Horrors...powdered wood!

I wove off the last part of the interleaved twill sample yesterday.  There was still about 6 inches of warp I *could* have crammed weft into, but at one point, while weaving at a good clip, I noticed a pile of tan powder that was quickly accumulating below the pulley associated with the right-hand treadle (the one that does the work to lift the shafts). 


I'd known for a while that due to the age of my beloved AVL (circa 1979-80ish), that there would be wear and tear, and if it turns out to be something that AVL can't sell me a replacement part for, it will not be difficult to turn a new pulley on my lathe.  Specifically, what is happening is that the cylindrical bore through the pulley has, over the years, become conical in diameter, mostly at the far end, which is the place on the pulley where most of the load of lifting the shafts falls, so it makes perfect sense that this is the kind of wear that would proceed.  Not too bad for being about 36 years old!  But I hadn't noticed the powder before...it seems to be breaking down quickly.  So I'm going to ask Ryan Utnehmer if they have a replacement one.  If not, or if its price is out of my reach, I'll have to turn a replacement on my lathe.  At least it's not a difficult part to make well...phew.


Saturday was great fun.  A friend and I had planned a Dyeing Day, but I had also wanted to try out her AVL loom, which is far newer than mine, and also with an additional 24 shafts.  ;-)  She kindly set me up to weave on it - it was fanTAStic - it'd be the perfect loom for me, with the e-lift, because if my knees get any worse it will become gradually more and more difficult to lift shafts under leg-power.  I managed to move along at a really good clip - not as fast as my friend can (she's the fastest and most deft handweaver I've ever met - she could probably outpace a fly-shuttle).  That was fun!!


Then we had lunch, at a very nice Thai place. 


My friend also lent me a number of books that anyone contemplating learning advancing twills and network drafting should learn from.  I spent about six hours yesterday, after weaving off the sample, studying the books.  Splendid.  I learned so much just by reading carefully and slowly.  A lot of this will entail warping the AVL with a sample warp and going through the exercises one-by-one, but this will also need to wait until I'm using a Compu-Dobby...as my friend said "You should live so long, to peg such a long dobby chain!"


In the meantime, though, my friend also gave me a number of books of which she has duplicates - one of them is a collection of drafts from Complex Weavers members, and one of them is one I've been wanting to do but whose draft I was not able to find anywhere until now.  I think that'll be my next project, and I'm going to start it out by weaving it in perle cotton first.  More on that later!