Shaft Switching Sampler

It's been several years since I took Jason Collingwood's class at Juanita Hofstrom's Vavning Studio. So I had to reread my notes and look over Peter Collingwood's books again to figure out what I was doing. I have the new Cranbrook warped with linen for a sampler and I made some shaft switchers out of some wood strips with nails. All I have left to do is make the doups and I'm ready to weave.

I want to try out some different sized weft yarns to determine the best epi. Then I can make the shaft switching device using levers. 

Freedom to try new things!

I do love to organize things. Sometimes, when cleaning, I get so caught up in the details of organization, the bigger picture gets lost in the shuffle.
When I purchased the Cranbrook, a lot of yarn came with it. A lot. Bags and bags and boxes and boxes. It was all packed kind of hodgepode by the seller, so I ended up piling it all up in the dining room on a couple of clean sheets and have been picking through it.
I've been so impressed by how wonderful some of this yarn is, some of it decades old judging by the old plastic bags they were in that I ordered some of my own plastic bags. I found some in reasonably small quantities at Good Quality Paper Goods in NY and it arrived yesterday. I already had a large package of mailing labels so I got to work. I have 59 pounds of various sized wool rug yarn in natural white and fawn color. Those are skeined, so I have those in big plastic bins.
Here's some of the yarn all packaged up and labeled. This is mostly wool yarns and rayon yarns. About 41 pounds of just those types just on those 2 shelves.  And there is more to do yet.

I've always had a relatively small yarn stash and this has limited my weaving to some extent. I would only buy something for a particular project and wasn't able to experiment the way I would like to. Now I feel like I can try all sorts of things because I have all this yarn to play with! It's wonderful!!!

Bexell Loom progress

The loom has been assembled and the chains removed and replaced with texsolv cords. The bottom tie up cords had been cut by the previous owner when disassembling, but I have a pretty good idea of the length they were. I replaced all of those cords with texsolv too. The original heddles were string, very dirty and yellow, so when the new heddles arrived from Yarn Barn yesterday, I put those on right away.

Here she is after being washed with Murphy's oil soap and outfitted with texsolv. I bought 600 heddles but on a 60" loom, they look lost! But that will be plenty for doing the rugs and saddle blankets I plan on using this loom for.

This loom is very old, possibly one of the early Bexells? There isn't a metal plate on the beater support that you usually see, but it is stamped instead. 

Right now, I'm working on a design for a shaft switching device. On my old Toika, I made one with eye screws and 2 pieces of wood and lots of texsolv, but I would like to have levers on this one. I want to weave with 4 end blocks using 5 ends per inch, so I'm using Peter Colllingwood's design from his book, but figuring out the best way to make it work with narrower levers. When I start working on that, I'll post pictures.
I also need to do some sampling with a new wool weft yarn to see if that is the sett that will work. I've used that before on yarns that I got 10 years ago, but I don't know if that manufacturer is still in business, so am doing some checking around to determine what yarn I'm going to use, then I'll know what sett will work, and how to space the levers on the SS device.

For some reason, I have been getting lots of ideas in the middle of the night! A few nights ago, I had an idea for a silver pendant design and didn't want to forget, so I downloaded a sketching app on my phone, then sketched the idea out to save. The next night at 3:30am, I had an idea for a rug design for my living room, so grabbed my phone again to sketch it. I've been having so many ideas lately that I am keeping a list with what I want to accomplish each day and then checking it off as I go. There's too many ideas and not enough time!!
Today, I'm working through more of the yarn stash to see what is usable and what isn't.

Yesterday, I also worked on the reeds that came with the loom to see if I can get the rust off. I used naval jelly and it removed some, but I need to work on those again today and see if I can get the rest off. They don't seem to be pitted, just have some surface rust.

Then there is a part that I wonder about.

It came with the loom but I'm not familiar with any loom part that this could be. One of the things that was included with the loom was a large vertical warping mill that only had one piece with dowels, instead of the usual 2 - one for each end of the warp. At first I thought the other end was missing, but now I wonder if the loose dowel in the box of parts was meant to go in this hole and then bolted towards the bottom of the warping mill to hold the end of the warp? There's too much yarn in the dining room right now to set up the mill and check out my theory, but once I get through some of that, I can see if that's what this part is for.