No Mistakes!

 

Borrowed table top loom

From time to time I hear/see newer weavers exclaim that they can't wait until they don't make mistakes anymore.

Yeah, about that...

Well, not all of the challenges I had to deal with for this warp (and I'm not even finished dressing the loom - yet) were of my making.

I'm doing a 'thing' and the best way forward to get the 'thing' done was to borrow a small table top loom.  I planned a warp (I'm weaving 'samples') and based on the yarn and weave structure (2/8 cotton; Bronson Lace) decided a reasonable density was 20 epi.  Although 24 might be better.  I didn't know, but figured 20 was a good place to start.

Crunched the numbers.  Decided I wanted an uneven number of units so that any motif I wove could be centered, recalculated to make sure I had the correct thread count, then set about winding my warp.  All went well and the warp was waiting for me.

Then when I went to rough sley the warp (as I do), the *only* reed that would fit into the loom was the reed that came with it.  Which was 12 not 10.  Sigh.  Oh well.  

Re-calculated for the narrow sample I was making, the % of lace in the cloth (on average), how difficult lace can be to beat in (consistently) on a looser warp, decided that probably 24 was better than 20 anyway, and recalculated to make sure that by tightening the density I would still wind up with a decent (very narrow) warp.  Yes.  Just barely.

Today I thought I'd quickly beam the warp, but it's been a while since I worked on such a small loom and I was out of practice pulling on a warp.  Frankly, I'd have rather used my 4 shaft floor loom, but am not feeling up to weaving on that loom right now and was the reason I had borrowed the table top loom in the first place.

I had to figure out warp packing.  Such a small loom won't take much length and my warp packing of preference (which I couldn't find anyway - think I donated the bamboo mats to the guild) so I had to switch to brown paper.  Not my first preference but since I would likely be cutting off and retying a few times, probably would be ok.

The beaming on went ok, but then I had to transfer the lease sticks to the back of the loom (because rough sleyed reed) and then things fairly quickly fell apart.  The lease sticks came out entirely, but ta-da!  With the warp rough sleyed in the reed it was a quick matter of picking up the cross again.

I knew that the loom didn't have all that many heddles and Bronson Lace requires 50% of the heddles on one shaft.  Oops.  There were not enough heddles on any one shaft.  

But!  The loom has 8 shafts, so shafts 1 AND 2 were designated to work together as one, and then the draft was threaded as 'usual' on shafts 3, 4, and 5.  It meant I had to pay close attention as I manipulated the threads onto the appropriate shaft and remember to thread the weave structure correctly based on the conjoining of shaft 1 and 2 for the tabby a.

Doug agreed to drive me up to the guild room so I could look for a reed before I sleyed the warp, but the guild doesn't have one the right length, so hopefully tomorrow I can finish the last few units and then sley the reed and tie on.  And then wind some bobbins.  I need to decide on what I will weave for the samples, but that can happen in the next day or two.

So, not really any terminal 'mistakes' on my part, just a project that is proving to be more challenging than I'd hoped.  Kinda like life, really...