So one of the things I got my hands on last year was a tapestry loom, from Schacht. It’s currently sitting assembled in my office, and I am hoping to warp it this afternoon. Right after I can find te wool I want to use as weft; I have some really nice embroidery wool samples that I want to play with.
But meanwhile I had been thinking and thinking about the continuous warp. The warping instructions from Schacht are available at Tapestry Loom Manual but I was struggling to make sense of how the warp was advanced (since it’s a continuous loop). But a bit more digging found me this excellent article https://www.afieldguidetoneedlework.com/blog/long-warp-short-loom which provided the A-HA moment I needed. The key point is that after the warping is complete, the warping bar is essentially free floating because it’s held in place by the tension of the warp.
So hopefully I can warp the loom up this afternoon, and then I want to try knitting heddles as described by Laverne Waddington in her tutorial at https://backstrapweaving.wordpress.com/tutorials/tutorial-continuous-string-heddles/. It’s also possible to make fixed length reusable heddles, as in inkle weaving, but … we’re experimenting.