After creating the blue yarn for these towels (the feature stripes) it was time to set up the loom.  I had just finished removing some test weaving from the HD loom.  This was the blue stripe/checked demonstration warp that I put on the loom for the Scenic Valley Handweavers guild to use at their booth at the Smoky Mountain Fiber Arts Festival this year.  Not a particularly great demonstration of weaving, but I know a lot of the visitors are not weavers so perhaps nobody noticed.  I briefly considered unweaving and then finishing the cloth to use somewhere, but seemed way more work than really needed.

So with the loom cleaned I felt inspired to see if I could find out a little more of the loom back story.  Knowing only that it was donated to the guild in Townsend, TN, I did some searching on the web to see if there was any sort of lookup for serial numbers (A6 1259).  There wasn’t but one fiber artist mentioned that Harrisville Design would send information they had on file if you emailed them.  The other information I had was stamped on the reed (11-4-93), and while there is no guarantee that the reed was original with the loom the chances are good as it appears to be the type they still supply.  I emailed and had a reply back that unfortunately they don’t have the 80’s and 90’s sales records any more, but the ‘A’ was the original Type A loom built during those decades.  I had already assumed the ‘6’ represented the number of treddles. Along with the date the reed was manufactured all I really know is it was most likely built in the first half of the 90’s and either went directly to the Townsend area or was sold/bought and ended up there for a period.

While that didn’t quite go as smoothly or successfully as hoped – the dressing of the loom was a breeze.

The loom is 31.5 inches deep so lends itself to using yard sticks as support for lease sticks (for the cross), raddle and reed.  The warp was chained and wound on using the yank and crank method of winding a little, pulling on the warp to settle the threads then repeat.  I put 6 or so lease sticks around the back beam as the apron rod met it and then used heavy brown paper to keep the warp threads separated as it wound on.  When I am dressing the loom back to front I set the reed up horizontally and pull the warp thread through the appropriate heddle then directly through the next reed dent. Then it is a simple matter to mount the reed horizontally in the beater frame. I then tied on to the front apron rod and now just need to re-check tension before finalising the square knots and beginning to weave.

The goal is to weave the 5 towels needed, cut them off and finish, leaving two more on the loom to be woven as a demonstration at the Blue Ribbon Festival at the end of September.