Despite my last market for the financial year being a 'bit disappointing', I actually had quite a successful year, almost reaching the first of my financial goals. So much so, that I purchased a number of equipment items.
If you know me, you know that I love hand tools. Mechanical, don't often break down, hand tools. I even don't have an electric beater, but a hand beater. Perhaps says as much about how often I bake, but I DO use it when I need to!
The first purchase for the year was the overlocker, but the second, perhaps the cheapest of all, is the swift. Organised by Amy (thankyou, again), I managed to obtain this beatiful and incredibly useful tool for simply holding skeins while you wind them. This may not seem like alot, but after the number of skeins I have knotted and struggled with, this is just heaven. Then after much umming and aaring, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a 16-shaft table loom, and then proceeded to add it a double back beam and a warping mill from the very helpful people at Ashford.
I do like playing with weave structures and the more complicated the better! There are a number of weaves in my sample books, most notably the eyelash weave, that require lots of shafts, so I can go back and revisit them, or make the sample for some of the weaves I didn't get to do. The table loom means that I can quickly warp and produce, hopefully interesting scarves, etc for my market stall. The double back beam adds to the complexity by having two separate warps that can be woven in very different ways at different rates. I haven't put this on yet, but I will.
The warping mill, like the swift, makes a tedious job so much easier. 10 minutes to do my first warp, including fiddling time. Love it already!So, keep an eye out for more weaving!
