Your new loom has arrived!! It's all very exciting with the possibilities of weaving your own cloth but can also feel a little overwhelming. Where do you start? Let's take a quick look into the yarn you could use
If you buy a Kromski Harp Forte loom you will have an 8dpi heddle included with your loom. What does that even mean? What yarns can you use with that heddle?
On shaft looms you there are two separate parts, heddles and reeds. The heddles are used to separate the warp threads and the reed is used to beat the weft into place
On a rigid heddle loom, the heddle does both of those jobs, the warp threads go through the slots of the heddles but you also beat your weft into position. For that reason, on a rigid heddle, sometimes you will see it referred to as a heddle or a reed but for our purposes here will will be calling it a heddle
The an abbreviation dpi stands for dents per inch and refers to how many slots and holes are in an inch of your heddle. Different heddles have different dpi, on Kromski looms there are 5, 8, 10 and 12 dpi to choose from and also a variedent reed which has all of these options so you can mix and match the yarns you use.
At the moment, we're talking about the heddle you have when your new loom arrives which in the case of a Kromski Harp Forte loom is an 8dpi. For Ashford looms that will be a 7.5. If you're coming to weaving from knitting then the short answer is a dk weight. If you're using this yarn for warp, remember that it will be under tension for a while and also have the abrasion of the heddle moving back and forth so it needs to be quite a strong yarn. To check it's strong enough, give it the tug test. Take a piece of yarn, make sure it's at least an arms length and give it a firm tug. If it withstands the tug then it's usually ok to use as warp
The way that weavers check which heddle is suitable for which yarn (for instance, say I've spun some yarn and forgotten about it - how do I know what gauge it is?) is by using a method called wraps per inch or wpi . Take a ruler and wrap a length of yarn around an inch worth of ruler. You then half this amount and that is the heddle size you would use. So if my yarn wraps around 12, 14 or 15 times you that would suit an 8dpi heddle as that's nearest to half those numbers
The yarn I normally use on workshops is sock yarn that I dye myself. This yarn is 19wpi and so I usually use my 10dpi heddle, that being the nearest to half. If you didn't have a 10dpi heddle but you have a stash of sock yarn - (you yarn festival fiend!!) then you can double up on your 8dpi heddle with two threads in each slot and hole. Saving you from having to buy another heddle
This is a rough guide and as always there is plenty more to learn but if you're itching to get weaving from your stash, this will get you started
