Now with more confusing photos
This part takes the longest, threading each individual thread through each individual reed and headle space. Yeesh. Annoying.
But the warp lays very neatly, and that was satisfying to watch wind on like little rows of soldiers.
Ready to set in the shed bar.
The shed bar happens to be a butter knife. You must dress the previous pick to make sure it's well set. At least that is what I thought should happen.
How creative we can be! I used some loom waste for my first fills. Here you can see my first upgrade from passing the end via my fingers.
Faster than by hand.
Pull until the moment before it draws in, then beat with the reed. Gently. Is that all you can think to say, Gently?
Yes gently. After the first beat, you see that little loop on the left side? Tug until it just disappears. Then beat again.
Now it looks a bit neater.
Headle position is up. As in the stop peg is up above the frame. Now it's time to swap them.
Now you see the headle stop peg is down, and in the frame, and we're ready to continue like in the previous photos. Keep placing your picks or fill threads until the following happens:
You're out of room. You can't *possibly* get the shuttle in there *one* more time, so now it's time to Loosen the back warp.
This little knob will make it possible to loosen the back warp as much as you need to move it forward. When you lift the catch, the rod will spin and leave you with the following.
Tighten the front catch mechanism until the fabric you created is on the front rod, and you still have a little bit of it showing.
When you move the back warp forward you end up with some problems. One of those problems is the headles come out of line with the dealie that holds them. Take notes, dealie is an official term*.
After you see this it's okay to have a moment of panic. It will pass and then you just shove the dumb things out of the way and back in line with their supportive dealie.
They definitely know who's boss now.
The other problem that I had with my yarn was that it had lots of loose fiber from the preparation before spinning, and it was also a three ply, perhaps a *teensy* bit bigger than the reed really liked for the first time. I also ended up with problems with a sticky shed.
I looked through the shed (that's a fancy term for the space made by the threads) and could see where my two threads were just gummed up by their loose fibrous nebulae surrounding them.
So I put the shed bar in there to open it up and fix it. But still had more problems.
Do you see that? There are notes on the fliker page that show where I was a ninny and still had threads stuck that should have been out of the way. I took my shed bar and just picked those threads apart first at the headle eyes, and then again after the beating reed.
So that's fun. And it took about a day to weave up a rather long scarfy- type thing. Because of my continual neatening of the previous pick, it was very hard fabric. Three ply yarn coupled with tight tension and packing was just a ridiculously dense material. Heavier than upholstery. My daughter ran off with it as soon as it was off the loom. Regardless of qualities the novelty of having someone she knows making it was too much to resist.
*This statement has not been verified by the FDA