THE SILKY WEAVE

Or do they? Enter paper clip.
When I was weaving in the class, I didn’t pay attention to what my loom was doing beyond pattern and selvages. I was still in the information overload mode, a normal part of the learning.
When I got my own loom, gradually I started to notice how shafts are raised (uneven, so I re-tied the knots on ropes connecting threadles and shafts), how shaft arms squeaked more and more (bought oil lubricant and oiled all the moving loom parts until squeaking was gone), how beater wobbled (just tightened the wing nuts around the reed stick). And I also started noticing how free heddles tend to move to the threaded heddles, closer and closer with each beat, until they began to chafe the selvage threads. Solution: paper clips on each side of each shaft to keep the unused heddles in place.