Tuesday, September 17, 2013

My cherry wood Mighty Wolf

My loom came in!!! I was so freakin' excited that I was practically tap dancing in place when the gentleman called to let me know he was about an hour away with the delivery. I knew the loom was about 100 lbs, but I was not expecting the HUGE box it came in! (That's Vanya, my smallest Aussie pup in the pic and you can just barely see her sister Blyx's head.)



First thing was to take it out of that huge box since that sucker was NOT going to fit up the stairs. We had to move all of the living room furniture to make room for the box You can see my awesome hubby in this pic helping me and the front of my biggest Aussie, Isil. :)



Of course there are several things on the loom that need to be assembled and the majority of those were wrapped separately and taped under that upside down v shaped cardboard under the x frame. Once we got the cardboard box and cardboard frame taken off of the loom, it wasn't quite as bad when taking it upstairs to my craft room. I've got a spot right in front of the window for it that is perfect. It is only 18" deep when folded up and can be folded out of the way even with a warp on the loom. Open, it pretty much takes up the entire floor space in my craft room (which is only the size of a small bedroom anyway).



The loom has 8 shafts and comes with 1000 inserted eye heddles, 80 tie ups, the brake shaft handle, beater pegs, 2 apron cords, 3 apron bars, 2 lease sticks, a cherry mighty wolf trap and a cherry mighty wolf stroller. Most of that is pictured above.

 

I'd post a better picture of it freshly opened, but I didn't realize this one was so blurry when I used my camera phone. *shrug* You can see it pretty much takes up most of the floor and I have to be able to pull it away from the wall to get underneath the loom from both sides.

One of the things about this loom that makes it so special is that it is a limited edition and they only made between 35-50 of these cherry mighty wolfs, usually they are made out of maple. Here is the limited edition symbol (located on the front of the castle) for this year to commemorate Barry Schacht's 70th birthday.



First things first: tying on the apron bars.



Then came putting on 200 of the heddles and 20 of the tie ups. It was getting a bit late by this time, so I decided to just put a few of each on the loom to see the (almost) finished product. I also had my hubby help me find some screws to put together the little black nylon wolf trap that's hanging on the front beam and is holding my 3 new cherry wood shuttles in 9", 11", and 15". I was a bit surprised at the fact that all of the shuttles were open bottom and I had thought they were closed bottom. It turns out to be a great thing though as it makes them much lighter weight when handling them.



Here's another view of the wolf trap.



Here's the final view. It's folded up next to the wall and you can see how much space it saves. In this pic the cherry stroller has been added to the base of the loom's legs to allow me to roll it around once in the folded position. When the loom is open, the wheels are not touching the floor to make a solid flat base.



I am so thrilled about the color of the wood! I've always loved cherry floors, but knew this was going to look totally different - no stain and no age. Both of those age cherry to a nice and warm dark orange. This cherry is a clear light reddish-orange with hints of natural iridescence in the wood that is extremely hard to capture on my crappy little camera phone. I will love looking at this beautiful piece even when not using it, which was the point! I didn't want just another piece of furniture, but something I loved to look at and touch.

I have yet to get a warp put on it as I'm waiting to get the perle black 10/2 cotton cone that I ordered last week from here.. I want to use that and Madeline Tosh Vintage yarn in Spectrum for the weft. The warp is intentionally a smaller diameter yarn in order to make the weft stand out more. I'll post pictures when I get it started on the loom.