More tales from the Loom Room

Have you ever been faced with a task that looked impossible? Like dismantling a giant loom? Well by now most of you know that that is just what happened to TLM (the loom monkey) and me this weekend. In the corner of someone’s spare bedroom lurked this piece of carpentry and engineering, much of it covered with sheets of antique brown paper and the rest of it sporting a substantial coating of dust that would have made Quentin Crisp proud.

 

It was a gargantuan task trying to decide which part to tackle first, because, as is the nature of the beast, every part is interconnected. I was the brave one. I stood with my feet firmly planted on the floor and said in my most heroic voice, “I think we will have to cut the warp off.” My goodness I sounded as though I might actually know what I was talking about. This skill was honed in a period when I had to field rather a lot of calls from IT salesman and I learnt that if you learn a paragraph of jargon almost parrot-fashion and regurgitate it at the right moment then you can call their bluff and they crumble at your feet as they actually think you know what you are talking about.

 

The seller’s son went off to fetch a pair of scissors and then the cutting began. Out came the roll of masking tape and everything dangling from both warp and cloth beam (see what I mean about the jargon) was bound to within an inch of its life.

 

The next day, when we were reassembling the loom, I made another royal decree, “I think we should undo everything on the warp and cloth beams. Perhaps I should have used my best Captain Picard voice and said, “make it so”. We chopped away again and

 

Abracadabra bimbambazoo

instead of just a few inches of weaving we found…..

 

it must be my lucky week.

…… or not ….

just had a  frantic email from son of loom’s previous owner… please can we return rug that was on loom! I can’t say I am surprised.