One of my favorite innovations is one I came up with myself. When I was weaving professionally, I needed a tool that could comb out the warp as I wound it onto the loom when I was using a standard warp beam, that could hold multiple strands in place against the warp beam when I was using a sectional beam and I needed my hands free to cut the ends and tie a knot and other things, and to do half a million (ok, I'm exagerating... a little) other useful and very necessary things. There wasn't any tool that I was (or am) aware of that could do all of the things I wanted it to. But I remembered a tool that I had used in a type of work I had done previously that I just knew would do the trick.

The tool was simply a Hartz Mountain dog grooming comb. The kind with the one piece molded metal tooth end, and the one piece molded plastic handle. Those combs were an indispensable tool for me, and I honestly don't know how I could have functioned without them. And yet, I've never heard of any other weavers using a dog grooming comb as an essential tool.

That's the heart of innovation. It doesn't have to be elaborate. Just something that you come up with by yourself that fills a need.