Trouble Shooting

Oy. Every once in a while, there's just one of those projects. Everything that can go wrong, does.

I'm attempting to weave some dishtowels from some very nice, very fine, organic cotton yarn that I bought from Silk City Fibers. It's really lovely stuff, it feels almost silky to the touch.

Two major problems so far, though.... First, I was threading an Ms and Os pattern. Simple enough. On a four shaft loom, you thread it more or less like this:

12121212 34343434
13131313 24242424

I motored right along, tied it all on, wove a header, wove my hems, started to weave my first towel, and lo and behold, I got this:


That doesn't look like any Ms and Os I've ever seen, lol... It's pretty, but not what I was aiming for. What on earth happened?

Oh, goodlord. HUGE threading error. I skipped that second row up there (the 13131313 24242424 part) and just repeated the first line for the whole warp. DUH.

600 ends. 300 of them threaded wrong. Rip the whole thing off and start over? Nope, this yarn is much too expensive for that. So, I cut off the above, re-threaded those 300 heddles, re-sleyed those 300 ends, tied on again, and was finally ready to start over.



Well, that looks better. Except...

I put on a long (6 yards) warp. On my little Harrisville Loom. Which tends to give me severe tension problems with long warps. Which I had forgotten, since I've mostly just been weaving scarves or other single projects on it... So I blithely wound it on without paying extra special attention to the tension, which I need to do with long warps on this loom. So, the left third or so of my warp has gotten really loose after weaving not even one whole dishtowel...

One way for fix it for now:

Ha. Anybody with little kids will recognize those (they're the edges for the foam rubber alphabet mats that everyone seems to have now). I've heard of using upholstery foam to do this, but I didn't have any and thought of these. They're working ok, but once I'm ready to start the second dishtowel, I'll probably try to take up some slack in the warp by pulling it forward between the towels. We'll see if that works! If not, I doubt I'll have the patience to weave six or so more towels with a messed up warp...

Live and Learn. :) Two problems that easily could have been avoided if I'd been paying more attention!

Warped

30 ends per inch. I'm in warping hell...

Actually, it's not so bad. I'm setting up some organic cotton warp - this yarn has 7000 yards per pound, so it's really fine. I'm going to weave some dishtowels in Ms and Os. Huh. Haven't done many dishtowels - my first absolutely disastrous attempt at weaving involved dishtowels and yarn from a knitting store (what was I thinking?? LOL I had no idea at that point where to find yarn suitable for weaving). I made some a couple years ago for Christmas presents (along with soap that I made, too) that turned out significantly better. Here's hoping these are even better!

If these turn out well, I'm thinking of trying another set with overshot borders, using some 10/2 Tencel as the pattern weft. Supposedly, Tencel is very absorbent, and the colors are so darn striking, I thought that might be fun to try.

Not much else going on - I've started working out again. My cardiovascular system is in shock. ("You want me to do *what*??") I figured that since Conall is just about seven months old, it was time to get my rear in gear. Especially if I want to ski this winter!! I missed it so much last year! But at this point, my thighs are *not* going to be letting me telemark any time soon... Oh well, there's always snowboarding, the laziest way down the mountain if I'm still a blob by the time November/December roll around.