It's getting warped...

Late this afternoon I started to wind the warp for the initial project on the AVL loom.  I've decided that I'm going to weave the W-twill I wove before on Rosemary's dobby loom twelve years ago, the one with eight harnesses.  This time, however, I have decided to weave it with tabby selvedges, which I can do now with the 16-harness loom.  I don't think I ever really worked out in my mind how to add the selvedges in tabby, but tonight it suddenly dawned on me how to do it with the dobby.  It will have to be tensioned separately from the main warp, but that's possible now to do with the two warp beams.   For the pattern I'm thinking of, eight of the sixteen harnesses will be devoted to the main threads, which will be in a beautiful twill, with two additional harnesses carrying the selvedge threads in tabby.  All I will have to change is to add a pin for the tabby in each dobby bar, alternating the dobby pins in the hole for harness 9 with that of harness 10, all alongside the pins that spell out the design repeats for the main part of the fabric.  I think.  I've never done that before, but I think I have it right.  Suddenly I could see it in my head, so I think it will work.  

I was originally going to weave something with 60/2 silk but I think I will save that for the scarf for my friend Noemí.  I looked through the 30/2 I have still on spools left over from the color gamp project last year, and the one with the most silk on it still is the madder-dyed one.  Here it is:

 Since I chose madder red, in homage to the old Italian silk weavers of the Renaissance I will add the tabby selvedges in their signature green.  There is precious little of the green left, so the eight threads on each side of the main web, should be enough.

 I started winding the warp.

I'm currently winding it on the old warping board, since I do not have a spool rack nor an AVL Warping Wheel.  Since this is for a sample project, I am going to make it narrow.  I've decided to weave a lute strap, which will be four inches wide at the wide point where it goes over the lutenist's back.  The selvedges, as I said, will be green.  I'm winding three yards on the warping board, and I'm making each bout 80 ends, which at 40 epi will spread into a 2" space on the sectional warp beam.  I'm winding two of those spaces on the sectional warp beam, plus eight threads at the selvedge tensioned on the non-sectional beam (but riding over the same back beam).

 In addition to the red and green, there is also blue (from indigofera suffruticosa) and violet (from logwood) which I dyed last year.   I'm curious to see all these colors in the weft, as well as the red.  The elaborate twill pattern, which has some float threads, should produce a kind of faux-relief of one color against another.

Here is a piece of a Mexican lime, which is the tastiest salt substitute I've yet tried.