Warp woes

Ok, so as I said the warp was flaring out at the edges on the beam and the threads were getting caught. The threads were also bouncing in and out of their tiny slots. I had to admit defeat and unwind the warp and retry. New attempt steps:

• I put my other raddle on the loom right behind the built in raddle and carefully transferred the threads to the right slots. It was getting a bit messy as not all the threads were in their slots anymore.
• I covered the built in raddle with some craft paper and taped it down so they wouldn’t catch the threads.
• I cleared the desk next to the loom and unfolded my folding table at the end to have room to stretch out the four warp parts at their full length. I weighed down the warp to keep tension
• I tied some sport cotton from the front to the back of the loom at the weaving width (30cm), so 2 ends through the reed from front to back, then I added sort of a cross thread that was slightly less than 30 cm width from knot to knot to keep the warp at the right width
• I used a roll of craft paper instead of sticks to separate the warp

Another lesson learned: Be very careful when winding not to touch the lock on the cog wheel. My hand kept bumping it and it almost unwound on me. Also be careful when tugging the paper that the lock is in place properly, I had to restart winding again when it shot off and everything unwound.

Run your finger over the warp near the raddle at the front and back to unsnag threads and check if there are no super tight threads in there, those are caught in the raddle somewhere.

Winding a warp like this needs to be done under tension because snags are far more likely to happen when there is no tension at the front of the loom.

March 17, 2019 3PM: Threading done

I have the threading done. I think it’s now all correct (fingers crossed) and I am about to start sleighing the reed.

I found that the nice idea of threading the cross with one color on each side of the cross while holding both colors together didn’t quite work out as expected, it didn’t end up with all the threads alternating one by one, but a number of pairs of the same color, so it’s still a nice idea because your cross is very clear and visible but you’re still dealing with two threads instead of one at a time. I also had a few threads that got pulled out of the cross in the warp woes. I marked those by tying a piece of contrasting scrap yarn to the ends of those so I knew when I got near those to pay attention to where they should probably go. I think things worked out fairly well but time will tell as the warp unwinds and possible twists will appear…. again, fingers crossed.

I decided to do 5 repeats of the threading per stripe. I also made sure that I started on the back layer on every stripe, even if that meant threads crossing a bit, because I felt consistency in threading for the two layers would be best.

On the first few groups I found that I had some twists between the cross and the heddles which I had to fix, after that I checked every group but had no more twists, not sure what I did in the beginning.

Note to self: a bit left of the middle of shaft 7 there are two heddles twisted together. I’ll try to remember to fix those before the next threading, for now I figured to just leave it as 1 heddle since I could just add an extra heddle on the right from the ones pushed aside there.

I got into a bit of a flow after about 1/3 of the warp but it was quite a bit of work. I can now totally understand the idea of using a dummy warp to tie on to and will seriously consider that for when I start on the actual blankets. I don’t think I can use the current warp for that as I’d need a wider one and it had some issues with warping anyway. I could use some warping practice yet.

To sley the reed, this may be very obvious but it took me a minute to think about it, I’ll lift the two shafts that are on the same level in the two layers. I started from the middle (it’s nice there’s an even number of 6 stripes so I can just start working backward from the third stripe), lifting shafts 4 and 6, sley, 3 and 5, sley, etc.

March 24, 2019: Baby steps

I finished slaying the reed last weekend and as I was tying on I could tell there were so many twists in the warp I got discouraged. It reminded me of the double weave project I did on the AKL last year where the warp got away from me and I had to restart as well. I had such a hard time on that project to move the twists back every time I advanced, I was really not looking forward to it again. It kind of took the fun out of it for this one. That combined with a number of other factors (I don’t really like sampling, I don’t like the colors I chose, which I did merely on yardage and it being a somewhat acceptable combination, and a general drop in energy the rest of the week) things stalled a bit. I tried to find the really bad twists and fixed a few, then decided to push on, given that it is a sample and the lessons learned will hopefully give me a better start on the actual project.

I started weaving the twill pattern and it looks like there’s no threading mistakes, yay! I’ve woven about 10-15 cm now and I can lift the top layer and run my hand through the two layers no problem. I’ve also dug up a little telescopic mirror I had laying around to check the lower layer.

