Hasta La Ideas

What did you do during the pandemic? New-Jersey-based artist and freelance writer Lauren Puchowski invented this:

That’s the boomloom, a portable loom. Puchowski invented it “as a way to make weaving more intuitive and expressive, and to close the gap between the craft and the art,” she writes. “Probably I also wanted to hijack our smartphone compulsions by putting something tactile and analog in our hands.”

“The patent-pending boomloom is an adaptation of an old technology, the rotating heddle bar, fixing it into a little one-piece frame. The heddle bar forms the shed — the space between the warp threads — so you don’t have to pass the yarn in and out, just back and forth through the shed. Keeper slots capture the beginning and end of the warp thread to make stringing easy. EPI (ends per inch) is about 6.”

“The loom is made simply from six parts in aluminum, beech and maple, no screws or fasteners. I assemble and finish the looms in my workspace behind the home I share with my husband and kids in Jersey City, NJ (that’s it in the pic below). We’ve sold looms to customers all over the world including France, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Alaska, Los Angeles, Guam, London, Colorado, New Zealand, Brooklyn, Switzerland, and Salt Lake City.”

Puchowski got the boomloom, which comes in two sizes, into production. She sells them on her website, and they’re also retailed by the Cooper Hewitt Museum Shop.

You can see what folks have made with the boomloom on Puchowski’s Instagram.