A Visit From Murphy

Day 75: Pleased that warping had for once gone without a hitch...no miscounts of heddles or dents, no annoying tangles in 21 feet of warp, no unnoticed manufacturer's knots...I sat down at the loom to figure out which bird's-eye pattern would kick off the new project. Little did I know that Murphy had not gotten the message about social distancing and was indeed standing mere inches behind me, chortling like Snidely Whiplash as he tied fair Nell to the railroad track. Nor did I feel his sinister presence when I said to myself, "Huh, that looks awfully wide." I did several tests of an inch or so of throws, each time saying, "Nah, that just isn't working" before picking it all back to conserve precious fibers. I tried overshot technique, spacing each pass of colour with a pass of white, but the designs were not showing up well at all. "Weird," says I. "Did I use a different thread the last time I did this?" I finally settled on making two passes in each shed, effectively doubling the weight of my weft. The pattern began to show itself and I wove about three inches before going to bed. This morning when I woke up, a thought occurred: did I use the 12-dent reed rather than the 15? The reed determines the width of the cloth. 288 threads spread out at 12 to the inch gives 24 inches; at 15 to the inch, it's a hair over 19. Even before I brushed my teeth or washed my face, I went to the loom and checked the reed. There, etched in the metal was the number 12. That's why the piece was wider than I'd planned. Murphy had exercised his law in a way it had never affected me in my entire career as a weaver, teasing me by smoothing the warping process all the while knowing I had the wrong reed in the loom. Now, I could have stuck to my guns and appointed the project to bathtowels, but that was not what I had intended. I made six more plain throws in natural, hemstitched the end and cut the "sample" away (that's what we'll call it: a sample...not a mistake, a sample). The right reed has been inserted and re-sleyed, and Murphy has been sharply reprimanded and banished for his unwelcome participation in my craft.

Update: Murphy has been defeated. The weaving is now progressing as planned. I believe I will still have enough warp for six hand towels in spite of having had to cut the "sample" off the loom. I always allow extra when warping.