Marketed under the name "Zoom Loom" by the Schacht Spindle Company, the "Weave-It" by the Scovill Hero brand, and as the "Weavette" by the Weavettes company, the zoom loom is a miniature loom designed to create perfectly consistently sized and tensioned "blocks" of weaving, usually 3" or 4" squares, which can then be stitched to each other as modular units to form a larger project, such as a tapestry, blanket, scarf or hair scrunchie.
The zoom loom achieves complete consistency of tension and sizing through the loom's layout. All four sides of the loom have metal nails, and the yarn of a weaving project is looped around these nails in a specific sequence which sets up the entire warp and every second row of the weft ahead of time. The user them weaves in the remaining half of the weft rows using a hook, miniature shuttle, or darning needle to pass the weft between the columns of warp. This means the user is only actually weaving manually for half as many rows as they normally would need to weave to create a square block.
The zoom loom imparts one especially useful virtue upon the finished work: all four sides of the woven block end in selvedge, with no overt weak points or uneven stretching across the resultant fabric. Four selvedge sides inherently grant greater durability to the final project, especially in terms of resistance to becoming unraveled.
The zoom loom makes bias weaving trivially easy, as one only needs to adjust the warping pattern from orthogonal to diagonal orientation across the loom. It is also very easy to weave a block with bilateral symmetry of pattern, such as a heart, star, or smiley face design, by starting the warp from the lefthand side of the square rather than the front of the square. There is a perfectly consistent final count of stitches in every row, and these stitches have a very tidy square appearance, allowing them to be treated like pixels in pixel art, or like cells in cross stitch, to create artistic designs in the weaving. It can also be used for other styles of diagonal continuous strand weaving (also called "rapid weaving," in that the warp and weft come from the same mass of yarn, and are not separate pieces from each other, and only half the weft is ever woven by hand after warping). Zoom looms can also be used for children's "pot holder" mini projects using elastic loops instead of a continuous strand of yarn.
It takes perhaps twenty minutes to learn how to use the zoom loom, if one has prior weaving experience, or an hour or so if this is one's first foray into textile crafts. After very little practice and familiarity with the zoom loom, a quick and competent weaver will find it takes around fifteen minutes to complete a single tidy square on it. As with any fixed loom setup, the last couple rows tend to be incredibly tight compared to the first rows, meaning that the level of challenge to complete a row increases sharply toward the end, unavoidably due to the extremely confined working space within a tiny frame of only a few inches. The upside of its small size is that it can be brought along in one's handbag or lunch box to continue projects on the go. The zoom loom fits easily inside a typical snap-shut sandwich box, like one might find bundled with a child's school lunch bag. It's also very easy to measure and pre-cut lengths of yarn which are a perfect working length for the zoom loom, since the loom's outer frame guarantees a correct measurement, achieved by wrapping yarn around the exterior of the frame and counting up a number of wraps that matches the project size.
The delight inherent in having modular woven blocks, equivalent to a granny square in crochet, cannot be overstated. The fabric is tight and dense, warm even when using fairly fine yarn, due to the close spacing of the strands, and this close spacing also allows sewn stitches to be hidden easily between multiple back-to-back layers of weaving.
For anyone trying out this style of loom for the first time, I recommend obtaining a 5" tapestry needle, a curved darning needle, and as slim a crochet hook as you can get your hands on - whatever you are picturing, go smaller! - to make the weaving stage go smoothly. There are zoom looms and weavettes available in a variety of sizes and shapes, these days, including hexagons, triangles, long and squat rectangles, and many sizes of square. The Ullvana company has in the past sold very large modular looms called the Relmu and the Kaya, which had removable and repositionable plastic pegs instead of fixed metal nails, to allow the user to change the frame for weaving. The main disadvantage of these modular looms is that they do not have a hollow void in the middle to make the weaving itself an easily coordinated task, so working with them entails a more severe challenge for the full duration of a block's work-up, not just close to the end when its tension is highest. These modular looms are also, of course, far less portable, being many times the size of a standard Zoom Loom.
Zoom looms are able to be held in one hand and worked with the other hand, and it is immediately apparent both visually and to one's sense of touch if a row has been positioned wrongly. It is also easy to correct errors of position and sequence, without having to undo one's work entirely. It is somewhat too easy to accidentally slip a warp column off its retention nail prematurely, though this can be mitigated or prevented entirely through the use of a stitch marker or other removable redundant securing object. The simplest solution I have found myself is to use a loose strand of a different colour or texture of yarn, an inch or two in length, looped through each of the warp column ends, which I pull free after I finish a block. This also grants more security to the project when it is being transported.
I thoroughly recommend a 4" square zoom loom to anyone who is curious about weaving, but not wanting to make a major commitment of either resources or effort. I also recommend it as a bite-sized meditative task, since it really is only about a fifteen minute commitment to warp and weave an entire block. It makes excellent use of the leftover ends of yarn skeins that have not been completely used up, so it can serve as a way to reduce material waste in the course of other textile projects. It is not necessary to buy a new zoom loom from its name brand; plenty of independent craftspeople have handmade wooden zoom looms for sale on Etsy, and used ones for sale on eBay. They are likewise easy enough to make for oneself, if one has access to a bit of wood, some small nails, wood glue, and sandpaper to smooth the wood down so it won't snag the yarn. You may consult visual guides to zoom looms online, to see the exact layout of the nails; do observe that this is not an agnostic layout, and it is not symmetrical: the exact number and spacing of the nails is crucially important to the loom's ability to be used at all. Too-close spacing means the shuttle or needle will not fit between the nails; too-distant spacing means the tension will be wrong, causing the final project not to be a perfect square. With these considerations in mind, if you are a crafty sort in the woodshed, you may note that a zoom loom would make a wonderful gift for the yarn addicts in your life, and we do have some holidays coming up soon!
Iron Noder 2024, 09/30