At last! I got the warp done and was able to test the treadling sequence to see how it was going to weave up.
Since I’ve used this combination of yarns before, I had drawn upon my experience and decided on 32 epi and a twill of some kind, chose a pretty bog standard tie up and wove the cloth as drawn in (threaded) but I had guessed if my choices would be good ones.
I spent some time weaving a header (a thicker red linen for ‘waste’) then started weaving the border with the linen yarn. I counted out 30 picks, wove the red linen again to mark the end of the 30 picks, then measured the length woven. It was beating in at about 26 picks per inch, but the twill line was looking ok – and really, it’s for tea towels. ‘Perfection’ isn’t actually required. Consistency will win the day.
As I got further into the web (after adjusting the treadling to account for the somewhat different number of picks per towel) I noticed what is a fairly common ‘thing’ when weaving with linen on a cotton weft, at the beginning.
The first few inches the weft and warp find each others temperament, if you will, and they settle in as hesitant partners. The linen does not behave like cotton. It is a stiffer yarn, not prone to co-operating with a cotton warp. It tends to try to over ride the cotton. Additionally, the warp needs to settle into its final pathway in the design/pattern.
With this cloth I have a fairly long border/hem area and by the time I started in on the pattern, the web in the loom was showing hills and valleys. This isn’t ideal, but I also know from previous experience that this will settle once the apron rod and knots are over the breast beam, so I’m not the least bit worried about it. It just means a few minutes of awkward weaving, making sure that the shuttle travels through the shed properly. And yes, I did submarine the shuttle at one point but it’s fairly quick to unweave and get going properly. Paying closer attention to what I’m doing.
Sometimes new weavers panic too quickly. Just because the first few picks are ‘wonky’ is not the end of the weaving. It’s literally the beginning. The warp and weft need to meet each other, agree to co-operate, or need to be convinced to do so. And if you just have a bit of patience, or are willing to weave ‘more’ of a beginning sample, most often things will calm down, settle down, and the issues that, at first, seemed to be something that needed fixing just needed the time to get used to each other.
Not unlike life, really.
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