Beginnings, Endings

Life is full of beginnings and endings.

Every ball of yarn, ends. Every cone of yarn, ends. Every warp, ends. The thing is, we need to get over the fact that it ends and learn how to begin again.

I frequently see people posting about their angst about dressing their loom. Worrying about how to deal with the end of a bobbin, and beginning a new one. It may seem daunting until you figure out that endings happen and the way to deal with them is to accept that things end, and you pick up the pieces, learn how to deal with it and begin again.

One of the ways this avoidance of endings manifests is that people will ‘over fill’ their bobbins, or they will wind their stick shuttles in a way that is actually a hindrance to their weaving. So I see photos of stick shuttles with so much yarn crammed onto them that they are actually thicker than the shed is wide, meaning that with every pass of the shuttle the yarn on both the shuttle and in the warp, gets abraded.

For warps that may be a bit ‘tender’ the abrasion is likely to weaken the yarn even further, and warp ends can begin pulling apart and breaking.

I use primarily Leclerc stick shuttles (I have others that I can use but they don’t have the beveled edge of the Lecerc brand) and I wind them so that the yarn is primarily on the surface of the shuttle. By winding in a path that criss-crosses at the ‘spine’ of the shuttle, the bottom of the shuttle has less yarn on it and the shuttle has more of the smooth wooden surface on the bottom for the shuttle to slide on. The yarn wound on just one of the edges of the shuttle will build up and begins to form a triangular shape that will more closely match the triangular shape of the shed, and will pass through more easily reducing abrasion on both the warp and the weft.

The argument that by winding on both edges of the shuttle they don’t have to deal with re-joining the weft may be valid, but at what cost? Plus the shuttle becomes heavier which may be tiring to your hands/wrists/arms. The extra weight just makes the whole usage of the stick shuttle more awkward.

Anyway, happy weaving, whatever you do.