Just Off the Loom

Finally! The dog is off the loom and looks pretty good. This is a moderately coarse wool yardage woven for an SCA friend, Mistress Alina. Eventually it will be make into a tunic for a very dear friend of Alina's who has a Viking persona and is very, very enthusiastic about authenticity.

The wool is a mill end. Several of us spent an evening getting it from cones into skeins ready for dyeing. I had to dye it twice with fiber reactive dyes. Don't know if the dyes were old or if the wool was somehow resistant to dyes. Then it took another evening to get it back into skeins and wound on a warping board in 1 inch wide segments. Several people from the shire learned how to thread through the reed and through the heddles. Then Alina had a death in the family and I had too much to do for several months. When I came back to Alina's loom, a small Harrisville loom, I was convinced that I had a "dog on the loom"-something that really, really did not wish to woven on that loom at that time. I took it off Alina's loom and put it on my AVL at home. It came quietly and I had no tension problems at all. I turned out to be an extremely sticky warp. I tried my usual remedy of spraying it liberally with the cheapest,strongest hairspray I could find. The only thing tht accomplished was to make the loom room smell of White Rain. I still had to clear every shed. One of my weaving friends says that boiled flax seed warp dressing would have spared me all the trouble. The fabric was a little stiff and scratchy before it was washed. 5 minutes on the gentle cycle with warm wash water and cold rinse water, using Orvus paste worked well. It is just a little felted and the hand is much better.

Weaving Draft for Alina's Red Wool Yardage

Draft name: plain weave
Loom: floor loom, jack action

Warp
Fiber: wool
Color: red
Size: 1500 yd./lb. (several yards woven with 4 strands of 6000 yd./lb because I ran out)
Sett: 12 epi

Weft
Same as warp
Beat: 12 ppi

Measurements:
Width in reed: 30 inches
Width on loom: 29.5 inches
Width off loom: 29.25 inches
After finishing: 28.5 inches
Wove 6 yards but did not record how much was originally on the loom.