces this thing is on both sides of the front legs it goes back and has the little stoppers to keep it in position, I'm at a lost as to what this is for.

This other piece of wood is the same length of the interior of the loom and has notches on each side. I have no clue on this one either.

This is the back beam you can see were the strings were at one point and were cut off.

My rusty heddle bar that got a good wipe and rub with steel wool.

A close up of the heddles which are in great condition just a wipe and they clean up real nice.

And the final pics of of yarn because I'm also trying to figure out how I can clean it before using.

This is a cone of wool/mohair, and as you can see it's really dusty, How do I clean this or should I just skein off the first few layers and start there?

This is the true color without flash it's really a great looking deep blue.

The Clean up Begins!

I went home yesterday and took a 2 hour nap, I felt really exhausted and had a headache that wouldn't stop even though I popped Advils. After that power nap I woke up and was ready to roll .

This is the before and after shots of the cleaning, these are the harness levers, I can tell that the loom was mostly used as a four harness because the front notches are nicely worn in, compared the the other six. Mr Deepend has a blower with a hose for mechanic work on the cars and it's been a God send, love that thing.

I took the front beam off that was really cool since this is my first big loom, I'm finding that it's going to teach me so much just by cleaning, disassembling and re-assembling. I love that since everything you learn you get to keep with you. This portion are the bars that control the harnesses with the lamms and foot pedals. (please excuse me with the terminology I'll get it all down as I get this loom cleaned up and do my research).

Now this little piece of dowel is notched at the end and attached to where the lamms are this is a mystery, I don't know what it's for. I looked on Sarah's blog but didn't see that she made any reference to it either. There is also a longer piece of wood that has notches at the ends that I don't know where it goes (wasn't attached to the loom when I went to see it just in the corner), I have to get a pic of that too. The wood is really starting to look good, I'm using Old English Polish/Cleaner and I love the richness its bring out.

I'm officially FREAKED OUT!!

Yeah, I was exhausted, nose clogged up with dust, mind reeling with ideas and well generally overwhelmed. I knew this would happen but no matter how I mentally prepared, it didn't work. I AM REALLY FREAKED OUT!! I don't know what to do first, but I like a challenge and well the loom is in the garage so there is no turning back now. You know that feeling that you get when you really want something, then it happens and you think OH LORD what have I done or gotten myself into?? I'm there, I haven't slept since 3:00 am and that's not really good I need my 8 -9 hours.


40 boxes of extremely dusty dirty yarn, a lot of it wool, some linen, some cotton and some I won't know until I burn it. Also hidden in one of the boxes was Macrame yarn, I hadn't seen this type of yarn since the early 80's. I did discard a lot of the wool that was too dirty and tangled up to deal with, plus it had some kind of bug debris whatever was in it has been dead a long time. there was also some very thick almost roving like wool unfortunately it was in with the bug yarn.

Loom Bench that is also sturdy and adjustable, swweeeeeeet.

A bunch of slat sticks and two sets of these sticks that are tied on both sides with leather? I need to look in my weaving book for these. I have not emptied the milk can and don't know if by chance there are any shuttles in there but I don't think so.

The milk can that it housing these right now is suppose to be hunter green this did my nose and allergies in for the night.

The Stats: Macomber Ad A Harness Model B-5 Serial 4719

10 harness 12 pedals, no tie up from pedals to harnesses.

5 reeds, #5, #8, #10, #12 & #15 all Macomber, #15 is the only one without any rust.

I can't even begin to tell you how many heddles there are most are in great shape some have light rust. But counting them will be more tedious than cleaning the up. LOL..

There's a ton of cleaning that needs to be done and some de-rusting. I guess there will a mountain of dirty rags, wire brushes, steel wool and latex gloves in my near future.

Another Ad, Another Hope

I found this ad and am going to see her on Saturday. The husband of the weaver doesn't know anything, his wife the weaver is suffering from Alzheimer's and a few other ailments and could not answer even the simplest of questions. I'm excited and hopeful that it's a loom I can use. My questions to you all what should I be looking for to make sure I can actually weave on this one? Thanks I appreciate it.

