Arthur A. Allen Folding Loom Historical Documents

         I am SO excited.  I sold the loom to a good friend and hand-spinner, so I know it will be well loved.  That is not really why I am SO excited though.  I am SO excited because the good friend and hand-spinner from whom I bought the loom originally is moving to Portland.  That part is sad, but leads to the exciting moment of her finding the paper-work about the Arthur A. Allen Folding Loom which she had promised to give me when she sold me the loom originally.

          It is funny as well as exciting because there seems to be a  history of delaying the forwarding of these documents--she handed them to me in an envelope addressed to her from the then previous owner with a note that says:

     I will have to include a similar note to the new owner! But FIRST I am going to scan and document these things, because when I searched the inter-webs I found nada/zilch/nuffin about these looms except for other people asking for information about them.  

    I think THIS note was from the previous, previous (previous) owner.  Susan Lilly still has a website, at weavingroom.com which I am going to go check out a little more closely very soon to read about her garment construction books, but back to the note:

       I visited the Historic Looms of America Website just now. While they do have much worthwhile information about historic looms, they do not have any information on the Arthur A. Allen Loom posted. I imagine it is just too small a company to have been prioritized as of yet. Hence, I am going to attempt to scan it for you.* I will do it page by page, as I think it will be too small to see in its adorable original 7" x 11" folded into thirds size.  

 

 

 

It really just explains how to warp it.  The rest is up to you. Hurrah!  Golly gee, it never occurred to me to fold it to make reaching the heddles easier while warping.

I have been saving the best for last.  Well, actually I am saving the best until I can go to the library tomorrow and see if I can find this on microfilm to get a complete copy.  This article appears to have appeared in the Sunday Oregonian Magazine in August 1944.  The last bit is missing front this copy, and it is pretty poorly reproduced here, so let's cross our fingers and just check out this teaser:

Hurrah, indeed! 

Hmm just found this link to Popular mechanics as well. Now, there's a rabbit hole....

*No copyright infringement at all is intended.  I suspect I am in the clear, as this is pretty old, and I am surely not making any money from this, but thought I should mention that.

There's No Place Like Home

That was a very pleasant vacation seeing some new towns like Bloomington,

and Indianapolis;

knitting--and finishing-- my Knit-1-Below leg warmers in the rental car on the way through Ohio;

being taken care of by my folks for two weeks back at the cottage on Lake Erie;  

eating the original Buffalo wings at the Anchor Bar;

and hanging out in good old Wash, PA.

 I say "good old," but, dang it has really grown with all this natural gas drilling and fracking going on.  I almost fell out of the car driving around -- there are OUTLET STORES for goodness sakes.  There were people from OTHER COUNTRIES in the AT&T store. Seriously astounding.

Anyhow, we made it back only an hour late on United. The trip out on American was perfect. And the staff was friendly (and existent). I'm so glad American is flying into Eugene now.  We are definitely going to continue to try to avoid United. 

Anyhow, anyhow, we got back and the next day I went to Eugene Textile Center to get a cone of black 10/2 Pearl cotton to go with my other Lunatic Fringe yarns which I had left from my Fiber In the Forest doubleweave class with Madelyn VanDerHooght last spring. Now, that was a totally awesome class, and I learned a ton and a half, but it was seriously a bit over my head. I was so excited about weaving after that though that I was acting like a crazy chicken. I knew I needed to do something a little more basic, but what? Did I want to try to do handspun? Did I want to try some more basic dish towels? Wool or cotton? Did I want to do different threadings? So many options! Of course the result was, I didn't do anything until now.

While I was toiling back along the rails to trails bike path from Ridgeway to my folks' cottage on Silver Bay on a cranky old bike one chilly day on vacation I kept my mind off the sore parts by planning out my next project.  Doing multiplication while riding is recommended only on easy trails!  I finally decided to use the beautiful Lunatic Fringe Cotton for some multicolored dish towels where I could try different treadlings on one tie up. I used our delay "due to weather" in bright and sunny SanFrancisco, to type up my plan on my iPad.  My mental math was right, I was pleased to find. 

