Dressing the loom

Okay, so I now have a loom. It's not as easy as just sitting at the loom and starting weaving. Before you do that you have to dress the loom. That's planning out a project, doing the math to figure out how much yarn you need for the warp and the weft, winding a warp, sleying the reed and threading the heddles. Sounds like a new language, well it is in many ways.

Here is my first project. It's going to be a 10" x 60" scarf. The warp is commercial lace weight merino/silk blend. It's being wound onto a warping board. The warp is 3 yards long. I had to make 160 ends. That's a lot of wrapping.

You keep your threads in order by doing this lovely cross. Lovely indeed. You have to remember to do it each time, below on the way down, up on the way back. Easy rule, but just as easy to forget.

You take it off the warping board by making a gentle series of loops, like a crochet. You would not believe the amount of work this wee braid represents!

Then you do all this other stuff with the assistance of lease stickes, and start sleying the reed. That means putting the warp threads through the reed, in order. This is an eight point reed and I am putting two threads in each slot.

After that I have to thread the heddles.  This is going to be a plain weave; up and down. Plain and simple. So the pattern for threading the heddles is one thread in a heddle on shaft 1, next one in a heddle on shaft 2, and so forth. Keeping the order perfect.

Well I am not there yet. That's my next task.

Will keep you updated, and next post will show you the hand spun yarn I am using for the weft.