I’m continuing to weave the bamboo sock-yarn stole. I’m feeling like it’s taking forever at the moment, but I’ve just had a careful look at the back roller, and there are just two sheets of paper still on there, and I’ve taken three sheets out, so I’m more than half way there! There’s little point in posting another picture of progress though – as it basically looks the same as the last one!
In the process of weaving over the last couple of days I’ve had to solve a couple of problems:
The first problem was a knot in my warp. I hadn’t noticed it as I was warping up the loom, but as I worked this knot became visible. I wasn’t sure what to do. Should the knot be left in the work, should I attempt to fix it, or should I fix the end after completing the weaving? In the end the weaving told me what to do: fix the end as it has now broken!
I fixed it using a temporary weighted warp end – as per the instructions in Anne Field’s book. She suggested a table fork as a weight – I grabbed a dessert spoon and found that worked very well (and comes in a very convenient shape for tying to a length of yarn).
The second problem related to the winding on of the finished work onto the front beam. I’ve found that the design of the loom (with plastic rods holding the front apron bar to the front beam) and the slight differences in the width of my weaving as I work; mean that I’m getting different tensions on the warp ends as I wind the work onto the front roller (with a noticeable difference in the ends at the salvage). I’m not sure how much difference this really makes, but I found a simple solution. I used the paper that had just come off the back roller and rolled it in with the work as I wound onto the front roller! For my next project I’ll make sure I’ve got an extra sheet of paper to do this for the initial winding on. At the moment it’s making the work look much neater so I’ll see what difference it makes as weaving progresses.
And all this problem solving? It’s developing my weaving skills and moving me beyond being a beginner weaver!