Maps

 

I have always loved maps.  They help me understand where I am, and remind me that the world is much larger than my reality bubble.

But here's the thing with maps - to be useful, they must be accurate.  Plus they need a 'legend' to help you understand what you are seeing.

Unlike the map pictured above which has all kinds of errors.  How do I know?  Because I have the 'shape' of the United States as a mental picture.  

When I was travelling, I would routinely check a map to see the layout of the route my trip would take and get myself familiar what might be there waiting for me once on the ground.  Because I like to know 'where I am'.

But apparently we have reached the stage in the 'information age' where we have a shit tonne of information, but a bunch of it is just plain 'wrong'.

As I wove today I thought about maps in the back of my head and I thought about weaving drafts.  

And how many new/beginning weavers just don't understand what they are looking at.  (In spite of loads of books that will tell them exactly that, they want members of an online group to explain it.)

Or they ask ChatGPT, which is even worse because that app will flat out lie to you.

Sometimes the questions is: where are the tabby treadles?  Or they can't work out the symbols: what does it mean to do this 3X?  Or whatever. 

I thought about huck as a weaving draft.  And how many people get confused because there are 3 (at least) different ways to write the sequence and they don't understand.

So here's a short explainer:

Huck is generally (not always) written with a 5 thread by 5 thread 'unit'.  It can look different depending on the resource one looks at:

3 ways to thread huck - blank spaces indicate that I am providing 3 different threadings

I have not included the tie up because each of those threadings needs a different set of treadles tied up to create the cloth.

Here is the option as given above for the first threading sequence, reading from the right to left.

This option weaves huck in every place it has been threaded for huck.  Yes, you can insert plain weave sections if that meets your design requirements.  Look where the plain weave treadles are placed - in between the two 'pattern' treadles.  You don't need more treadles when plain weave is already in the DNA of your weave structure.

Some people find this sequence to be easier to thread.  Note the change in the tie up.  This is the middle option in the above 'draft' showing 3 different sequences:

And then the third option which changes yet again, and makes expanding the threading to more than four shafts if you want to do that and have the extra shafts:

Which of these is correct?  

They ALL are.  The threading, tie up and treadling need to give you what you want to have in your cloth.  Drafts are not writ in stone.   It is possible to switch things around.  For example, you may not have enough heddles on a shaft.  In that case you either need to add more heddles, OR if you have more (some weavers routinely load extra heddles on the front two shafts) you can shuffle the draft to take advantage of having 'extra' heddles on some of the shafts.

Plain weave is not always 1+3 vs 2+4.  And sometimes it doesn't best serve the needs of actually weaving it by being placed on either outside treadle, OR to one side of the rest.  And sometimes you really need to get the warp set up and sit at the loom and weave a bit to really understand what you are trying to do.

Or read the beginning bits in the front of the book.   The author will generally give Important Information about the symbols they have used.