Saturday 17th April

Well, another week gone by and my Glimakra Julia loom arrived last Thursday.  I was expecting it to be in all natural wood but ended up with the lovely bright red sides which will no doubt brighten up my workroom.  On opening the boxes, my ten year old daughter Meggie and I set to with a will to get it up and running asap. 

These pictures show the opened boxes and various parts of the loom as they were sent prior to construction.

Note the feet were not included!

This is the beater cradle, the reed will go between the two thicker pieces of wood.

The instructions that were included with the loom kit were, I have to say rather limited.  They were basic diagrams but I have found one or two of the pieces would have been better added earlier rather than later.  I had assumed a dvd was to be included to show how the loom should be constructed and tied up but I was told by Glimakra that this is only usually distributed with looms in the US, however they have kindly said they will send me one and include it with the missing treadle spacers, that is the little wooden discs that are threaded onto the rod between the treadles.  One point to bear in mind here if you are considering buying one of these looms, do place the treadles onto the metal rod on piece A as per your instructions first before the whole loom frame is constructed as it is near impossible to do so afterwards, my fingers narrowly avoided being broken by a springing metal rod!

Sorry, just realised this shot is at an angle, but if you turn it sideways it shows the back of the loom, first side piece and the part A, the natural wood piece with the three metal rings and the treadle rod I mentioned above, this is when I think the treadles should be added.

A close up of this piece.

The loom constructed and on its side before being raised up, note the black metal rod is not needed in the eight shaft countermarch make up as I found out this morning when the jacks would not sit up against the beater cradle with it in place, I loosened off the loom to remove it but again this is not mentioned in the instructions so do be warned.

A close up of the inside of the loom before the cloth beams are added

The top of the loom, showing one of the beater cradles, there are several different positions here so that instead of advancing the warp you can move the beater back. 

The cloth beams are now in place and I have hung the beater here to show it in proportion to the front beam.

A shot of the loom before the shafts, jacks(shaft controllers) treadles and lamms are added.  All the tie up cords do come ready cut tos size and colour coded with different colour plastic ties which correspond to the tie up diagram.

The treadles and lamms are now added.  There are two sets of lamms, upper and lower and eight treadles, so I suppose in theory you could do a direct tie up, one treadle to one shaft if you wished.  I have to say that the tie up diagram for the horizontal countermarch was a little confusing.  I have not used a countermarch loom before and found a very good tie up diagram on the All Fiber arts website, link here

http://www.allfiberarts.com/ and then search for countermarche tie up, the one I used is type B tie up.

This is for the horizontal countermarche tie up and they give an alternative for another style of countermarche

loom.

A close up of the first warp to go on the loom, a 92 inch warp in tencel and rayon hand dyed by Yarntopia Treasures from Etsy.  Wonderful colours, also has a website http://www.yarnstopiatreasures.com/

This will be for a scarf on a four shaft threading with a small diamond pattern, the weft is hand dyed laceweight baby alpaca and silk in a light green colour.  The photo doesnt show the colours of the warp yarn too clearly but they are in shades of jade.

Pictures to follow when the loom is warped and ready to go.

For now happy weaving!!