Christmas came in early!
When it comes to crafts, I’ve only ever been obsessed with knitting, but I have been trying to find another obsession to change things up here and there. I’ve tried sewing, crochet, and numerous other little handcrafts but none have brought me the joy I was looking for, until now.
My craft inspiration and obsession always comes from a need and want of things I actually want to use and wear. I love knitwear, hence I’m obsessed with knitting, and I also love clothing but I hate sewing. For years I’ve been wanting the viral (amongs fashion people in the cold climate) colourful Acne Studios scarfs, but have yet to bite the bullet because they are quite pricey, though I know well worth the coin for a notherner.
I started to toy with the idea of making one myself, and so I started to look into weaving and buying a loom. I did the classic Youtube research and watched hours and hours of videos to see what would be the most suitable option for me.
I didn’t want to buy a big ass floor loom at this time because I’m not interested in weaving carpets at this point, and that would also require lots of space. If I want to make little textiles like scarfs and kitchen towels, a smaller loom would make much more sense.
I started to search for table looms and found out new ones are definitely not cheap, usually ranging from 600€ all the way up to 1200€, quite discouraging. There also didn’t seem to be any available second hand. Yet I persisted and kept searching for weeks when I finally got lucky; a 4-shaft table loom for 180€! I immediately contacted the seller to tell her I wants it! It would pose a problem to get the loom to me since the seller lived about 600 kilometres away and posting would be difficult and pricey.
Luckily the seller was willing to reserve it for me while I figured it out. I called for mom and she not only was willing to go get it for me since she was a little bit closer, but also buy it for me as a Chrismas present! She’ll have first dibs on what ever kind of luxurious soft wool scarf I make!
Mom just delivered the loom to me and I was super excited to try it out. This loom is beautiful, in good condition and made by a traditional Finnish loom maker Toika. An absolutely steal for 180€ when it retails around 700€!
The previous owner had left a basic cotton warp on the loom, and a start of some ugly whatever playhouse carpet or something on it. I don’t mind since I could trial the loom without wasting some precious material.
I have weaved a little table cloth way back in the day, either at school or at grandmas, I’m not sure, so I do know the basic technique, but here the loom was luckily set up in a way that I can also try out the basic twill, tweed and stuff like that. Once I had used up what ever there was left on the shuttle, I dug to my storage for a fisherman’s twine to actually make something I don’t need to throw away when I’m done, even when it’s just for a rehearsal.
I weaved for a couple hours and I thoroughly enjoy it. I already know it’ll be my new obsession once I get to the good stuff.
Weaving is quite easy when someone else has already threaded the loom, but there are a few things I need to learn, like what to take into account to get a neat salvage edge. I think that’s something I’ll learn when I thread my first proper project on this after I use up the leftover warp already on the loom.
