Four shaft bliss

I’ve just swapped one of my Saori looms over to a 4 shaft with the Saori conversion kit. How easy is it – 15 minutes and it was a new loom!

To be honest I was a bit concerned about the rigour of threading it as it isn’t recommended to take the four shafts off the loom to thread as I do with the 2 shaft. I imagined contortionist acts like I do on my large loom.  But it was a day of bliss threading up with a stunning  fine linen set at 30epi (12 epc).

The winding went well despite my always jumbled calculations. Then over to the loom and I placed the beater horizontally on the loom with the front facing upwards. Using the cross box, which loops around the beater to secure it, I entered each thread in its crossed order through the reed. Now for the threading??

Like a dream threads’ fell’ into place in their appropriate heddles. This is warping from front to back and the warp wound on the back beam easily. I usually warp from back to front so it was a new and pleasing experience for me.

Apparently I’m not one to design an easy ride and I made this first warp for the loom as tricky as I could.  I used a very simple pattern which allowed my handdyed Japanese paper yarn to float on the surface then mix with the weave. So the paper warp had to be threaded and weighted separately. As a supplementary warp.  But that went well too. I’ve done alot of them so knew the routine.  However the clipping rod wasn’t suitable for this first tie up at the front and I tied the Japanese paper yarn to a separate dowel and lashed it to the clipping rod which provided the linen tie up.