I'm Warped!

And my loom is too, finally!

About a month ago when I had the flu, I had no energy for anything.  I did force myself to sit at the kitchen table and wind the spools that I use to put the warp threads on my loom.

Yesterday I got up feeling good and energetic.  I mixed up batch of dough for whole wheat bread and set it to rise.

Then I decided it was an excellent day to set up my loom.  I put my spools on the spool racks and was ready to crank it on.

There are several different ways to put a warp on the loom.  Since I am a semi-production weaver, I use the spool racks for ease of handling the 360 threads that I will be putting on for dish towels, placemats and napkins.

I will be setting my threads at 20 to the inch, since my sections on the back of the loom are two inches each, my spool racks have 40 spools on them.  I position them about eight feet from the loom so they unwind properly.

Next I thread the threads through my tension box.  This device helps keep all the threads at approximately the same tension so that there aren't threads that are too loose or too tight and cause problems in the weaving.

After I have the tension box threaded, I attach it to the back beam of the loom.

The threads are now coming off the spools and are ready to be cranked on to the sections of the warp beam on the back of the loom.

Then I start cranking and counting.  I looked all through my weaving notebooks for my calculations on how many turns of the crank equal how many yards, but couldn't find the information.  It's SOMEWHERE!

I wanted to put on at least 20 yards, so did 75 turns of the crank for each section.  Now I will only know how much I put on when the cloth comes off the loom.

The tension box is in place and I am working on the second section. 

Deiter was warned beforehand that there was to be No Touching of the threads.  He was a VERY GOOD boy!!!  He just sat quietly on a stool and watched the whole process.  I know he wanted to get involved!  He can be an amazingly sensible cat when he wants to.

All nine sections are finished and ready to be threaded through the heddles on the loom.  They are the little wires that you see in the background.  That will be a project for another day.

Today I have the dyepot on the stove again.  I'm dying the background for the Forest Secrets rug.  I am hoping for a nice dark blue green.  I pulled out some dark green from a previous project and am overdying it with dark blue. 

Tomorrow is the Blue and Gray hooking meeting.  I need something easy to work on so if I do more talking than thinking I won't mess up too bad!  LOL!!!

Hope you are having a great weekend.

Happy Hooking, etc!