Who’s the Dummy Now?

Here’s what’s on the looms.

I bought the kit for the Jane Stafford Harrisville Shawl. It’s her sample for Season 3 Ep. 7 – Double Width Weaving. The kit/draft is for a shawl, so I added a cone of the color Woodsmoke and bumped the ends up to 400 for a blanket. I’ve never woven Double Width before and wanted to practice first, so I wound another warp with the same yarn from my stash that I used in my grandfather’s blanket, Elann Highland Wool. In my head, I bought the Elann so long ago, it’s free, right? I think that’s pretty good logic. I got to looking at the size difference between the Elann and the Harrisville. The Elann is a lot thicker. Jane setts the Harrisville at 8epi. I wove my grandfather’s blanket with the Elann at the same sett and it was a nice thick fabric, but now I’m thinking I can go down to 6epi because the Elann is so much thicker and it felts beautifully. The blanket will be a little lighter weight than the one I wove for Gramps and I’ll get a more bang for my buck. The 400 threads will be 33.3 in the reed at 12 epi (6 per layer for the Double Width Weaving) where as in the Harrisville it’ll be 25″ in the reed.

People…. full disclosure…. my mind scares me sometimes. I overthink EVERYTHING! So let me tell you how this is going to go… Hang on to your hats. It sounds like A LOT as I describe it, but when I’m done, I’ll have two totally different blanket warps on the loom ready to weave. In the end, it really does make sense. I think.

I like to tie onto previous warps if I’m going to weave the same thing again. Basically, I’m using the previous warp as a dummy warp. Personally, I think their name should be changed because they are genius. Maybe I’ll start a campaign like Elizabeth Zimmermann did for I-cord (you know it was originally Idiot Cord, right? lol). I’ll start calling it a D-warp. But I digress…

When tying onto a previous warp I know there are no errors. For me, it’s also a time saver. I can tie on a new warp a lot faster than the time it takes me to rough sley, thread and then sley the reed the final time. Even if it took the same amount of time, the insurance of knowing there are no errors is a pretty nice deal and worth it to me.

I know that if the end of the warp is not around the warp beam and I try to tie a new warp on, there will be slippage of the ends looped around the warp rod. These blanket warps are 3 yards. By the time I weave to the end of the first blanket, the warp rod won’t be around the beam anymore (the Glimakra Standard is deep) and the threads would slip back and forth as I tried to tie the new warp on. No bueno. I’m fully aware that I could tie on from the back, behind the shafts, but my space doesn’t allow for that and I’ve tied on from the front *a bunch* of times with no problems. If it ain’t broke…

So, here’s what I’m doing… I beamed and threaded the Harrisville first, but I sleyed it at 12epi (6 per layer) because before weaving the Harrisville, I’m going to tie the Elann on, beam it over the JST and weave it first. When I get to the end of that first Elann blanket, I’ll cut it off in front of the reed and wet finish it. If I like the fabric, I’ll probably tie on another because I have another blanket’s worth of the Elann that I’d like to use up and get out of my stash. If I like the 8epi better, I’ll just resley it to 8epi. I’ll have to resley it when I get to the Harrisville anyway. So, long story longer…. I’m basically using the Harrisville as a D-warp. A technique that has served me well. I learned it four years ago from the amazing Yarn Whisperer, Kathrin Weber of Blazing Shuttles.

So the Harrisville is on the loom and ready for the Elann wool to be tied on. I took some pictures along the way to point out a few tricks I use. When you are at the back of the loom trying to get a warp beamed, you want as much ready to go as possible. I mean, we only have two hands and things can get crazy back there. I don’t use a raddle. I like to rough sley a reed. It takes me about the same amount of time as the raddle, but the reed is there and it’s easy to stick it in the beater when I’m ready to beam. I use the Glimakra Reed Holders to rough sley the reed on my kitchen counter. The first picture at the top of this post shows what that set-up looks like. If you look closely, you’ll see markings on my cloth rod. You can see them better in the close up on the right. That is where the apron cords go. If I put that cloth rod up against my rough sleyed warp, I can see exactly where the warp needs to be split so that the threads will lay where they’re supposed to when I put them over the back apron rod. I put them in groups and hold them with pot holder loops (I use these for a zillion things. The polyester ones are cheap and hold well). When I take the warp to the loom, it’s one less thing I have to juggle while I’m dressing the loom.

In the Summer of 2017 I had the opportunity to go to Vävstuga Weaving School. Becky taught us this easy way to thread a 4-shaft draft on Texsolv Heddles. I put a video up on Youtube that you can find by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sYXS41e44g

Finally. Deep breath. I was able to grab an able body this morning to help me film a quick video singing the praises of Top O’ The Lamm Tie-up again and showing how I sley the reed on my Glimakra.

That’s all folks! Weave On!