Day 150: Construction has commenced on the Wall of Troy. I am amazed at how much easier it is to hang a warp on Max, owing to the way he was designed. I have mentioned before that Bergman looms can be folded up for transport or storage even when fully loaded with a project. This feature also allows the weaver to remove certain pieces which otherwise interfere with accessibility. The breast beam comes out and can be laid aside, making it easier to reach the warp threads where they lie across the lease sticks, thence to pull them through the heddles. With 480 ends to work with, I figured I would spend the entire day heddling, but the process went much faster than expected, and almost before I knew it (read, "a couple of hours later"), I was ready to thread the reed. That was nearly my downfall, and brings up the one design issue I find problematic with the Bergmans: the warp roller is mounted above the warp, not below, and therefore the warp itself is in shadow. For someone whose vision is poor in low light, this makes dark-coloured threads difficult to see. I thread from the middle outward both ways. After pulling the warp through the reed, I was ready to tie onto the cloth apron, but when I started on the center section, I discovered my sequence was short by five dark brown threads. Sure enough, they were hanging loose in front of the heddles. There was no recourse but to pull that half of the warp out of the reed to be re-threaded. It went fairly quickly since I was threading two ends per dent, but by the time I was done, I was tired and almost ready for bed. After a few minutes of down-time, I decided I couldn't sleep easily until I knew if I had done everything properly. And I had! The Lego-like structure of the Wall of Troy shows up beautifully in natural across a gradient of eight warm tones.
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