Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Meet Grace

Let me introduce you to Grace, my 32" 4 harness Gilmore. I don't usually name my tools, but I found her at a college that was selling off all of their looms. At the time I had just one loom since my studio is rather small. Grace was so compact and perfect for weaving scarves. I noticed a small metal plaque at the base of harness mount: GIVEN IN MEMORY OF GRACE HOSSACK WEAVER. After some research, I discovered Grace had been Anita Mayer's mentor years ago. I am blessed to have a loom of spirit come to live with me. To make it even more wonderful, the loom came with reeds: 6, 8, 10, 12, 14,15, and 16. I had never seen a 14 or a 16 before. Interestingly enough, for my first 20 years of weaving I only had a 12 dent reed. I guess if a person only has one reed, a 12 would be the one.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

You know it's odd, I've only ever had a 12 dent reed. I'm not adverse to buying another reed, but a 12 dent can do just about any sett I've wanted. Of course being lazy, I think I just gear my projects toward working with some multiple of 12.

The color photos of the horoscope weavings are beautiful.

Bonnie said...

I agree. A 12 dent reed is all a person really needs. The one exception is working with chenille. I think an 8 dent reed is better for chenille, but then again chenille is so 20th century. Bamboo is definitely a 12 dent reed fiber.

Dorothy said...

I loved seeing your looms here, and your thoughts on reads are very interesting, I got a 4 dent and a 12 with my loom, and have been wondering what other reads I might find useful. I just ordered 8 and 10, but feel very reassured that my 12 is going to be so useful :)

Bonnie said...

Thanks Dorothy,
I believe an 8 dent reed is very useful, and I find I am using my 10 dent reed quite a bit now that I have been weaving with 5/2 cotton and Bambu7. Both as sett as 20 epi. I don't know if you will see this comment, but this is the only way I can reply. Your comment was forwarded to my email as a "no reply" comment, so I couldn't just email you back.I know there is a way to change that at your end, but I am not certain how to do it. If you want to set up communication with me, you should find out how to change this.