I Just Got My Loom

Woohoo, just a week since I won and it's here!! It's an intriguing piece, I've taken it apart so that I can clean it and of course figure out how it all works. I found that the heddles that are on the bars are twisted and face sideways instead of forward. I'm a bit confused and having never had a loom with heddles is that normal? I don't really think so, but anyone?? Another question is how the heck do I know what size reed is in this thing? The spools have some string that isn't any thicker than sewing thread and there are 2o threads wrapped together per spool, 4 spools in total. Yeah, this is going to take some time to figure out. As soon as blogger cooperates I'll upload some pics.

NEW LOOM!!!!!!

As of 1:30 pm EST, I am the proud owner of a new (to me) Structo 4 harness table loom. **HAPPY HAPPY DANCE** I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!! Lord knows I prayed on this one, I found it on ebay in the antiques section not in the weaving section and I was the only bidder. For a week I've checked everyday, expecting someone to outbid me, but it didn't happen, I got her for $ 125.64 including the shipping, can you believe it. I was so shocked it took me a full 30 seconds before I realized that I really had won it. Considering that I'd been beaten quite a few time over the last past month. Well good bye birthday cash, hello my little loom.

Isn't she a beauty, well a little rough around the edges but hey, so are diamonds. I just paid for her and they will be shipping to me soon, I can wait. Not that I know what to do when she gets here, but one step at a time. I think I'm in luuuuurve!

Now the fun part getting some kind of manual, instructions etc..

I've already put on hold some books at the library for 4 harness looms so, this should be fun!! I guess I should start hunting down some shuttles and reeds.

What do you guys think??

I'M BACK!!

I had a great vacation and am back to my daily routine, amazing how hard it is to come back into your normal life after a few days. We visited the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Animal Kingdom and Epcot, by far my favorite Disney Parks. Although I think that Disney should change the jingle from "the happiest place on earth" to " the most aggravating place for parents on earth". I love kids, I have three of my own, but I witnessed the total meltdown of both parents and kids at least a dozen times this weekend. It was scary and wickedly funny, cause really does anyone think that kids at Disney are not over stimulated, tired or cranky by 4:00 in the afternoon? Well obviously I saw a few parents who missed that tidbit.

This is the Weaver's Loom in Holy Land it was an interesting upright loom with pegs, the actress playing the part didn't know anything about it or weaving, but she was a sweet girl. She didn't even have a beating fork and was using a carpenter's file to beat the weft in place very odd to see, this is what was on the loom and she said they would use it for a rug at one of the exhibits. Each one of the weft pegs were holding up to 10 picks each, which made for a dense fabric. This is a pic of a woven fabric I saw at the Kali River Rapids in Animal Kingdom it was faded and worn from the sun and rain, but the embroidery was outstanding.

Then this is a panel from the same attraction, although not woven but carved, I found that the colors were really vibrant and the pattern just spoke to me, I loved this one and thought it would make an insanely beautiful tapestry, if I ever intend to play with that medium some day. After a few shots like these the hubster was starting to get antsy, and asked me to please curtail the weaving, knitting picture taking for the vacation. So I did, although in hindsight I really should have taken some pics of the Moroccan textiles, but I know I'll be back there so no big deal.

And since we drove to and fro, I got to finish these baby wash cloths at least half of the presents are finished on these two sets.

So all in all I had a great time and enjoyed the time off, but I'm also glad to be back, as I have a lot of ideas and plans for my fiber crafts.

NEW CAMERA, BABY BLANKET UPDATE

I got a new camera a Canon Power Shot A560 and am learning to use it. I was a photography minor in college, you think I could pick up a digital camera and take great pics NOT, these things have gotten complicated, I long for my Nikon SLR 35mm. whaaaa!! I bought the camera right before the kids' graduations, read enough to set it up and take some pics, not all the pics I would have taken with the 35mm because there is always a delay with a digital that I don't have with a film camera, so I missed a few pics I would have liked to have, but I'll get better ( I hope).

The next pics are an update to the baby blanket I've been working on. I have the first panel completed and I started on the new panel. I took a close up, somewhat blurry, I guess I need to play with the ISO, the other pics were on auto.

I also ordered and got the little flower loom and the double sided corder from Knifty Knitters **happy dance** now I can make baby booties to go with the burp bib, hat and blanket. OMG, I need to really start concentrating on these since the baby is due late August.