Warp weights

A little spin-off project concerning my loom: Me and my ever-present child labour made weights from clay. I´m testing different shapes and materials now: Stones (courtesy of my father-in-law and his stone carving tools), bags of sand (if someone wonders why there is a bit less sand in the nearby playground, I confess. I´ll return it, I promise...) and these clay ones in two basic shapes: round with a hole in the middle, as seen up there

...and then these conish-shaped ones. 

The flat round ones are as I´ve seen in pictures and desriptions of Viking and Northern Europe looms. The cones are inspired by ancient Greek loom weights. 

Incidentally I found a great lecture about textile production in ancient Greece. Here´s a Youtube link for it. That lecture gave me the idea to stamp the weights with my mark (I ended up with my initials in Khuzdul runes of Tolkien), as the women evidently did in ancient Greece (well, they didn´t use runes obviously... But e.g. stamped their heirloom ring or scrathced some other mark on the clay)

Oh, and here is another great lecture about textile archeology in Iceland. I highly recommend!

So far I deem the round clay ones my favourite. And the stones with flattened bottoms and hooks inserted on the top are a close second. The clay cones have a habit of hanging all skewed (at least the way I tie them. Maybe the Greeks knew a better way...) and the sandbags slip through the knots too easily.

But the cones were so much fun to make... It was so easy to slip something special there. 

Like these kitties... The left one is mine and on the right my daughter´s.

Or this poor kitty, who already lost an ear...

Or this Slytherin loom weight, because why not...

All the clay ones weigh approx. 400g (I used 500g of clay for each, so it looses 20% of its weight when drying). With the stones the trouble is they vary more. The ones I have weigh from 530g to 730g. I prefer the smaller ones.

...Except this dude is my favourite. It weighs exactly 666g. Heavy Metal!

I ordered the clay from web bookstore (!!) called Ad Libris and 10kg cost a little over ten euros. Shipping free of charge. The making was so much fun that I think I´ll get some more. And also my motley collection of weights is pretty unpractical, as I have not enough of any one variety for weaving.