PLAYING ON A TABLE LOOM.

During a visit last week from all 21 of the North Tolsta School children I described the studio as my playroom. Unlike most artist studios it contains a very wide range of mediums of creation from shells, pebbles and drift wood to feathers, paint and tweed yarn. Although there is a constant stream of cars and camper vans on sunny days heading to our two local beaches visitors to the studio are few and far between, averaging perhaps five a week throughout the past month. Those interested in the creative arts and who do make the effort find themselves suitably rewarded judging by the compliments I receive. When the school minivan arrived to pick up the youngest group of children several asked to stay on so taken were they with my playroom.     

 My most recent toy has been my table loom on which I’ve been having considerable experimental fun over the past fortnight. Having spent a considerable time in selecting a graduation of rainbow colours to set out on the warping board I once again ran into serious difficulties when getting this onto the beam. There is no easy way of doing this single handed and I can see that in the future I would be better to ask a neighbour to crank the beam while I keep the tied on warp wool under tension. Again I had only a very rough idea of what length of warp I had managed to get onto the beam but at least the tedious operation of tying in had gone more smoothly this time. My aim was to weave the full range of rainbow colours within the warp and in each case to create a band of twill and basket weave separated by a narrow solid weave.

It soon became evident that the twill weave would effectively blank out the appearance of the rainbow. I was however delighted to discover that on the reverse side, all the colours remained more or less visible. After approximately 2m of weaving I wound on the warp to start a second scarf. This was to be a thicker two ply weave and literally anything goes as far as weft colour and combination of weaving pattern. The aim here was to experiment, play and discover to the point where I even ventured into double weaving one section leaving the ends open for a short distance then crossing the weft wools over to seal what would be a pocket within the scarf.

Once the scarf was removed it again proved to be much longer than I had expected which I suppose showed how much fun I had been having. Yesterday I popped in to see one of the Harris Tweed weavers in the village to collect some more unused bobbins and decided to be brave and show him what I’d been doing. I had prepared myself for a critical appraisal so was delighted when he was full of praise for the complexity of what I had achieved. My random sequence of weaving in these scarfs seems to be their charm but the shear riot of colours is the result of a much wider selection of modern colours within today’s tweed.