Harrisville Designs 22" Four-Shaft Four-Treadle Floor Loom!!!

A week ago I was sitting in my knitting/scripture-reading chair early on Monday morning.  I use an app on my phone (We Believe) to organize my scripture study every day and I do mean every day.  It makes the days go so much better.  Well, I was reading in Jeremiah and a note popped up from one of my fiber  group friends saying something like, "This looks like a good deal."   Since my scriptures were not going anywhere, I clicked on the link!

Wowzer!  This is a Harrisville Designs 22" Four-Shaft Four-Treadle Floor Loom. (If you click this link you will see this is a kit for $1800.  If you want it pre-assembled -not a bad idea!--it is $2550.) I don't think they make this specific one anymore. I think they all have six treadles...for which they have upgrade kits.  I will have that in the back of my mind but I will have to exhaust the possibilities weaving on this loom first...!

Here is the loom in its new home beside the spinning wheel in the front window!

About twenty years ago I went to Harrisville, New Hampshire to attend a one-week course on weaving on this very loom style!  I was so thrilled to see that note on my phone.  I went back to my scripture study and had a brief chat with Heavenly Father and said that when I finished my scripture study, not taking any shortcuts, if the loom was still available, then I would consider that He wanted me to get it.  I did my study.  I texted the seller.  The loom was available.  Pickup was available that day.  The only glitch in the plan was that it was an hour and a half drive away on scary fast roads BUT I decided I could do it.  After packing a couple of apples in the car and stopping at the credit union to pick up cash (where I learned I could not immediately fix a perplexing mobile financial app problem), I hit the road and managed to find the home where the loom was located.

The loom had belonged to the seller's wife who had died a year ago and which loom had been her pride and joy.  Now it is my pride and joy!  The kind man and his friend carefully loaded the loom in the car for me and I headed for home.  GPS decided to take me home a different way.  The first thirty minutes were white-knuckle driving then I got on familiar roads and crawled along at the usual snail's pace, safely pulled the car into the garage, closed the overhead door, went into the house and collapsed onto the couch to get up strength enough to go to bed!

The next day I brought the loom inside then over the past few days have found a permanent home for the loom in the front window next to the Ashford Traveler Spinning Wheel which tools are book-ended by the slate table we got in Vermont many years ago which houses the computer/monitor set up and on the other side by the horizontal wooden file cabinet my sister brought to house the color laser printer and the black and white laser printer which we purchased this spring when the old color laser printer bit the dust.  (Parenthetically it had not actually bitten the dust, we two of us just could not figure out the problem.   A kind senior missionary who likes to fix things fixed it and gave it to a "friend" at church.  That was no problem then and no problem now.)  And in case you want to know why I thought we needed a color laser printer--I plan to print out my electronic journal which has lots of photographs in it...which I wanted to be in color.

So as I have been watching Tom Knisely weaving videos I have been pricking up my ears from time to time as he shows something that I needed to know.  I do think now that the loom parts are all happy.  The last thing Tom talked about was care and maintenance of the loom.  I will get some Murphy's Oil soap and scrub down the loom in case there is grunge on in though I can say that the home it came from was immaculate...unlike some places I know rather intimately...!

The Deborah Chandler book: Learning To Weave arrived last Wednesday and I have been reading it and making notes.  It is a book that is actually a weaving course.  I have completed Lesson One and am on Lesson Two...which I do not want to move on to until I have scrubbed up the loom.  Of course, I have not read all the way through Lesson Two, and I have not gone back and re-read Lesson One which Deborah recommends.  I did measure the sample warp.

This is obviously going to be a striped piece.  I have not read ahead to learn more about what the sample will create...but I do know it will be a piece of cloth that will be 22" in the reed.

The sample warp Deborah calls for has you use a 12-dent reed, which I do not as  of this moment own.  The loom came with a 10-dent reed and I ordered an 8-dent reed since I often have used at least worsted  (number 4) weight yarn for weaving on the rigid heddle looms we have.  After ordering the new reed I actually tried putting the yarn I plan to use for the first real project (Christmas kitchen towels for a friend who already gave me the yarn...) through the reed and found it would have worked just fine.  Oh well.  It is only money and I am sure I will use thicker yet yarns in the future.

So the sample warp is ready to go, but I do plan to re-read Lesson One before dressing the loom.

That is it for today.

Do good.

Be good.

Let's do it now, together.