The Warp for the Perugia Towels.

I've had some problems with the ancient tennis-elbow injury on my right arm...it was diagnosed as tennis elbow many years ago, though I've never been a tennis player!  I got this condition during my first stint weightlifting twenty-three years ago, and it's been with me ever since.  Ordinarily it does not bother me, but there's a sort of permanent 'pain spot' on my right forearm that I just avoid touching.  I bonked it accidentally on a doorknob last week going into a conference room, and so I was not able to weave for about a week.  I couldn't even keep my arm up long enough to thread the heddles, but yesterday I felt fine, and so was able to resume work on the Perugia towels that my cousin ordered.

For the first time ever in my weaving life, I was able to thread a complete warp in one sitting!  It's only 540 threads in all, but historically I tend to do the threading in brief increments, taking long breaks in  between.  This time I was doing laundry downstairs while Carlos was cleaning upstairs, so I just stayed downstairs and kept threading.   I listened to two albums while I threaded: Dire Straits Brothers in Arms, and an ambient music album whose author I can't quite recall this morning.

The other thing that speeded up the threading came about through a task analysis I did for my threading technique.  Carlos came downstairs and filmed me threading, and while he was filming I somehow noticed two unnecessary motions I was making for each heddle threaded.  It entailed switching hands at one point and passing the thread from one hand and then back to the other; when I removed these two motions the whole process sped up so that I was done in under three hours.  That is significantly faster than I've done before, and by the time I got into it, I had memorized the new motions sufficiently so that it had become effortless. 

At one point I did get up and stretch, but then sat right back down and continued.  This would usually be the time when I would get up and go take a break, but I didn't.  And so it got done.

I couldn't find my 15-dent reed, but I ended up locating it on top of the disassembled Cranbrook in another part of the garage.  Since it's carbon steel (hard to maintain, but my preference) it has rusted a bit, but I'll scrub it first before threading tonight.

Below is the gossamer beauty of fine lustrous mercerized cotton just after beaming and then threading.