Weaver's Worst Nightmare

Day 229: For the last several days, I have been living one of a weaver's worst nightmares. When I went to mount a new warp of expensive, fine (16/2) Scottish wool on the loom, I dropped half the cross.

For those of you who don't know, the cross is what keeps the threads in order. It is established when measuring a warp onto a warping board, and before the warp can be removed, the cross must be secured with ties or separators of some kind. I generally use little pieces of cardboard, inserting one on each side of the cross, then tying the ends together. In this particular case, I had wound the warp in two pieces (one on each of two warping boards). During the transfer process, one of the ties came loose, and one piece of cardboard slid out. Luckily, the second one remained in place. Even so, the cross had been free to "travel" down into the remaining warp, but fortunately, the wool was fairly "grabby," keeping it more or less in order. The operative words in that last sentence are "more or less." I still had to re-establish the cross without further tangling the threads. For obvious reasons, Merry was banished from the Loom Room for the duration. It took many hours to complete the job to my satisfaction.

The "grabbiness" of the wool worked both for and against me. It had kept the cross from becoming too tangled, but at the same time, it had a tendency to snarl at the lease sticks as I tried to wind on, especially in the section where I had manipulated it. An inch at a time, I coaxed the warp through the lease and onto the roller. The last photo in the series shows a perfect cross. It wasn't easy getting to that point, but patience prevailed. I'm still threading heddles (1024 of them!), but when I'm finished weaving it, this piece will be a shawl in my family tartan, McLeod of Lewis...a "bucket list" project which would make my mother proud.