Does it Help?

 

It was a bit of a sobering realization this morning that I have been writing this blog for 12.5 years.  When I started there were a fairly large number of bloggers who, for one reason or another, have drifted away from blogging.

There are a few of us left but not the large number there used to be.

Over those 12.5 years, I have written.  A lot.  Lots of words, some pictures to illustrate what I'm trying to convey.  I try hard to make the posts informative (and clean up any typos, which sometimes get overlooked - my apologies!), not too lengthy, but having a kernel of information that I focus on.  Some days I do this better than others.  Because yes, I do have 'bad' days.

With over 3000 blog posts, it sometimes becomes hard for even me to find the information I want to share.  Sometimes I just ignore the fact that I know I've addressed the issue, probably multiple times, because not everyone joined me in August of 2008 and won't have read all of the previous posts.  Sometimes I have a new little insight I want to share.

But sometimes even I don't find what I'm looking for, maybe because I haven't actually tackled the topic before.

Someone asked about my headers.  I did find a post that talked about what I do.

I have been using the same approach for starting my warps for long enough I don't remember when I adapted my process.  The above photo shows a pretty standard start:  About 1.5 to 2" left between the rod and the header.  This space allows the warp threads to even out if there are minor tension differences (there pretty much always are) and they don't have to bend acutely from weaving to rod.  My bouts are about one inch, although this can vary slightly depending on the warp.  The Goldilocks zone - not too much, not too little.

I begin by opening a shed and throwing a pick.  Then I throw two more without beating in between.  The beater then brings those three picks forward until they are adjacent to each other.  At this point I will bring the weft around the left hand end of the rod making a loop from weaving to end of rod, and throw the next pick, beat.  Open next shed and take a loop of weft around the right hand side of the rod.  You can just make out the loop on the two ends on the weaving in the photo if you look closely.  Then I weave one more pick (sometimes three more - it depends on how slippery the yarn is) and that's my header.

In this photo you can clearly see the plain weave hem, then the beginning of the thicker weft for the body of the place mat.

So why do I do this, people ask.  As a new weaver I noticed that the beginning of the weaving tended to skew, to roll up on itself.  This made getting a good selvedge more difficult.  It was an accident one day when the weft looped around the rod on one side and not on the other without my noticing.  What I *did* notice right away was that the one selvedge was much better behaved than the other.  Which was when I noticed the loop.  Thinking that I'd made a mistake, I unwove, removed the loop and started weaving again.  Whereupon I noticed all the issues with my selvedges.  

Huh.

So I unwove again, and this time applied the loop to both sides of my weaving and...voila...much better behaved selvedges.

Since then I have met other weavers who do the same thing, for the same reason.  So like Elizabeth Zimmerman I will say that I 'unvented' it.  Obviously I wasn't the first, and no doubt I won't be the last to discover that this little 'trick' helps.  

If it helps, do it.  If it doesn't help?  Don't do it.

(for a more cohesive, 'logical' approach to my way of weaving, The Intentional Weaver tries to put the information into a more easily accessible format...)