Warp Speed: Dressing the Loom and Off We Go

It always takes longer to dress the loom than I think it should, which is probably just beginner's impatience. But

• putting end stick through end loops and securing
• placing lease sticks in raddle cross
• placing the raddle between both sets of sticks and spacing out the bundles
• attaching end sticks to loom end stick
• winding warp onto loom
  
• placing paper bags between layers
• moving lease sticks from inch-by-inch cross to thread-by-thread cross
• cutting the front end loop
• tying warp into bundles
• tying lease sticks up for threading
• threading the heddles
• sleying the reed
• tying onto front apron stick
• adjusting tension
  

. . . . all with special knots--surgeon's, lark's head, slip, overhand, choke ties . . . .
. . . . all while you count and recount, tie and untie and retie bundles . . . .
. . . . all while everyone asks why you haven't started weaving yet . . . .

Well, it's no wonder it took more than 3 weeks of class! And I'd even done it before, two years ago. But the repetition was good. Besides, Albus the cat watched me from the wide castle of my 16-shaft loom the whole time I threaded those 200 heddles! And then sleyed the reed, again, with 200 threads.

I just wish I'd remembered to take pictures of all the steps as I did it.

Now my loom is finally dressed, with its indigo Jaegerspun warp. And I have a shuttle full of plum weft. It's time to start weaving, but only my practice swatch (think of it as checking the gauge in knitting). I started with several rows of plain weave (1-3, 2-4) and then experimented with a few patterns. Mama checked in as I went along--it's her scarf, after all--and chose a horizontal stripe pattern (4, 3, 2, 1, 2-3-4, 1-3-4, 1-2-4, 1-2-3) for her scarf. My first scarf is much more of a sampler, with about 20+ different patterns separated by bands of plain weave. But I wanted Mama's scarf to be more composed, if you will, than that. I think it will be pretty, showing off both the indigo and the plum well.

I wove about 4+ inches tonight and will do the same tomorrow night, just to get the feel for it again--remembering to go over and then under my selvage thread, how to keep the special weaver's 45-degree angle to make my sides as straight as possible, establishing a routine for when to beat (after a pass, generally, but before I change my shafts), how hard to beat, when to advance the warp (mind you, I'm still practicing doing it all and am not sure of the exact phraseology). And then, hopefully, on Sunday, I'll put in a spacer between my sample and my "real" scarf (probably a piece of chip board, at least for awhile) and start working on it. I just have to remember that even though it is my second scarf, it is still only my second scarf and I'm still learning. I'm kinda thinking of it as my second "first" scarf!

Besides, experience tells me that many of the mistakes are so much less obvious once there are tassles and the scarf has been washed (which seems to help the uniformity). Besides, once you wrap it around your neck and tuck it in a coat, whose looking at each row of weaving??

So, let the fun begin!