I get Teresa Ruch to paint my cellulose fibre warps for me. It’s great fun to send the white warps away and get back bags of lovely colourful warps!

The warps have been disturbed during the dyeing process so care must be taken to get them into the loom.

Remembering that a thread under tension is a thread under control, these warps aren’t quite so intimidating.

When I wind the warps I tie the cross on the four ‘arms’ of the X with a choke tie quite close to the cross. I also put a leader string on the cross end.

The lease sticks are inserted, then the leader string and four cross ties are removed.

The loops are then inserted in a reed for rough sleying. I prefer to use this method rather than a raddle because it separates the warp ends more than a raddle can.

Take care to take the loops in their order and do not split the loops. It is important to keep the loops intact so that the cross can be transferred later. It is also important to take them in their proper order.

Above is the warp rough sleyed, ready for the next step, which is to flip the reed over on top of the lease sticks, below.

After the reed has been flipped over, grab all of the loops and give a gentle jerk in order to open a shed.

Insert a third lease stick into the shed. This will make moving the loops to the apron rod easier.

Insert the reed into the beater ensuring that no loops are caught either above or below the reed in the beater and the stick holding the loops is toward the back of the loom.

Push the heddles to each side and carefully carry the stick to the back. I quite often do this from the back of the loom, reaching through to the front.

The loops are then transferred to the apron rod and any pigtails in the loops worked out so that the slack in the warp between the choke tie and the apron can be straightened.

The warp is then put over the warping valet.

It looks very messy at this point! Some might say scary. But check the time on the clock – it’s about 2:12 pm.

I begin by applying tension by pulling on the warp and snapping it, then strumming it to even out the slack in the individual threads. Once the gross areas are worked out, I may then give the warp a few passes with a brush.

The choke tie is removed and any further threads that require straightening are dealt with. You can just see one thread dangling.

This particular warp was not in very good condition. Several threads had gotten out of order and wrapped around the chain. They required easing all along the length of the warp.

Once the threads are more or less aligned the lease sticks are moved from between the breast beam and the reed to in front of the breast beam and moved up the chain as far as possible without causing threads to snag and become tight.

Once I have an area of warp that is clear I start winding the warp onto the beam. In the next photo you can see the water jug I attach to the chain for weight. This is a four gallon jug filled half full of water. Some people prefer to use sand to fill their jugs, some people use weights from a free weight system.

It doesn’t really matter what is used so long as the weight is consistent especially if more than one warp chain is being wound. Generally I only wind warp chains a maximum of 15” wide.

Here you can clearly see the errant threads wrapped around the warp chain and how messy the warp is below the water jug.

I use bamboo blinds because they are self-loading for about 2 yards. They are also self-unloading. That means I don’t have to fiddle around inserting sticks every few inches during beaming or take them out during weaving. I prefer bamboo blinds because they are flexible and if I don’t get them in perfectly straight it takes only a nudge to keep them going in without fouling the brake.

As beaming progresses, the water jug is removed so that I can straighten the next section, then reattached to provide weight. The lease sticks keep getting moved upwards as the warp gets snapped, shaken and/or brushed.

During beaming the jug is kept on a short leash until the end of the warp and then the hook is set at the end of the string so that the warp chain can go up and over the valet while still being weighted.

Here the jug has been let down to its fullest extent.

Once the warp and the string are too short to go over the valet it is dropped to hang over the breast beam.

And here is the warp ready for the cross to be transferred. Notice the time on the clock – 2:35 pm.

Beaming this warp was slower than usual for two reasons – the errant threads wrapped around the warp chain which needed to be eased the length of the chain and the fact that I kept stopping to take photographs.