All loom have loom waste. It’s a thing, and it’s a thing that you just learn to live with. The chunk of warp that just cannot be woven, because of how the loom structure works. Usually it’s behind (or below) the heddles, to wherever your back beam is, or your weights are. Some looms are exceptionally efficient, some looms are /really bad/ for excessive loom waste.

My Fanny (go ahead, giggle. I get it. It’s also the name of a really common Leclerc loom, so get it out of your system now) is about average for loom waste (24″ or so), the warp weighted loom (WWL) that I’m borrowing is pretty excessive (almost 30″ or so). Inkle looms are shockingly efficient for loom waste (which is good, when you only have 60 – 70 inches of warp to begin with, you don’t want to lose half to loom waste!)

Forgive the mess I’m about to make of this photo, but I’ll try and show you what I mean:

 

 

 

I recently asked online for ideas on how best to minimize it on a warp weighted loom, and after most folks failed to read the question and provided excellent, if extraneous, suggestions on what to do with it, there was a couple useful suggestions.

First off, have more slots for the heddle bar to rest in, especially further down, close to the shed bar. Not a solution for this loom, I’m only borrowing it, but good to keep in mind if I ever build a loom!

There’s also the very pragmatic solution of having a longer string upon your weights, such that your precious handspun warp doesn’t need to get all the way to the shed bar, some other string can. That’s the most practical solution for me, on a borrowed loom that I am hardly about to start drilling holes into.

 

As for what to do with your loom waste? Naalbinding is the classic answer. (I’m pretty sure that the historical weaving internet has a pavlovian response to the words ‘loom waste’ and just yells ‘naalbinding!’ without hearing anything else) Pre-cut lengths of wool, it’s an obvious jump. One can also embroider with them, if you particularly wanted to. I decided to do neither, recently, and instead used them to replace the handles of my basket. Looped back and forth and then wound tightly, the wool works just fine for handles!

Nothing ever really goes to waste, especially not when the process of getting from dirty sheep to spun wool is quite as labour intensive as it is. Use every last bit of it!

 

Wow, I have not kept the blog up to date on my weaving progress. Whoops! I suspect I kept looking at it and thinking ‘damn, it looks the same as yesterday’ and never realizing I hadn’t shown you any weaving pictures.

So when last we left our hapless weaver, I’d managed to get heddles knitted and then whoosh, was off to travels. At Pennsic, I attended a couple of warp weighted loom classes, and judged a couple war point entries about WWL weaving.  That’s a whole different conversation, judging things that you aren’t an expert in. I am a weaver, but a beginner WWL weaver.. Coming soon to a blog near you, commentary on judging in A&S. It’s a huge topic, and one I have a lot of thinky thoughts about, both as an entrant and as a judge. But that’s coming soon, that’s not this blog post.

Chatting with weavers, and watching weavers, and getting excited about weaving on that freshly heddled loom, basically ensured that I wasn’t even unpacked before I was diving in and weaving. My warp was incredibly sticky. It loved to grab onto itself at every moment, and I fought tooth and nail for every single shed in this warp. Every. Single. One. Rrrrriiiiiiip went the warp, every time I asked it for a new shed. And the fuzzies on the floor? I’m surprised I didn’t misplace the cat.

Now, it was a warp I’d already wound ages ago, so no tablet woven band to start. It’s quite a thick yarn, knitting worsted weight (and fairly worsted spun at that.. yes, same word.. yes two totally different meanings. Fibre arts jargon is mean like that.) My sett (how many threads per inch in the warp) ended up incredibly tight, and as such, my fabric is incredibly warp faced. I also made some threading errors, and decided that I could live with them, so in they stayed. (A couple threading errors could not be lived with, and I repaired those heddles just by cutting them and retying them a tiny bit shorter. Seemed to work just fine.)

I’d be warned that draw in is a real bear in WWL, and I lost about 2 inches from start to finish. The first bit is absolutely that janky ‘I have no clue what my tension is going to be’ start that happens in all weaving, and I tried really hard to get consistent and stay consistent, so the second half is much better than the first. Ultimately, I ended up with 82″ of cloth, that started out 12″ wide, but for the most of it is just about 10″ wide. Not the most functional size, especially for something that thick, but hey.. it’ll become something. We’ll see what size it settles to after its bath. No weaving is finished until its wet finished, and while I’m a gentle wet finisher (No staking it out to sea for me!), it really does change the fabric to have some swish swish water time. It only got washed this morning, so no glamour shots of it all clean and dry yet.

I’m super pleased with how it turned out, and super stoked to get something else on the loom. I need to find someone who loves to naalbind (I hates it, precious), who wants all my loom waste. This particular loom leaves quite a bit, and it seems a waste to throw it out. Oh wait.. I don’t throw it out, I use it for other stuff. I’ll show you that next week. (Although seriously, if there’s someone who likes lengths of wool that are basically perfect for naalbinding, talk to me. I would happily pass them off.)