{"id":7343,"date":"2024-11-17T16:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-18T00:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/?p=7343"},"modified":"2024-11-17T17:15:41","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T01:15:41","slug":"a-simple-hack-to-make-counting-heddles-quick-and-painless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/a-simple-hack-to-make-counting-heddles-quick-and-painless\/","title":{"rendered":"A simple hack to make counting heddles quick and painless"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s nothing worse than running out of heddles while you\u2019re threading. Fortunately, it\u2019s an easy problem to avoid if you count your heddles before you start threading<\/em>. Counting heddles takes time and effort, though, and I\u2019m usually impatient to start threading. I used to be tempted to \u201csave time\u201d by skipping this very important step \u2013 and occasionally paid the price when I did!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution for me was to add markers that make it VERY quick and painless to count my heddles. Now it only takes a few seconds to do the thing that\u2019ll save me grief later, so I\u2019m not nearly as tempted to take the risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some weavers like to color or mark the heddles themselves, but I\u2019ve never liked that solution. If you move heddles around, you have to be careful to put the marked heddles in certain places. Marked heddles mean something specific, so you can\u2019t just put them wherever you want. If you make a mistake in counting and marking, you\u2019ve got to move heddles around to fix it since the heddles themselves are the problem. If you add a bunch of heddles, you\u2019ve got to either dig up some previously marked but currently unused heddles, or mark more. Plus marking the heddles isn\u2019t reversible and I always like having the option to undo anything I try if I don\u2019t like how it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of marking the heddles themselves, I used a different solution on my loom: I added markers between<\/em> the heddles. I like to count by 10s, so I put a marker after each group of 10 heddles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what my markers look like on the loom:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Weaving<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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They slide right along with the heddles and make it very fast and easy to count. If I ever have to take heddles off or move them between shafts, it\u2019s easy to move the markers, too. If I ever notice one\u2019s in the wrong spot, I just cut it out and add a new one in the right spot – easy peasy, and no harm done to any of the heddles themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making the markers for the heddles<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You might be able to tell from the picture above that my markers are nothing but paper clips I snipped the ends off of with wire cutters. If you\u2019re making your own, be sure to use paper clips that are long enough to slide freely but not so long that they catch on neighboring shafts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s an undoctored paperclip on the left, and another on the right that\u2019s been snipped:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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You can see that I cut out the inner loop entirely, and also trimmed the overlap in the outer loop a bit to make it easier to snap onto the heddle bar. Here\u2019s a picture that shows how much I cut off in each spot:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cutting<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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When they\u2019re trimmed like this, it\u2019s easy to snap the markers into place even when the shafts are on the loom. It\u2019s not as easy to take them off again, but they\u2019re paper clips<\/em> \u2013 you can just cut them off with wire cutters and make new ones. (Of course, if the heddle bars aren\u2019t actually in the shafts, you can slide the markers off the ends along with the heddles.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only downside to these paper clip markers is that they occasionally get themselves hooked over the tops of my flat steel heddles, which hooks two or three heddles together temporarily. It just takes a second to flick the marker back over the tops again and unbunch things, though, so that hasn\u2019t been a deal breaker for me. This should only be an issue for flat steel heddles, anyway \u2013 inserted eye or wire heddles don\u2019t stick up above the heddle bar, so the marker doesn\u2019t have anything extra to catch on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve had these markers on my loom for a few years now and they make me happy every time I sit down to thread!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Janet\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This handy tip came out of our Live at the Loom series, see the full recording of Janet threading her loom here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Want to learn more about how Janet makes warping easier? Read about her #1 hack for making warping faster and easier.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Join the Academy to gain access to more in-depth content<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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From the Community:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Undaily Namedrafts<\/a> thread in the Let’s Talk Weaving<\/em><\/a> forum<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The Live at the Loom<\/a> thread in the Let’s Talk Weaving<\/em><\/a> forum<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janet explains how to use paper clips as an ingenius aid to count metal heddles accurately and efficiently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7344,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shaft-loom","category-weaving-technique"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7343"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7354,"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343\/revisions\/7354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handweavingacademy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}