elz

People say...

- that you could prop up a tabletop rigid heddle loom between your legs and the table's edge. Sure, but perhaps not this one, which is palm-sized.

- that you need multiple shafts to weave certain motifs. It's like saying that you need a bed frame, boxspring, and foam mattress for sleeping, or chairs with rigid frames and a table of a certain height for eating a meal. You might like having them, you might consider them status markers, your cultural expectations may've blocked off other options, but one does not need them in an absolute sense.

Here's Kyoung Ae Cho preparing to weave houndstooth using a backstrap and several sets of string heddles. A meaningful percentage of the work is completed during the warping stage.

(If her setup goes too fast in that video, try her basic setup howto. It shows the interim uses of lease sticks and which things are tied provisionally, then undone. What she does is unfamiliar to me but looks much like the setup used by a Kazakh weaver whose reels Instagram keeps tossing my way---a Kazakh weaver who's a quarter ethnic Korean by heritage, part of the Koryo-saram community. Coincidence? I've no idea.)

- that you need multiple shafts, part two: here's someone with Atelier Fagelbo (Japan) weaving basic houndstooth with a rigid heddle on a tabletop/box loom. They don't show how to dress the loom because they'd like you to buy the loom and their many photo pages of directions (no thanks), but it is proof of concept.

- that you mustn't fuss with the warp (except to repair a broken warp thread) once a loom has been dressed and weaving has begun. I've undone the basic knotted warp from the large 8-dent heddle that shipped with my 10" Beka beginner frame, rethreaded the warp through a heddle with the right size of reed (12 dent), and added a few weft rows to what was provided by Beka staff. Much better. The original plan was to use someone else's warp and not only learn but save my hands. An 8-dent heddle with what looks like #4 or #8 cotton is pretty clunky. (#10 cotton, only slightly thinner, is "bedspread cotton" for mid-C20 crochet patterns.)