Between the ages of 10 and 14 I learned to weave. On a full four-pedal floor loom. My weaving teacher lived down the road from our weekend house/barn, and in the summer every Wednesday morning I would amble down for my lessons. Hazel Warren was an Eisenhower-era =Lady= (she would have fit right in with the Helen Hokinson cartoons that appeared in the New Yorker) with enormous skill, and considerable patience (we actually warped the loom together. The math alone should have killed me).
When we moved up to Massachusetts full time, my mother decided she was going to weave fabric for curtains for the living room. This would have required (educated guess) 200 yards of 30" fabric): Mom managed just shy of 2 yards, and the warp stayed on the loom for decades, until I cut it off, disassembled the loom, and shipped it out west when I sold the barn.
I have decided that someone should get the good of it, so yesterday I unearthed the various component bits, and today I brought them down to the garage and unwrapped them (we will not speak of the volume of geriatric bubble wrap, brown paper, and styrofoam peanuts that are now bundled into garbage bags).
In the process of decanting the loom I found a paper-wrapped box, at a guess 40" x 5" x 5". In my father's scrawl was the word LOOM? In fact, when I opened it, it turned out to be a "Bliss" Adjustable Rug Frame, left over from my mother's brief phase of rug hooking. As near as I can tell, it's in the manufacturer's box and everything. If anyone wants it, contact me. Otherwise I suspect it will be donated to SCRAP (thank you, Ellen Klages, for the suggestion).
As for the loom itself? It is in approximately 30 pieces, like a massive 3-D jigsaw puzzle. Alas, that I did not document the taking apart of the thing when I did it. This is going to be interesting.
I am unspeakably sweaty and grimy. Crawling around in the attic is messy work. Who knew?
When we moved up to Massachusetts full time, my mother decided she was going to weave fabric for curtains for the living room. This would have required (educated guess) 200 yards of 30" fabric): Mom managed just shy of 2 yards, and the warp stayed on the loom for decades, until I cut it off, disassembled the loom, and shipped it out west when I sold the barn.
I have decided that someone should get the good of it, so yesterday I unearthed the various component bits, and today I brought them down to the garage and unwrapped them (we will not speak of the volume of geriatric bubble wrap, brown paper, and styrofoam peanuts that are now bundled into garbage bags).
In the process of decanting the loom I found a paper-wrapped box, at a guess 40" x 5" x 5". In my father's scrawl was the word LOOM? In fact, when I opened it, it turned out to be a "Bliss" Adjustable Rug Frame, left over from my mother's brief phase of rug hooking. As near as I can tell, it's in the manufacturer's box and everything. If anyone wants it, contact me. Otherwise I suspect it will be donated to SCRAP (thank you, Ellen Klages, for the suggestion).
As for the loom itself? It is in approximately 30 pieces, like a massive 3-D jigsaw puzzle. Alas, that I did not document the taking apart of the thing when I did it. This is going to be interesting.
I am unspeakably sweaty and grimy. Crawling around in the attic is messy work. Who knew?



