Decision time again with my countermarche tie up.

I don’t really want to have crawl under my 144 treadle ties to get this loom going for new patterns. I want to be able to control them at a higher level, preferably on top of the lamms.

I tried these instructions first which offer a good overview of the traditional tie up.

But there are two further  interesting ways of doing the tie up. This one involves slipping the cords, coloured with a black bead (upper lamm to lower shafts) or white bead (lower lamm to raise shafts) according to the draft which nicely manages the tieup without crawling under the loom. To secure the cords to the treadles a knitting needle is used.  A very creative method.

The other attractive method here uses permanently connected treadle cords long enough to reach beyond the upper lamms. So any cord in the treadles can be connected to an upper or lower lamm at will, according to the draft, without the crawling.  I think this is the method I’m going for first. Mainly because the first method leaves me with a few positioning questions and I don’t want to ‘risk’ any texsolv cord waste!

The first method requires all the lamms to be parallel to the floor. The second method requires the lamms to be parallel to each other but raised at an angle about 2″ higher than at the pivot point. Confused?? I think it’s about gravity and footpower dynamics.