I grabbed my tiny warping board, which I have taken apart, and screwed it to the fence with the sides a yard apart to make it bigger.  Now this worked great the first time I did it, last spring for FITF,  

but this time the screws (which I had not too intelligently put back in the same holes in the fence) started stripping out on the right side so that edge started leaning in and the threads kept sliding off the pegs which are a little shorter than I would like anyhow since it is only a small warping board. I just kept powering through because I didn't know what else to do.  Of course the last half of the warp ended up being about 8" shorter than the first half.  If I hadn't been in a panic (did I mention I was outside and it was getting dark and I had to go to my piano class?)

 I might have realized I could just stop that warp and start a second one for the rest.  I know that's what "people" do for big warps, but "I" have never done that in my vast warping experience (I think this is warp #5).  It turns out I could even have done the colors separately.  So much to learn.  I had "heard" all of this, but it's not until you really experience something that it thoroughly sinks in.  Next time I will think in smaller warp chunks (392 ends was probably a bit much for my short pegs even if they hadn't started to come out of the wall) and be sure my warping board is really secure. Oh, yeah, and don't start later than 12:30 pm.  

It was hard to chain t off the board because of the sliding issue, but I managed it.  Whew. 

I suppose 8" of loom waste is a very small price to pay for the education.  

The saga continues in the next installment!

Fiber Financed My Fair Foray

In Washington, PA, my hometown, and seat of the county government we had an awesome County Fair.  There were so many animals and exhibits it easily took all day to see everything. I don't know if it's still awesome as it was in the 1970s an 1980s, but The Lane County Fair seems shockingly small to me given the square miles of Washington county are 861 and Lane County comes in at 4,722.

Anyhow, I decided to do my bit for the exhibits and entered 10 things in the textiles show.

We had fun treasure hunting for my 10 items.  I just had to fix the collar on this one though!

Hey, lady, read the sign!

In Wash., PA, you got a free day pass for entering--here you still have to pay your 9 bucks to get in. So I was very excited to see all the ribbons I won.

My cash prizes added up to $33, which was exactly enough to pay my and my friend Dominique's way in, buy a funnel cake, and ride the ferris wheel!

We could hear Pat Benatar playing her show from the ferris wheel.  That was pretty cool for us girls of the 80's.

Crooked Seamed Scottish Bear didn't win anything, but she did enjoy watching the world go by from the safety of her glass case.  She was, however, a little concerned with the psychiatric health of the purple crocheted snowman given the heat that week.

I received 3 First Place,  2 Second, 2 Third, an honorable mention and a Donor Award.  

There's no band night, or demolition derby, or truck pulls or anything at the Lane County Fair, but it's better than nothing, and a pretty good deal for just doing my bit!  If you are reading this from Lane County, enter some things next year to bulk up the exhibits.

Just be sure your entries are not a nice as mine!

Fiber Dreamland--Picture Heavy Post!

Another highlight of my summer was our local spinning group's (The Ewes) annual summer retreat with the incredible Judith MacKenzie McCuin. We hire her to come be our teacher for a very small retreat of her and 11 students.  We spent 4 nights at the idyllic Siltcoos Station, which is owned by Lane Community College and which you can rent for educational purposes.
Siltcoos is a big lake (complete with a Lake Monster named Silly--though some think it's Nessie come halfway around the world through secretive means)

We each cooked only a meal or two which left plenty of time for fiber exploration.
Our theme this year was "Yarn Design." Judith helped each of us with individual questions, and in her amazing way taught us so much without it ever feeling like a "class." 

