Murphy's Law

Day 355: Weavers are no strangers to Murphy's Law: "If it can go wrong, it will." But there are ways around Murphy, even if you feel like just throwing the whole thing in the bin when he shows up. So far on this project, I've had four "catastrophes," and here's how I've turned them to my favour.

First of all, when I measured out my warp the first time, I had a particular colour sequence in mind. I was thinking I'd create towels which looked like real waffles. Somehow between reading the draft and stepping to the warping board, a six-thread repeat became a seven-thread sequence. I didn't realize I had one extra thread in each repeat until I began to thread the heddles on my floor loom. I used a lot of bad language just then! I didn't want to unwarp the loom, so I dragged out my table loom, re-wound a warp in the correct sequence, and then set to designing a weave I could do on a 7-thread repeat for the warp on the floor loom. I'm happy to say that it's working out well.

 

The second disaster came when I began weaving the correct warp on the table loom. One of the tie-up cords snapped. Fortunately, that was a fairly easy fix.

 

The third near-disaster was when I realized that my colourway simply wasn't going to work. It had looked fine in tabby, but wasn't suited to waffle-weave. A not-so-quick review of my thread stash finally resulted in a brighter, more heavily "buttered" waffle because I used yellow instead of brown, but hey, I like butter.

 

The fourth mishap was when I discovered that I had somehow missed Mary Black's instruction to double-sley. By adjusting the beat just slightly and knowing how much this particular thread plumps up when it's fulled, I didn't have to start over. 

 

Most of the time, the woopsies we make are not nearly as catastrophic as they seem. Don't despair if your project isn't going right. It may not be exactly what you had in mind, but it's still hand-woven, and you've had a valuable learning experience.