Threading

I really wanted to watch the new episode of Bones last night, from 8 - 9PM, during time I would have otherwise been downstairs at the loom.  Add to that a slightly later dinner (though finished in time for the beginning of Bones) and at 9:00, after the program finished, I was feeling ready to slink off into bed.  I decided instead to surmount my slothy urges and go back downstairs to thread heddles with the watermelon warp. 

I got about a third of the way through the warp in just an hour.  Not bad.  I threaded on all sixteen harnesses this time since it's a sixteen-harness pattern.  A straight draw makes threading easier, though since this was the first time I threaded all the harnesses on this loom, and there are sixteen, the 'reaching-in' was more of a challenge due to the depth of the harness ranks.  I need to get a seat that is slightly lower than my weaving bench in order to not hurt my neck!  That said, I did manage to thread by craning my neck low and peering in.  Pulling out the heddles to be threaded before threading each bunch of sixteen also helped a great deal in keeping the heddles in order; I arranged them in an oblique row, marching backwards or forwards depending on where I was.  This also made the threading feel like it was going faster than usual.  For the red silk thread, since it was warped in pairs rather than singly (and remains in pairs at the porrey cross riding across the lease sticks) it went quite fast!

Tonight I'm hoping to have enough time to continue with the threading.  Possibly, if I can spare two hours, I'll probably finish it. 

I didn't count the heddles on each harness, assuming that there were enough to thread with my 12-inch warp; however, there may indeed not be quite enough on all harnesses, which means I might have to add some heddles to harnesses that are already loaded with threads.  I don't think that this will make it impossible, but it might make it fiddly.  Hopefully, mounting additional heddles onto each harness can wait until the beginning of the next project.  I have plenty of heddles - the ones that came with the AVL, and what looks like a probably equal number that Tien brought for me - the painted heddles with the color coding system. 

For the pattern I am planning to weave for the dresser scarf, there is a 'treadling' sequence of 32 sheds before a repeat, so I will have to add twelve dobby bars to the chain I already have on the dobby, and totally redo the pegs (the 'tie-up'). 

I tested the loom by adding several more of the harnesses to the dobby chain, adding the harnesses from among the 'back eight' I had not used for the inaugural warp; I wanted to feel the weight of lifting eight or nine harnesses at a time instead of four; and was pleasantly surprised.  It is heavier, and will be even heavier than that once the warp is tensed, but it is still manageable and kind of feels good to treadle.