We learned about different plying techniques, techniques for spinning different types of fiber, matching commercial or previously spun yarns, sampling to get the yarn you want instead of the one you make by default, and a lot about dying with Judith's pretty much non-toxic Mother MacKenzie's Miracle Dyes.
She was so much fun to work with! She sprinkles in all kinds of stories, tales and historical/anthropological information as she teaches. Nothing seems to phase her. I can do things with her nearby that seem impossible on my own (though I know theoretically that they're not since I DID manage them at least once). "Be calm," she says if things go awry, because she always can find a way out of the trouble. This was my first time being able to attend (note the 11 person limit) and I now see why so many Ewes plan their summers around this event!

 

One of the neatest things we did was learn about the renaissance of sericulture (silk production) in Kenya. One of the Ewes, Gwen (that's not her), has been making long visits to Kenya for many years now, and she brought back pictures of the sericulture revival as well as a whole bunch of "seconds" cocoons. 

We cut the silk worms (who were done in through non-toxic baking in big clay ovens) out of cocoons and de-gummed them (the cocoons that is--I took the crunchy worms to my friends' chickens later that week) in a bath of hot water and baking soda. At first the smell was a bit nasty, but after awhile it kind of grew on me.  A few we spread out as an experimental silk hankie. 

The rest we dyed with Judith's dyes 

and learned how to spin straight from the cocoons on our wheels.

It makes thread-like "yarn," and I doubt I will ever have the patience to spin enough to actually make a useful item from them, but it certainly is beautiful. 

I think mine (which I wrapped around a nostepinde and is only about an inch tall but must have at least 25  yards of "yarn")

 looks like a hummingbird nest.

My other favorite activity was using the enormous electric carders which Judith's husband Nick makes.
They are about two feet wide and have motors

 strong enough to run an outboard boat engine. I joked to one of the Ewes, Renee, whose husband loves to fish, that they could run their boat with her carder so they would both have something they loved to do out on the water!  

As the carders are so sturdy and big, they are pretty durned expensive, but I got so much fleece carded that I don't think I'll need to card for quite awhile longer.

Hempsy-Woolsy and Rugby-Bear both accompanied me to the retreat and had a lovely time. We saw bear scat in the driveway, but luckily they were the only bears we met in "person."  They're still napping a lot to recover from all the excitement.

So, if you want me to come visit you next summer, it had better not be in the second half of July, because I'll be planning my summers differently now myself! 

Be calm.

I Forgot the Fiber!

I was so excited about blogging and traveling, I forgot this very important part! The museum in Victoria is super (get your ticket early in the day and keep going back--they're open until 10--and it includes an historic house and a repro longhouse, but we didn't know about the all day thing so we didn't save enough time. Next time!) There is a very well done display about First nations peoples which contrasts the coastal people to the inland people. Unfortunately I'm not sure who the spinning/weaving was about, but it is cool.

They use big bottom whorl spindles and spin on their legs, much like the Navajo. The B.C. people (there are SO many tribes and sub tribes I can't say exactly who did what where--sorry) seem to spin Chubby Singles! they have this cool roving holder (see the left side of the display). This one was carved as a bird. I love how they had/have such reverence for everything. They use the natural colors for designs. Their looms had a top and bottom branch which the warp wraps all around and is tied together onto a horizontal string which is then removed to get the piece off the loom.



In town I saw some lovely handspun/handknit sweaters for sale. Many of the tags were signed by the makers. The names seemed to be all women. The sweaters were selling from between only $150-$225 (C.D.). I think I should buy one next time. We were in a hurry for some reason (oh, right, we were going to meet Jim Ham--a master bass maker and show him Seth's newest bass and talk about the whole bass making business). Notice the chunky yarn. I really like the animal motifs-- I think these are orcas and eagles.

Most of the sweaters were zip front cardi's (with guaranteed zippers), but there was this one cool poncho tunic thing that I really liked. They also had big fat mittens, hats and ginormous socks, but I didn't get any photos of those.




Speaking of fiber, Port Townsend has 2 little knit shops, both of which even have a (very) little spinning fiber. Bought me a nice Della Q silk drawstring top baggie for 50% off at The Twisted Ewe and some threads for kumihimo at Diva Yarn & Trim. Now off for more shopping/sightseeing! It is really a lovely little old town!