Weaving on the Cricket Quartet

In my previous posts, I shared the unboxing and setup of the Cricket Quartet. Now I'm finally weaving on it, and I have a few thoughts to share!

​Overall, I am very pleased with how the Quartet works. It's a small and compact table loom, which was exactly what I needed. Even though you can see it shakes in the stand while I'm weaving, it's sturdier than expected and holds tension well. The swinging beater took some getting used to, but has a big benefit: it gives you more room to weave. This is super important given how compact the loom is. The shed size is also impressive for such a small loom - it's big enough to use a slim boat shuttle. ​

For all the nitty gritty details, be sure to watch the YouTube videos - there's one full video of me explaining everything, plus a series of short clips that give close-ups and process shots.  Everything is collected into a playlist here. Or, read on!

The Levers

The point of levers on a table loom is to lift the shafts. On the Cricket Quartet, these are spaced in the center on the top of the loom. Since I learned to weave on one of the "old school" Schacht table looms, this is familiar and comfortable for me.

​When I first started weaving on it, though, the levers were really squeaky. It was LOUD. Somewhere along the line, I remembered that Tom Knisely recommended a tiny squirt of silicone oil on squeaky loom parts. (This was probably in the Loom Owner's Companion, which is well worth a watch!) This worked like a charm. 

One thing I found a tiny bit challenging was the spacing on the levers. For my hands, which are on the small side, grabbing lever 1 and 4 at the same time is a bit of a reach. I'd love it if they were just a tiny bit closer together! I do realize this comes down to a lot of manufacturing choices/parts availability. Plus, it's personal preference - if you have larger hands, they might be spaced just right for you!

The Secret Shelf!

One of my favorite little parts of this loom is what I like to call the Secret Shelf. It's just under the levers, and contains several pulleys to align the shafts to the correct levers. It's the perfect size for storing my stick shuttle whenever I need to put it down.

Hot tip: don't store scissors or anything sharp there! You don't want them to fall while you're working or cut your warp - or worse, cut you!

The Heddles

The heddles are Texsolv, which have two big benefits: 
1. They're quiet.
2. They're lightweight.

I cannot overstate the importance of quiet heddles on a table loom. Other table looms that use metal heddles are somehow much louder than even a floor loom with metal heddles. In my search for a good table loom, noise was a big factor, and was one of the things that made me choose the Quartet.

The biggest drawback of Texsolv heddles is the price. Right now a bundle of  100 Texsolv heddles retails for about $25, while a bundle of 100 metal heddles retails for about $17. 

I also find that sometimes Texsolv heddles grip the shafts more than I want them to, and can be difficult to move around. However, metal heddles can start to have similar problems, especially on older looms when the shaft bars start to warp. So that's probably a wash!

As I note in the video, the way the shafts are connected to the levers makes it extremely important to count out your heddles BEFORE you start you project. You can always tie a repair heddle later, but it's time consuming and not always as accurate. 

Working with a Brand-New Reed

The reed comes brand-new. I have to admit, this is a new experience for me, since I've always had used looms, and therefore used reeds!

A new reed comes with a little bit of oil on it left over from the manufacturing process. The instructions say to wipe it off with a soft cloth, or to add a few inches to your first project. I did the first, but found slight discoloration on the loom in the area where my first project has been. This tells me that the warp did a better job of removing the oils than my soft cloth did. 

What I'd recommend is to wind a short sample warp in the full 13.5". Not only will this help you clean off the reed, but it will also help you to get acquainted with the loom!

The Reed & Reed Hooks

This is a very compact loom, and when we get down to the reed, it becomes even more evident. 

When I warped the Quartet for the first time, I used the reed hook that came with the Cricket, thinking that's what someone would have & want to use. 

I quickly abandoned that reed hook for a different one though - the tight space between the reeds and the shafts made the rigid heddle hook uncomfortable to use. 

This led me off on a tangent of the qualities of all my reed hooks! They're not that expensive, as accessories go, and it's worth it to have a good reed hook on hand to match both your mood and your loom!

