Yesterday my patience was tested. I'm really a pretty patient person but this silk warp almost did me in.
It's an 8 yard warp I painted last fall
that somehow got tangled in the dyeing/rinsing process even though I choke tied the bejeezzes out of it. I'm not quite sure how the tangles happened but they did - I've never had this issue in the past with painted warps but a few I dyed that day got tangled. I did have to cut the cross out of a couple sections - hopefully that won't come back to bite me in the butt as I'm weaving.
I eventually got it untangled so I could get it on the back beam but then I had to deal with halo'ing. I tried to capture a picture of it but it was tough - it's the fuzzy section you see. What happens is as the warp is coming through the lease sticks fibers fuzz from one thread grab the thread next to it and stop it from moving like a log jam. I could only advance the warp a foot at a time before dealing with 'un-halo'ing' the threads from each other - ack! All I kept thinking is if I dressed the loom from front to back it would have been worse to deal with going through the reed and heddles which would have already been threaded....one of the many reasons I'm a back to front warper.
Finally the warp is wound on the back beam and I'm ready to thread the heddles - I'm almost to the end and realize there are extra warp ends.........well, I always leave extra warp ends hanging from the back of the loom on a painted warp in case of a broken thread....only I forgot after the fiasco of dealing with the tangles. So, I pulled the warp out of all the heddles, pulled those extra threads to the back and rethreaded - ack again!
At the beginning of the day I thought I'd get that warp on the loom in no time and be well on my way weaving but instead it took all day to get it on the loom. If it had been $5 worth of tencel I wouldn't have spent the time on it and would have sacrificed it to the weaving goddess but it was around $50 worth of silk so I wasn't willing to give up on it.
Finally on the loom so I could audition wefts (above) - hoping to weave today. And yes, you weavers out here may spot a few errors in the weaving, I had one tie-up hook that kept falling out as I was sampling - I replaced it several times with others and finally got one that would stay put. This is not a problem I usually have with my Macomber but it seems like with this warp I'm having all kinds of issues.......hopefully today I'll weave away with no issues at all..........
Oh Cindie! My sympathies, I've had a few warps like that in my time and I still have mild nightmares over them. One was mohair but of course, the haloing and stickiness at least was expected. Fingers crossed for fun easy weaving here on in.
ReplyDeleteSo far, so good on the weaving, no issues at all, no hook popping off the lamm. Now back to the loom..........
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