Are we there yet?

So, last week I said I was nearly there, and it seems I jinxed it maybe just a little. I am weaving but there has been a lot of little tweaking between then and now. I should have expected that, I have replaced all the plain nylon cord with Texsolv and knew I would need to spend some time finding the right lengths for each of the cords so it all worked nicely. I also knew that with 580 thread ends, 4 shafts, four upper lams and four lower lams and eight treadles to connect in the right order and with the right distances between them that there were lots of placed to confuse things. That is 297,859 points to connect and 297,859 points to muck up. At some level it is a little like knitting, as a complete garment can contain that number of stitches - all of which need to face the right way and be the same size and in order. In another way - with Weaving, the corrections mostly happen at the start, once things are sorted the actual weaving is simpler.

So ...first I sorted out where I had accidentally crossed threads between the heddles and the reed.
Then I placed a flat stick into the weft, changed the shed and placed another flat stick,  so I could identify where the threads were not in order. It happens - but easily fixed at this stage. a matter of undoing the tie on knot and pulling these gently out and rearranging in the correct order. 

Then it was a case of weaving a little bit - and looking carefully for other errors. Here several set of two threads are twinned, sitting beside each other rather than taking turns - over/under. Again it is a case of gently pulling these out of the weave and sorting them into the right order.

Once  that was sorted - I wove a little more, just to check the threading was right. And then thinking things were good I worked a two-stick header, so I could eliminate the bulky tie on knots. This is something I have seen in Peggy Osterkamp's book and blog. I like it, it is neat and tidy and rather cool. It did seem to waste a bit more yardage- or at least it did in my case as I didn't have the foresight to place this closer to the beginning of the warp. Live, weave and learn.

The last little bit of checking is to make sure the treadles are tied up in the correct order.  Two things need to be 'right' here, that the order is correct for the pattern, when treadle two is depressed - in this case shafts two and four should rise and shafts one and three should fall). The other thing is that the treadles need to be tied up so that the 'shed' or opening created by lifting or lowering the shafts is clean - no stray threads sitting in the middle that could go either way and muck up the pattern. When I started weaving  my pattern, a point twill, - the pattern created was nice - but not the pattern I had planned. It took a wee bit of time sitting on the floor fiddling with the tie up to make sure everything was working together in the way I wanted it to.

Finally, it looked good, the top few rows of pattern are the one I planned. There is one little teeny mistake that I do need to fix. If you look carefully one quarter of the way in from the left of the photo - there is an interruption of the pattern. I think - this involves re-threading two threads and adding an extra thread - but I will sleep on that before I do anything drastic.

And while I did all that, Bear and Frank held hands on the sofa. Truly they did, Frank reached out and quietly with soft paws/no claws made sure he was in contact with Bear... so cute.
na Stella