The Reed & Weaving Width

The Cricket Quartet actually loses 1.5" of weaving width. It's designed to work with the 15" Cricket, but the shafts take up some space on the inside of the original Cricket frame. That makes your weaving width 13.5". This came as a surprise to me. I did find it mentioned in one marketing video, and a few retailers mention it. But it seems like Schacht wants to downplay that detail. In fact, in several of their marketing images I've seen lately, the loom is shot from a low angle to make it look even bigger.  This sort of thing drives me crazy. I know they need to sell product, but it feels like it borders a bit on false advertising. If I'd ordered it based on pictures alone, I think I might have been disappointed when I realized the size was much smaller than I thought it was.

There's still plenty you can do with 13.5" of weaving space, and it doesn't really impact the usability of the loom for me. Really, I bought it so I could weave even tinier things - as small as half an inch! And, as I explore in one of the short clips, you probably shouldn't have been weaving the full 15" on the Cricket anyways!

The Reed and Shed Size

The reed is a lot shorter than many of my other reeds. This has to do with the hanging swinging beater. 

The advantage of the swinging beater is that it gives you more space to weave, while still keeping the loom compact. The disadvantage of it is that it has to fit within the vertical space of the existing loom.

If  you choose to order extra reeds, you need to make sure that you're ordering exactly the right size - otherwise it won't fit into your beater. Note that having extra reeds is less of an issue with a table loom than it is with a rigid heddle loom. On a rigid heddle loom, you're more constrained by the size of a reed because it acts as a reed and heddles. But with a table loom, you can thread multiple ends per dent without affecting your threading pattern. I chose a 10-dent reed because the math is easy on 10!

The next question people always ask is, "how big is your shed?" As I show in the video, it's a pretty good shed for such a small loom. The extended back beam on the Quartet helps with this.​

The Reed & Warping

One of my big complaints about rigid heddle looms in general is that the warping process is less precise. It's quicker, sure, but I always had problems with the heddle moving back and forth as I wound the warp onto the back beam. Left unchecked, this could result in uneven tension during warping. 

The way the reed sits inside the beater solves this problem - there's very little side-to-side play when warping front-to-back. In fact, I might even say that it's more stable than a couple of my floor looms!

The Swinging Beater

A huge benefit of the swinging beater is that it gives you more weaving space, while still maintaining the compact nature of the loom. 

The swinging beater was my biggest learning curve on the Cricket Quartet. I've used one before, but on a loom that was already set up. Making sure the beater was adjusted so it beat evenly took me a few tries. But once I got it adjusted properly, it has worked really well. 

Advancing the Warp

Advancing the warp on the Cricket Quartet is really easy. On looms without a foot brake, you typically advance the warp by releasing a pawl at the back. This gets cumbersome when the pawl is out of reach, and is often *the* thing that keeps me from weaving on a loom as much as I'd like to. But on the Cricket Quartet, the whole loom is in easy reach for my short arms, and that's a huge benefit for me!

Using the Cricket Quartet with the Cricket Stand

I already had the stand for the Cricket, and decided to test it out with the Cricket Quartet. This is the least sturdy part of the whole setup - but that's a critique of the stand, not the loom!

I needed to tighten the screws more than I thought was acceptable in order to keep the loom from drifting down in the stand. And I can't lean my elbows on the loom to check on things in the back like I can with other looms - if I do, the loom will tilt in the stand. 
​
I've found that by placing my feet on the bottom bar of the stand, I can stabilize it enough to prevent the loom from moving too much while I weave. 

Final Thoughts

I really like this little loom!

In general, I prefer working on floor looms. Treadling with my feet turns weaving into a full-body action that keeps my mind engaged better. Any table loom is going to sacrifice that, so I tried to not let it color my review of the loom too much.

Having said that, the Cricket is great at what it does - offering a small footprint 4-shaft loom without sacrificing much functionality, if any. It perfectly fits my needs for a small 4-shaft loom for sampling/workshop/demonstrations. It's a little pricey if you don't already have a 15" Cricket, but if you do, and have been interested in trying out 4-shaft weaving, it's a nice place to start.