Spring is here, my new Spring II loom!
One of the first things I did when I decided it was time to retire was to order myself a floor loom. The timing was perfect as Louët had just announced the new Spring II loom. I ordered a 110cm wide, 12 shaft Spring II from Nicky at Thread Collective in November. The loom was built in Holland earlier this year and shipped to Brisbane, finally making it through customs earlier this month. Last Friday, Nicky arrived with three boxes – Louët has clearly taken packing lessons from Ikea!
Nicky was a trooper – it took us almost 5 hours to put the loom together – not including the time I spent afterward installing heddles and tie-up cords. Nicky did all the heavy lifting as I’m not supposed to lift anything with my left arm for the next couple of weeks. Thanks, Nicky!!!
Luckily, Betsy was able to come over on Saturday to help me install the 1300 heddles (and I need 300 more!). Fortunately, Louët has designed the shafts so that it’s fairly easy to move heddles from one shaft to another – or to add new ones.
Saturday afternoon I was ready to start dressing the loom with my first warp.
I’m working my way through Jane Stafford’s Online Weaving School, so I had already measured out the warp for Season 3, Episode 1 – Denting in brown and rust 16/2 cotton. Louët looms have a built-in raddle at the top of the castle to spread out your warp as you wind it onto the back beam. The Spring II comes with wooden raddle covers to keep the threads from popping out of the raddle as you wind the warp on. I weighted the warp with water bottles and was able to wind it on easily without assistance.
On Sunday I was finally ready to weave!
I’m enjoying the smooth, easy action of this loom. The parallel counter-march mechanism provides a big, even shed. Weaving is a breeze! More about these scarves in the next post.
Great to see you are right into weaving without delay.
Looking good Karen. All set and ready to go. Have fun.