Let me take you back 4 months to a cold, but sunny Arizona afternoon / evening.

Mike and Glenda were visiting for the weekend and we were sitting around the Kitchen bar discussing the spinning wheels.  We were working on the 4th of the line, playing with planetary gear designs.  The subject came up about expanding the designs into looms (I think Mom, a.k.a. Glenda, brought it up as she loves to weave).

So Mike (a.k.a Dad) and I started talking about the design parameters.  What about weaving could we improve.  Our philosophy is, if we can’t make it better, why bother.  The we had a round table discussion (and we still ask anyone that will sit still long enough to talk to us) about the process.  The major issue we talked about was how long it took to warp the loom.  The different ways people warp looms, and what we could do to improve upon these.

The first issue that was discussed, was once the loom was warped, you were kind of stuck.  If you made a mistake, it could be very time consuming to fix it.  So we talked and came up with the idea of making the heddle changeable.  Actually being able to remove the heddle, and move it from one harness to another.  This lead us into talking about weaving and how static it really was, once the weaver set up the loom.  So this changeable heddle could actually expand the creativity of the weaver, as the patterns of the warp could be changed, mid project.  So we had a starting point.  Design a Heddle that we could quickly, simply, and efficiently change from one heddle to another.

Mike and I started drawing, and playing with concepts.  We actually got one to work.

So we are off and running.  What our blog as we will continue this series there.

Thanks
Kris