spool rack with yarn for shawl warp
tension box, ready to go
showing one of the modifications Doug did
warp 1/3rd wound
After a week filled with things going pear shaped this morning I found myself weaving on the Summer and Winter test warp and really unhappy about being there.
Why, I asked myself, am I spending so much time on something that is making me so unhappy? Time is precious, life is too short for struggling and if it isn't fun, why am I doing it?
Especially when I had such a pretty warp waiting impatiently in the wings!
So after lunch I went down and cut the warp off the loom. I think I tossed maybe a half pound of yarn into the recycle bucket - if that - about $6 worth of yarn, maybe a little more - and saved myself 3 more days of misery.
A bargain!
I was going to set up the video camera now that it's functioning again, but quickly realized that a) there was no room to put the tripod where it could capture what needed to be seen, and b) that a static camera angle wasn't going to work, anyway. So until I re-arrange the studio and wrangle a cameraman, any video clip of beaming sectionally will have to wait.
The shawl warp is predominantly a darker rich forest green with a few brighter colours - a new green and turqouise - and an accent - the peach/salmon colour. The colours are scattered evenly but not strictly and will be threaded randomly as they come off the tape.
I don't use a cross - just tape the bouts. For me and the type of yarns I use and cloth I design, this works just fine. Other weavers find they need the cross in order to accomplish what they need to do. Since I don't make a cross, Doug removed the cross making mechanism from the tension box. He also cut the top off the gathering reed and added a wire gate so that I just lift the gate and drop the threads into the slots at the back, then thread them into the swiveling reed at the front.
He also made extra dowels in order to add additional tension to the warp when necessary - generally when I'm using cones and beaming directly from the cone top instead of using spools. In this case it's faster to wind spools than to wind the skeins onto cones.
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7 comments:
As usual, click on the photos to biggify...
I've been wondering about this for a while, and this seems as good a place to ask as any.
I don't have a sectional warp beam & have never wound on one, so this is probably a very basic question.
Why is it critical to have spacers (I prefer a roll of heavy paper) when you wind a warp on a plain beam and not on a sectional beam. Wouldn't the threads on a sectional beam be just as likely to sink down into the layer(s) below?
Thanks for your knowledgeable answer.
Hi Peg, when beaming sectionally you generally wind under higher tension than on a plain beam. The individual sections are held in place (prevented from spreading sideways) by the 'hoops' or pegs and the yarns cannot cut down into the lower layers.
If you *don't* sectionally beam with high tension you can have exactly that problem of upper layers cutting down into the lower layers, so getting sufficient tension is critical.
Dressing the loom using sectional beaming means I can beam a very long, very wide warp all by myself.
I even beam an ordinary warp wound on my board on the sectional beam by using a warping valet. There are blog posts with the label of warping valet, or perhaps painted warp, showing how I do it.
cheers,
Laura
Ha! I was just thinking about cutting a warp off the loom before it's finished because one of the yarns is old and black and hasn't stood the test of time so I'm getting very aggravated with all those broken threads! I think I shall move along to something with newer, less brittle yarn in a pattern I'm looking forward to trying out - doubleweave using an overshot pattern so it looks like overshot but has no floats!
Life is difficult enough without having to struggle at the loom. Go ahead and exercise the scissor solution! ;^)
cheers,
Laura
No cross at all? So you're just threading randomly from each bout (I presume an inch or so)? This is going to be so very lovely.
Hi Debbie, no I don't insert any cross, just let the tape hold the threads more or less in their order. Yes, there are times whem I will pull threads from the tape randomly, in this instance I'm just taking them off the tape in order, just making sure that I don't have two accent colours side by side but separated by the darker predominant green.
cheers,
Laura
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