Work in Progress

 

Here is a photo of the AVL tension box I have used since, oh, 1983?  Thousands of miles of yarn have traveled through this device.  It has been modified and we have worked together for literally decades.

When I got the Megado, I looked at their tension box and decided that I was going to somehow make the AVL box work on the loom and Doug made adaptations to the loom so that I could.

Changing looms meant changing some processes - because change one thing and everything can change.

I have been weaving pretty much exclusively on the Megado during the past year and I am still adapting my processes.  The longer you do something a certain way, the harder it is to change what you are doing when something changes!

So my minor tweaks have been done slowly, carefully, constantly adjusting and making further slight tweaks.

For this latest series of towels, the ends per section changed from 32 to 30, for reasons, although the warp then gets sleyed at 32.  As careful as I am while beaming, I was still having issues with the 'ribbon' of yarn not filling the section evenly so I tried this and that and kept tweaking over the summer and each warp.

The last couple of warps I made a more major change.  Instead of putting four ends in each dent of the tension box reed, I started putting 5, then leaving a gap in the middle to allow for the build up of the seine twine leader strings.

Yesterday I made a bit of a mess, in part because this was such a new tweak I forgot to leave the gap, but once that got straightened out, the warp began to go on quite smoothly.  It won't be perfect, but I have learned over the years that very slight differences will disappear in the wet finishing - at least on towels that get cut apart and wet finished separated.  It might be more of an issue with a longer textile.

In the end when I go back to 32 epi I may go back to putting four ends per dent and not leaving a gap.  Or maybe I'll try it for one warp and see how it works.  But 32 divides equally by four, while 30 divides equally by 5, so...

Weaving offers continuous opportunities to learn and change.  Lessons for Life, too.