It’s been a busy few days, but I’ve managed to get the warp to the point where I’m ready to weave.

The first step was to spread the warp in the raddle slots – I wanted 9 ends per slot as I’m weaving at 18epi. This meant 8/10 ends per slot for most of the warp as the black ends were warped in pairs. I counted the warp threads in each black section to make sure that I had the warp around the right way and discovered that I was 2 ends short in the Ms & Ws section! I cut 2 extra 6m lengths, knotted them together at one end (allowed me to mark the halfway point), threaded this onto the warp rod, through the lease sticks and over the raddle as required.

I unchained a few lengths of warp, added the 2 new ends, gave it all a flick to straighten it out and laid it all on the floor in front of the loom with the book weight (Textiles of the Islamic World by John Gillow) on top. I returned to the back of the loom and wound the warp onto the warp roller and separated the layers with old wallpaper. More warp was unchained and winding continued until all of the warp was on the roller. The front ends of the warp are remarkably even.

Next, I cut the front ends of the warp, removed the warp from the raddle and dropped the ends down between the heddles and the lease sticks in preparation for threading the heddles. The heddles were threaded yesterday afternoon and today I sleyed the reed (1,2,2,2 ends per dent), tied the ends to the front apron rod (bundles of 7 ends) and wove the header rows to separate the warp threads. I then threw 2 picks of alternating basketweave, and a pick each of treadle 1, 2, 3 & 4 before hemstitching on the basketweave picks in bundles of 4 keeping the red dividing threads together.

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