Time to dress

I haven't reported back in a while, but things are progressing. Thus far, I've wound off the white worsted warp, sized it with gelatin and started dressing the loom. I didn't end up oiling the yarn, mostly due to forgetting a critical moment, but I don't think it's going to be a problem.  Maybe next time.

I did end up deciding to go with a 4 yard length.  If I wanted to do all possible variations of all the samples, I probably would want 5, but this is the commercial worsted, so it's not actually supposed to need as much finishing as the woolen pieces, and I'm thinking that there's not a lot of point in doing all the processing of all the twills.  The vast majority of the period woolens seem to be worsted warp, woolen weft in tabby, because all the processing seriously obscures the weave, so why bother?  But I am kind of curious if the twill will make any difference in the finished product, so I will probably do at least one twill with everything.  However,  we have the opportunity to do an unusual set of experiments, which is to play with S/Z combinations in the warp and weft, because this project has access to two handspinners and now that I have a spinning group 1-2 time per week I'm getting a LOT more spinning done, so we can put out a good deal of "to order" yarn for ourselves to play with.  And in fact we're plotting a fiber processing day soon with intent to crank through a whole lot of the washed fleeces we have on hand and get them ready for all the spinning before the weather really turns.   

I have some leftover white warp that I'll use for some of the samples and the rest of the worsted/worsted will be in white/grey.  I haven't decided on a woolen yarn yet for the worsted/woolen samples, because the Jaggerspun is going to be way too small.  However, odds are very good that I have something in the stash that will work if I do a little digging.

I haven't tried sizing before, so lacking more specific guidance, I dumped a (very expired) packet of gelatin into a bowl, poured some boiling water over it and then dunked the warp chain in, and let it hang dry.  I also used the same gelatin to size a friend's vastly more delicate linen warp, where it made a much more noticable difference than in the sturdy and coarse worsted warp. 

Contrary to usual recommended practice, I generally dress the loom front-to-back, mostly because of 1) habit and 2) the way my room is set up.  The table loom is up against a wall, so it's most convenient to get at from the front, plus working all the stuff through the loom from the front means that you're guaranteeing that it's all gone through the heddle and reed by the time the warp is wound on, which is both good and bad.  In this case, I have extremely sturdy warp, so the extra stress of going through it twice isn't a problem, but when we get to delicate handspun singles I'll have a lot more incentive to dress back-to-front. 

Note to myself for next time - if you're doing 90 ends with a twill pattern, remember that 88 is divisible by 4 and leave floating selvedges. However, since this is very preliminary I don't actually care enough to re-thread it all to move those two ends to either size instead of just the left.

So where things stand now is that I have the warp sleyed and threaded into the heddles, so the next step is going to be to wind on.  Unfortunately, the first step there is going to have to be to find a wrench, because the one that lives by the loom seems to have gone walkabout, and the bolt holding the ratchet on the brake is almost stuck, so tools are needed to loosen it up so I can wind the warp on when I get home tonight. 

While I was googling the proper term (dog? pawl? ratchet? one of those...) I came across a conversion kit for a friction brake, and I think I neeeeeeds it, because weaving is decidedly slow when you can only weave 4 inches before you have to get up and advance the warp, so that one thing could increase my productivity immensely, as well as improve my habits, because advancing frequently is definitely recommended, and that's more likely to happen if I don't have to get up.  So kit improvements could go a long way to making that more pleasant.  I will have to ask my carpenter husband what he thinks...

Looking at what I've posted so far, it looks like it about time I went back for that explanation of spinning terms that I promised a while ago, because this all makes perfect sense to me, but understanding it depends on a lot of vocabulary that probably is completely foreign to anybody who isn't already pretty deeply immersed in yarn terminology. So that'll probably be the next post. In the meantime, here's a useful glossary.