Waiting.

Compu-Dobby is still with AVL.  In the meantime, I have been sitting on my hands! 


Though not entirely.  I went with a friend last weekend to visit someone in Albany and got to see a number of AVL and slightly pre-AVL looms that had  been made by Jim Ahrens.  Among the looms was a dobby-run drawloom, which I was interested in until I realized that it only had four ground harnesses, so weaving satin ground would not be possible on that.  Ah well.  Still, it was a real treat to meet such distinguished people and to see prototypes made by Ahrens himself. 


They also showed us a tiny swatch of leno-woven silk, about 75 epi, which has to be one of the most beautiful textiles I've ever seen. 


Among the other treasures was a warp beam still beamed with an unwoven cream-colored silk warp that Jim Ahrens had beamed on it.  A haunting moment!
If that wasn't fabulous enough, a friend who's just purchased a new bobbin winder gave me her old AVL bobbin winder.  She says "It looks like it's been through the wars!".  Not bad.  It works, though; and this is a great thing.  Although I had bought a Schacht hand-cranked bobbin winder, for a good chunk of money, the same thing that happened with the old one I had happened, which is that it is not really a stable design, and seems to have been made with weavers who only weave a few bobbins once in a while in mind.  The electric one has a sturdy sewing machine motor on it and is controlled by a pedal.  I have to accept the electrical advantage, too, because winding bobbins and pirns had become a huge pain in the neck to do by hand with that undersized, rotator-cuff-injuring crank.




The numbness in my right arm, down the ulna from the elbow to the pinky and ring finger, has abated slightly.  I've been trying to sleep with my arms at my sides, which is a very unusual sleeping position for me, but it actually seems to be helping a little bit.  I can still feel the tingly numbness, but the fingers aren't totally numb anymore and the right side of the ring finger, though still tingly, feels almost normal.  My handwriting is still wonky, and I couldn't play piano too well yesterday, but I'm feeling a bit hopeful!


And I am reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally really missing weaving. 

The Compu-Dobby, or rather, the Live Animal, on its way back to Chico for repairs!

So finally the Compu-Dobby II has been sent off to AVL for repairs!


I brought it to the post office.  Only $63 to send and insure (for replacement value).  There was another surcharge I noted on the receipt, which said 'Live Animals Enclosed'.  I brought the receipt back to the counter.  The clerk was at first confused and kept asking me what kind of animal it was...I explained again that there were no live animals in the box.   Either the clerk hit the selection for 'live animals enclosed' by mistake, or did it on purpose and hoped I wouldn't notice the extra charges, or they thought I said 'elephant' instead of 'component'.  Dunno.


Keeping my fingers crossed!

And on and on...

My Compu-Dobby is off to Chico tomorrow for repairs!  We did all the diagnostics we could here, replaced cables, replaced the keyspan adaptor, and ran other tests.  We established that the Compu-Dobby is functional (for instance, it weaves tabby perfectly when the tabby button is pressed) but it doesn't seem to talk to the computer.  My gut feeling is that it's the port on the Compu-Dobby component itself - since the computer can't find the loom, I suspect that the port is damaged.


Hopefully it won't be very expensive to do whatever repair it takes.  I am excited that this is moving forward!  Crossing my fingers.


Last weekend a few of us gathered at friend Tien's and assembled her new TC-2 loom, which had just arrived from its manufacturer in Norway.  It was a totally fun day, with the loom going together well, and cake and champagne afterwards!  And also fun because everyone there was either an engineer or a weaver (or both), so people were very good at figuring out how to get it all together AND we even had time to put a warp on it and get it threaded through about 2/3 of the heddles.  Tien was able to weave her first piece on the loom the next day, with a fabulous 'Hello World!' on it.


I'm thinking that once my Compu-Dobby returns from AVL in Chico, that I'll do a test warp of a few yards, 8 inches in width, of perle cotton, just to try out some of the extended repeat sequences I will be able to enact with the Compu-Dobby.  Excited!