A Cricket (Loom) by the Hearth

Some of the best memories of Christmas are about playing with all the new toys. Naturally, I had to play with my new toy, my Schacht Cricket Loom. Day after Christmas I ran through all the instructions to warp the loom, then ran through them again to do it right, then sat down to weave the striped scarf, which is the project in the accompanying booklet that goes with the yarn provided.

The weaving goes surprisingly fast, especially working a narrow width in worsted-weight yarn.

Much faster than knitting a similar-sized object, as weavers probably all know already. By the end of the day I had this:

Okay, so the selvages are a little wobbly and there are some mistakes here and there, but it's my first loom-woven project!

The Cricket, being a rigid heddle loom with only one heddle and a 10" width, is pretty limited in what it will do. Nevertheless, I plan to push those limits and see what all I can make it do before I run out and buy something larger and more complex. I see there's a lot of vocabulary to learn as well.

Seeing how quickly I wove my project, my son decided to give it a go. As a starving student, he doesn't have a lot to spend on presents, and he wanted something nice to give to his girlfriend. I don't have much worsted weight yarn, but we did some stash diving and came up with enough Lion Brand Organic Cotton to make a scarf.

I helped James warp the loom and he set to:

And a few hours later, he had a scarf made, too.

"Do you like it? I made it myself!"