Last night at class I started by winding the warp onto the warp beam for the Maltese Cross throw that I’m making.  The warp is JaggerSpun Maine Line 2/8 wool yarn (it’s yummy).  This is my first foray into wool and it behaves a little differently than cotton – it’s “sticky” so extra care was taken as the threads came through the lease sticks.  The warp is 36″ wide so it’s just fitting on the loom.  This loom is the same loom that I have in Rowe.  I’m seeing many wool projects in my future, mainly because I just love the feel of the yarn.  Somehow loving the feel of it makes every part of the process that much more enjoyable.

These are the chained warp threads from the front of the loom as they are being wound onto the beam.  I warp from the back to the front.

This is the view from my seat as I was threading the heddles.  You can see a little piece of the draft hung on the castle of the loom, that’s my instructions, it shows what thread goes into what heddle in order.  There are a total of 432 threads in this particular warp, I had half of them threaded by the time I left last night.  Next week I will be finishing up the threading and sleying the reed.

It seems like such a production when you try to describe it to someone but I find all of it to be very relaxing.  I need to concentrate to make sure threads are in the right order, and they aren’t crossed.  The perfectionist in me tries to make sure everything is in order so when I throw my shuttle the first few times I’m not looking at it in disgust trying to figure out how many mistakes I have to fix before I can weave.  This is where I think the perfectionist trait pays off, weaving is very unforgiving.  If it’s wrong, it’s wrong.  Of course some of those errors quite possibly are only things that I would see – but I would see them from across the room.