After a few test picks of the twill pattern I did find the first warp thread on the left wasn’t getting caught in the weaving. I remembered reading a blog post about Jennifer Moore’s herringbone blanket mentioned dropping a thread. I looked it up and read the section of the book and indeed it says to remove the first warp thread of the top layer on the left. This stops floats happening on the edges. Since I had everything tied on at this point I simply cut thread 1 at the knot and pulled it out of the reed and heddle.

I’ve found it it quite tricky to get the beat right for both layers. I was beating the top layer too hard, but found that I had to use a different technique with the bottom layer. So this is what I’m trying now to get a nice even balanced twill:

Top layer:

• close shed
• beat gently (placing the weft rather than beating), if there is a little bit of space between the weft yarns and this pick is followed by a bottom pick, leave it, it will settle once the bottom pick gets beaten.

Bottom layer:

• close shed
• beat
• open next shed
• double beat rather firmly

I’ve also reversed the pattern to make the diagonals head in the other direction. I tried this in a couple of different ways but I ended up with floats on the left on both layers’ last warp thread. I took a closer look to figure out why there were no floats on the original pattern with the first thread removed. Because thread 1 is removed, the first thread on the top layer is on shaft 2. The picks before and after turning on the top layer are such that shaft 2 is lifted on one pick and lowered in the other. The same goes for the bottom layer, only there the outermost warp thread is on shaft 7. In the end I simply reversed the pattern completely as written and started in the middle of the sequence, so that you don’t have two of the same picks following each other. This makes for a slightly less pretty transition but it’s the only way to get it right.

I do think I would prefer my blanket to be a straight twill instead of a herringbone. But there’s plenty more lessons to be learned before we get to that point.

February 20, 2021

My life drifted away from weaving for quite some time. I did some weaving on my AKL but I had no way to set up my Jane for a long time, even though I did long to use it again.

I was very immersed in illustration since the beginning of 2020. What that taught me recently about my creativity in general is that the craft I’ve always done in my free time after work and such, is my primary form of relaxation. I need that mindfulness, and I think I found that in weaving even more than in crochet or knitting. Illustration is mentally challenging most of the time, you’re constantly making decisions and analyzing and so on. Weaving and other yarn crafts have a phase of decision making, choosing what you want to make, the pattern, the yarns, the colors, and then planning, but once you get going, there is a flow that allows your mind to relax.

So in the past week I’ve been making space to set things up again so I can weave.

This project was still on my Jane and my first reaction was ‘ugh, I didn’t really want to make this thing’, something I describe in these notes earlier as well. But setting up a new project was not what I was looking to do right now, I wanted that zen state of just weaving. So I decided to just try it, and get that feel of it again, so that if I do move on to a project of weaving a blanket with colors I like, I know how to do it. Basically I resigned to actually sampling and learning and just using what is on the loom to have that mental unwind. And you know what? It’s working. Even though I know I’m likely not to use this fabric for anything (or maybe I will, you never know) and the colors aren’t my first choice, I am enjoying it. Following the pattern, making the squares, getting a feel for the beat I need to use to get a balanced weave. I sit down for 10-20 minutes at a time and just watch this project move.

I only noticed the twists I mention earlier after I’d been weaving for a while and had advanced the warp a bit already. So far they’re not a problem, let’s hope that it stays that way. This yarn is less twisty on it’s own than the rigid heddle project I had such a hard time with.

February 26, 2021

I’ve woven quite a nice bit of cloth by now and I want to start planning the blanket project, so I’m looking into cutting off the cloth so far. I’ve come across these articles by Peggy Osterkamp that explain how to use sticks to tie the warp back on instead of knotting everything again. I’m going to try this.

https://peggyosterkamp.com/2020/04/cutting-off-some-of-th...

https://peggyosterkamp.com/2014/09/twostick-heading-cut-w...

February 28, 2021

I had a few skips in the sample I cut so I looked for solutions to avoid this. The main advice I found was to have a (large) mirror next to the loom in which you can see the shed as you are weaving, and check every pick on the lower layer. I only had a small telescopic mirror (4 by 6.5 cm or 1.5 by 2.5 inches) that so far I used to check the bottom layer from below, but that was tedious and not very effective, since I could only see a small portion, so I only used it to see if the weave was more or less balanced. But I managed to clamp this unto the IKEA Raskog cart I have next to the loom such that I can see the shed. I think a larger mirror might work better but I couldn’t find anything suitable. I added 2 photos at the end to show the mirror setup.