Occasionally I'm up before the sun; had to share the view from my kitchen window.
For a short space of time this week I had all three looms warped and ready to create. The anticipation ...
8 shaft loom was threaded for blankets with a deep bordeaux warp to be crossed with 'orchid' purple mohair weft.
The table loom is warped for a project for Pauanesia. 14 inches wide, 10 tpi . I didn't want to tie up the big looms and its growing quite fast on the hand manipulated table loom. But what a pickle to get it threaded. There is a group of local ladies, about 4 or 5, who want to learn to weave and it wasn't happening, the lessons that is. No one would set a date to suit everyone and I got thinking if this doesn't happen soon the ladies will lose interest. My problem is I have always threaded front to back and didn't think it right to subject new weavers to the flack and, at times, brutal opposition to this method. So I thought it a great opportunity to learn back to front method while threading the table loom. I had the arbitrary thought that not all table looms have a raddle so threaded loops through the reed in alternate spaces and looped on the back rod. First problem, I had wound 6 threads together so one arm of the loop was 6 threads away. Oh well muddle through, but then I couldn't transfer the cross and also I had two chains as I wanted the final project to be alternate threads of wool and mohair. By a gread deal of luck I did get the loom threaded and its weaving off beautifully but guess I need to attend class as a student not the tutor.
And at the other extreme I thought I'd give myself a challenge and experiment with 4 colour double weave. There has been quite a bit of information about this in Complex Weavers journals of late. I've used a networked twill threading mirror imaged and echoed by 8 (Edit: actually echoed by 6) and therein lies a problem. I can't print from my computer and DH's computer doesn't have an active Fibreworks program. So to thread the loom I used the treadle as threaded method which went beautifully for the first 170 threads then I must have stopped for lunch or a phone call, I don't remember. When starting the pattern again my program always starts with the last row woven so, in this case, if the last heddle threaded was 14 when it starts again it will tell me to thread heddle 14. Wrong, but that's what I did which, of course, put my dark, light alternate threads out of order to the pattern.
During the night, after I'd discovered this major problem, I figured if I moved every thread over by one heddle starting from the outside I'd sort it. As you can see it worked. Thank goodness I threaded for a scarf sample and not the dreamed of fabric width. Changed the treadling to a completely different option; oh how I love the computerised dobby.
And now the blanket loom is waiting for the next warp to be tied on as is the table loom and I keep thinking of new treadlings for the 4cdw.
Today is haircut day and a long walk will be in order as rain is coming.
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