Oh, boy, did I learn some lessons :)
I used the trapeze, which really does make beaming long warps a breeze,
except for two issues, which I will put in another post.
But I learned the HARD way that I have HAVE to have choke ties every two
yards. I didn't have enough (having loaned some to another weaver when
she wound a warp on my mill last month), so I figured it wasn't that big
a deal, and put them on about every 6 yards. WRONG! A choke tie is a
check point, so to speak, to make sure the warp is going on evenly.
With every 2 yards, I had no problems beaming. With every 6 yards, I
ended up having to comb one side of the warp. WRONG AGAIN! Combing a
warp is NOT a good thing, and I knew that, but I had to. Having combed
one side, I should have combed the other as well, but I didn't. So
nothing was quite right with that warp.
And then, I ran out of sticks and had to do the last few rounds with
newspaper. UGH!!! With all due respect to those who swear by paper
(and heavy paper in smooth rolls may be quite all right), newspaper is
NOT a choice I will ever make again, even if I have to cannibalize
venetian blinds that aren't broken. The horrific tension issues that
arose when the first newspaper unrolled from the warp, plus the lack of
enough choke ties, plus combing one side of the warp but not the other,
meant that I had to cut off the first 7 towels and take the warp off the
loom and rebeam it! Thank goodness for my daughter (much more patient
with frustration than I am :) and the trapeze. I did get the warp back
on, and wove off the last 17 towels on that warp without quite so many
problems.
When I started planning the project, I wasn't quite sure I had enough
yarn, so I went with 21.5 yards instead of the 23.5 I originally
planned. That was another mistake, as it wasn't quite long enough to
weave the 26 towels I needed. And, before I found out it wasn't long
enough, I had already wound the second warp, to make sure I had enough
yarn for what I thought would be just the two warps, before using any of
the yarn as weft. So I ended up doing a third warp to get the last 3
towels done--of course, after everything else, that one was a breeze :)
Although I didn't do it all in one day, it would have been easy, I
found, to wind the warp, beam, thread, sley, tie on, weave, and cut off
those 3 towels in just one day, thanks yet again to the trapeze.
Can't think of anything else at the moment, but it just goes to show
that after nearly 20 years of weaving, BIG mistakes can be made, and
hopefully learned from :)
Holly
who always hopes to not make a mistake, but is defintely willing to
learn from them!
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