We live in a little house, so while the LeClerc Dorothy table loom isn’t that big it takes up quite a bit of what small space we have. I don’t know about you but I’ve organized all my craft supplies to within an inch of their lives getting them into this small space so the other human and cat can still have a fairly pleasant existence, and there’s no room for a table loom to be put all the time. I made a book for it in the basement which worked well, but I also made the loom less portable recently…
The first time I wound a warp on the loom I thought “meh I don’t need to add those pieces of paper or roll of paper in the warp”… FALSE. It keeps the warp tension nice and even and is necessary, as I learned working on my unevenly taught warp last time. That being said I didn’t have anything on hand I could easily use for strips, so I used a roll of packing paper. I didn’t measure the warp carefully, so I’m not sure that the length is typical of what I’ll be doing on the Dorothy in the future. So as not to cut the paper too short I left it on so I could roll it back up again while I worked. This might seem random but 1) it prevents me from having to fuss with the unrolling paper bunching up under the loom as I weave, and 2) it means I can use the paper again next time when I measure the warp more carefully. I’m trying to cut down on waste whenever I can, so this was one way to do that.
Speaking of living in a small house, though, the place is currently a mess 97% because I let my art supplies get out of order, and 3% because of Christmas prep. I needed some free floor space just to have a sorting zone to tidy, I won’t have time for weaving for the next few days, and I just need to clear some space of noisy clutter to give all three of the mammals in this place a chill environment! So popping the loom into its nook downstairs was an obvious choice but, with this roll of paper dangling off it, moving it downstairs would be a really awkward if not hazardous endeavour. So…
I tied a piece of the yarn from that failed warp adventure from October to the end of this really long cooking chopstick I have, threaded it through the paper roll, and tied it to the loom. Not only does this make the loom easily portable again, it will also make winding the paper back on as I weave even easier, and I wager, when it comes time to warp the loom again it’ll make that easier too. Pretty cool the difference one little piece of string can make!