diff --git a/toolkit/lora_special.py b/toolkit/lora_special.py
index 4dd94b0f..aa221480 100644
--- a/toolkit/lora_special.py
+++ b/toolkit/lora_special.py
@@ -209,7 +209,9 @@ class LoRASpecialNetwork(ToolkitNetworkMixin, LoRANetwork):
             ignore_if_contains = []
         self.ignore_if_contains = ignore_if_contains
         self.transformer_only = transformer_only
-        self.base_model_ref = weakref.ref(base_model)
+        self.base_model_ref = None
+        if base_model is not None:
+            self.base_model_ref = weakref.ref(base_model)
 
         self.only_if_contains: Union[List, None] = only_if_contains
 
diff --git a/toolkit/network_mixins.py b/toolkit/network_mixins.py
index b52af32b..826d7f09 100644
--- a/toolkit/network_mixins.py
+++ b/toolkit/network_mixins.py
@@ -547,7 +547,8 @@ class ToolkitNetworkMixin:
 
             save_dict = new_save_dict
         
-        save_dict = self.base_model_ref().convert_lora_weights_before_save(save_dict)
+        if self.base_model_ref is not None:
+            save_dict = self.base_model_ref().convert_lora_weights_before_save(save_dict)
         return save_dict
 
     def save_weights(
@@ -586,7 +587,8 @@ class ToolkitNetworkMixin:
             # probably a state dict
             weights_sd = file
         
-        weights_sd = self.base_model_ref().convert_lora_weights_before_load(weights_sd)
+        if self.base_model_ref is not None:
+            weights_sd = self.base_model_ref().convert_lora_weights_before_load(weights_sd)
 
         load_sd = OrderedDict()
         for key, value in weights_sd.items():