A Confession

 

In a continuing effort to use up my stash, I beamed the next scarf warp today.

Given the challenge to not buy any more yarn until I've made significant progress in using up some of what I have, the task is to try and figure out how to combine the colours in ways that don't always seem obvious to me.  In fact with this one, I went through at least 7 iterations (I lost count).  Finally late the other night, I decided to completely re-do what I had finally settled on and create an overall stripe.

The draft had been settled a couple days before:

In keeping with wanting drafts that are simple to thread, not terribly big motifs (or big enough that the entire draft is the width of the warp - which I haven't actually done for this series - yet) and that will lend itself to various tie ups and treadlings, I think this will do.

The stripes do not mesh with the threading at all - I never even tried to make it fit.  There are 12 stripes in total (30 ends per section for 12 sections) but the warp will be sleyed to 32 epi bringing the width down to around 11" in the reed.   The finished width will be approximately 10".  How wide will depend on the thickness of the weft.  I have several different rayon yarns I'm hoping to use on this warp and will begin with the thickest because that will be the widest based on the fact that it is thicker and won't draw in quite so much.

How do I know this?  Experience.  And remembering when I go to do it, or something similar, the next time.

One of the technical issues is that the spools are different levels of 'full'.  In other words, some are getting close to empty while some are full.  The fuller ones will beam at a higher tension that the less full ones and this can cause the heavier ones to wind on at a higher tension.

So - my confession.  I know this will happen.  And?  I don't much care.  I did my best to ensure each ribbon went into the section as flat as possible and under firm enough tension that the upper layers won't cut down into the lower ones.  And I've worked with this yarn often enough that I know it will tolerate some tension differences without breaking.

If the tension appears to be causing a problem, I will cut off once the scarf I'm working on is done, then re-tie (lash on to be specific, this is a slippery yarn) and even out some of the tension differences.  I have plenty of warp to play with and can cut off and re-tie twice.  I may do that anyway because the result should be 9 scarves based on the warp I cut off the loom today.

Lashing on is a good way to deal with a yarn that is slippery or where you want to minimize loom waste.

And in case anyone is wondering, the yarn comes off the 'usual' way - it's just not under tension right now and it looks a bit strange.  It'll sort itself out when I'm threading.  And I really wanted to show the stripe sequence in the photo.

It might have been the Dalai Lama who advised to learn the rules so that you know how to break them properly.  Whomever it was, they were correct, in my humble opinion...