It has been literally months since I dressed the AVL. Long enough that when I went to do it, I had to really stop and think about what I was doing. It no longer came naturally to me because when you don't use a skill...you tend to lose that skill.
I had left the warp beamed, ready to thread and only felt able to do the threading over the past two days. Everything seemed to go smoothly enough with the threading but I tear the loom apart to thread. In order to get close enough to the heddles, I take out the sandpaper beam, which means taking the auto-cloth advance apart. Then I remove the beater top and the reed, pull a small stool close (the sort of rust coloured one just visible to the right - the red stool is the one I sit on to weave).
Yesterday I finished threading and decided to leave the rest until this morning. At which point I completely forgot what I did next. So I re-installed the sandpaper beam and auto-cloth advance, then put the reed into the beater.
And realized that the sandpaper beam was now more or less in my way.
Sigh.
Well, I'm not going to take it all out again, especially for what is a relatively narrow warp (24" in the reed).
I will just be careful of my clothing so that I don't rub up against the sandpaper and then carry on.
But once again the lesson of 'use it or lose it' has been learned. Let's see if I remember it or forget it again.
2 comments:
I wrap my sandpaper beam with stretch wrap while I'm working over it. Saves the beam, and my skin/clothes. Thanks to Bob at AVL for that tip.
I put fabric over the sandpaper beam. I had a large scrap of fleece fabric I used to use that worked well because it stuck to the beam.
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