Lessons learned
So, I've been weaving towels for my winter shows - generous hand or dish towels in a cotton/linen mix yarn called, imaginatively, Cottoline.
Having come to the end of one longish warp I thought I'd have a got on tying on the next warp rather than re-threading from scratch. What that means in practice is that I had to tie every end of the new warp to an end of the old one - all 424 ends. If nothing else, I thought, I'll have mastered the weaver's knot by the end of the process. And yes, I can honestly say that I have now mastered the weaver's knot. I've also learned never to try this again!
The idea was that it would be quicker than starting from scratch, but it took me many hours - and much frustration. I got quite quick at the knots, but realised that none of them were going use exactly the same length of yarn. Consequently my lovely, organised new warp, that started with all the ends the same length, ended up a mish-mash of ends of varying lengths.
As a result winding it onto the back beam took a stupidly long time, with me having to stop every half metre or so to sort out tangled ends. There were times when I felt like ditching the whole lot and starting again, but the thought of the cost of the yarn involved, not to mention the time I'd already invested in it, stopped me. And I got there in the end, and am all set up now and starting to weave the next batch of towels.
Not such a colourful warp this time. The colour will come from the weft yarn, sometimes in stripes, sometimes as all over colour.
I know it must be possible to tie on a warp without all the problems I've had, but I'm not sure I'm going to take the time to learn how to do it any time soon!
And just to finish, here's a picture of the first batch of towels off the loom and waiting to be hemmed and washed.
