My New Spring Loom

Wednesday,June 1st, my new Louet Loom arrived. The very pleasant delivery man put it on a dolly and brought it up the driveway (only moderately sloped) and put it just inside the first bay of the garage, behind the black Z.  My husband is a car buff; one must not even breathe deeply when you are near any of his cars. 

Here is how it looked:

If it weren't for the photo of a loom on the box (upper picture), you would never guess that a loom, or at least its guts, could be hidden within.  However, if you stand on tip toes, you can just see a suggestion of the Texsolv cords that are part of the countermarch system.

Meanwhile, I have cleared some of the left-over boxes out of my room I know, I know; all the boxes should be emptied by now.  Here are my excuses: 

My desk has not been delivered yet. We are being kind to the furniture store, located in Pacific Grove, and agreeing to have all the pieces we ordered delivered at once. So, while my desk is in PG waiting for me, I also wait for it and its companion rolling file cabinet to match.

Some of the contents are things I am just not sure about. Do I need the Texaco cap with the signatures of Bobby Rahal and Bryan Herta (open wheel race car drivers)? And decorated with 2 pins from races at Laguna Seca (the local raceway set in the hills)?  I don't very often win things, and I won this hat - actually heard my name being called over the loudspeaker when I was outside the tent.  The very large tent was set up on the lawn at Laguna Seca for a fundraising dinner/silent auction put on by the raceway volunteers.  Big social event, with many of the drivers and owners attending.

• Some will go on the shelves that I want built beside my desk, like my little inkle loom (made by Tony Irwin from Vancouver Island) and baskets with yarn or fluff in them.

So those are my main excuses.  I am sure I could find more if needed.  Nevertheless, here is the space I made for the loom:

You can just see some of the boxes in the upper right-hand corner.  The window faces south west, so I will put my right shoulder toward the window so the afternoon sun comes over my shoulder.  If need be, I can pull down the blinds that are hidden at the top of the window.

So, I decided (against my husband's advice) to assemble the loom in place.  I am very glad I did.  Here is the piece unpacked from the large box pictured above:

As you can see, it was well packed.  The reeds and the footboard plus other parts are packed into the spaces in the loom body.

I was sure that I took a picture of all the parts and tools and five bags of hardware, but it is nowhere to be found.  I will say that laid out on the carpet, the various parts took up about 8 square feet.  I carefully labelled everything that was named and pictured in the Assembly Instructions with little hot pink sticky notes.  I began at the beginning and followed the instructions.  I made a couple of mistakes, and I fixed them.  Gradually it began to come together.

I am glad that I had already used a Louet countermarch loom.  I pretty much understood what everything was for and that helped a lot.  Of course, there were not enough heddles to suit me, so I took my time determining the shuttle count per shaft for the first project I have planned.  I ended up putting 175 heddles on shafts 1 and 5, 125 on shafts 4 and 8.  The other four shafts got 100 heddles each.  That works fine for the basketweave and huck baby blanket I have planned for a certain new Canadian (shh...).

Here she is - assembled though, as yet, unnamed:

Isn't she pretty?

I am going out later to do errands.  One will be to get two "milk crates" or the like so I can elevate the loom in order to sit in a more reasonable position while I tie up the treadles with the fist-fulls of Texsolve cords included.  They are all cut to size, thank goodness!  It took me more than an hour And, yes, I am slow. to cut all the loops on the heddles before putting them on the shafts.

It is nice to be communicating/writing again.  More when I get that first warp on the loom...