Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Trials and tribulations?

Well, it's been a trial, not sure about the tribulations part.  I was making great progress weaving plain weave in the first wrap of 4.  The warp was beamed and the weaving begun.  I wove the middle marker, a brief section of twill patterning, and headed down the road of the second half of the first wrap.  I keep repeating myself because each wrap requires close to 170" or close to 5 yards, 15 feet of weaving plain weave.  It's the easiest weave structure to weave and the least forgiving if you make an error.

You know where this story is leading.  I hit a poorly tensioned section of warp and the weaving went totally wonky.  I thought just a few threads were off and discovered that several individual threads throughout the warp were tensioned poorly.  They probably got hung up in the reed for a second or two during the beaming process as I wound the warp onto the back beam.  That's all it took.  Just a few seconds and that one thread had less tension than it's neighbor.  Creates huge problems when you are weaving.  You're thinking, okay, a bump in the road.  Think 3 foot deep pot hole you cannot avoid and each tire falls in one at a time.  Jolting to the whole system.

I corrected the errors I could find and continued weaving.   I noticed a few skipped threads and unwove.  Then, continued weaving.  I wove a few more inches and noticed several different threads that skipped over several rows.  So, I unwove again.  You get the idea.

By shear determination and some skill, I completed the first wrap.  Okay.  Tension issues behind me.  I wound part of the warp forward to correct some of the errors and re-tension the next section of warp.  Wound it back onto the back beam and continued.

Here is a brief video clip of my progress, if you can call it that.

The weaving continues forward for now.  I'll keep you posted as I weave on.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

No matter how often we've done something, we all still have days like this. Sometimes I just have to walk away and tackle it the next day.