I does have a warping board! My dad is pretty awesome, making me all these weaving things, and making them NICE. I've seen a lot of functional wooden bits and pieces that people have made for weaving, and they're not always nice, just functional. It's fine to have functional things, but it's nice of my dad to put in a little more effort to finish things off nicely. Anyway, here it is!
Tada! Complete with warp. It's 40cm x 50cm, which is a nice small size for storing places, and has heaps of pegs. I can measure out 8 metres of warp on this thing, which is probably more than I'll ever need. SO, how to use a warping board? I finally realised what it was and how to use it from this tutorial. I wanna make that hood by the way. The only thing that wasn't clear to me was the stuff about threading the cards. I get that you need to cross the threads on every pass, like this:
Because crossing them keeps them in the order you warped them, so when you transfer the warp to the loom it's all nice and flat and not all tangled. What I ended up doing was using some things as spacers.
A spare tablet and a pen. These are essential tablet weaving accessories that everyone should invest in, the proper tools for keeping your threads neat. When you awkwardly remove the warp from the board, trying to hold these spacers in place, and put them flat on the couch, you can pull each thread off in the order it went on, and it's all very neat and the string behaves and stuff. It's AMAZING. I had an epic argument with my skein of green silk, so what I ended up doing was warping up the correct number of black threads and laying them out with the spacers between the crossy over bit. Then I used the warping board to measure off two or three lengths of the green silk. I kept having to pull the end of the skein back through knots that had spontaneously occurred, so I wasn't able to just keep wrapping the thread around the board. Anyway, I'd have however many green threads I needed for the next tablet, and I'd pull off the correct amount of black ones from my nice neat row. It worked in the end. That whole process was a little tedious, but when I had finished warping the threaded-in part of the pattern, I had 18 tablets of alternate S and Z threaded to warp. This bit was super easy and quick. I measured off the correct amount of black threads, laid them down with the spacers, and just sat there threading the cards one by one.
I threw a few tantrums during the process, but that's not my fault, my skeins threw their tantrums first. I had epic knots in the green one, then right near the end the black skein decided that it had been behaving waaaay too well, and it spontaneously tangled up. So the process happened over a few days. I was able to literally just get up and walk away from it, because the cat is a very strange cat, and he hasn't yet been interesting in stationary string. He was dead to the world asleep on my bed when I quietly pulled my basket of silk down off the shelf to start warping. I turned around to find him alert and awake and watching me very closely. If I'm making the string move, he wants to play with it, but if it's just sitting there it doesn't interest him at all. What does interest him is little bits of round wood. I've caught him chewing on the pegs of my warping board, and he's almost totally destroyed a pencil I used to hold the end of my warp on my little loom, it's all splintered and covered in little teeth marks. Anyway, I finished warping last night, tensioned my loom and started weaving.
Remember it's supposed to be a black belt edged with leaves? Guess who got her Z and S threading backwards? Yeah. *hangs head*. I bloody hate stupid S and Z threading, it makes no sense to me. I spent ages figuring out which way to thread the cards and I got it backwards. So the first bit is all munted. Then I started troubleshooting, and flipped the cards over. Then the left side started looking closer to leaves, but the right side was different. Different? How can this be? So I compared the two sets and somehow I'd managed to thread two tablets wrong. Luckily they both just needed a half turn, so I did that and kept going. The last two blobby bits it what I got after all that. I dunno. Something is still wrong. The cards are all threaded the correct way, I double checked how Guntram labels his holes and I got it right, and the pattern is not on the bottom. The cards now face the right instead of the left, so maybe the home position needs to change. I'll try that next. Right now I have some study to do before I can go play at Nathan and Catherine's house. I'll bring my loom and work on it there.
Tada! Complete with warp. It's 40cm x 50cm, which is a nice small size for storing places, and has heaps of pegs. I can measure out 8 metres of warp on this thing, which is probably more than I'll ever need. SO, how to use a warping board? I finally realised what it was and how to use it from this tutorial. I wanna make that hood by the way. The only thing that wasn't clear to me was the stuff about threading the cards. I get that you need to cross the threads on every pass, like this:
Because crossing them keeps them in the order you warped them, so when you transfer the warp to the loom it's all nice and flat and not all tangled. What I ended up doing was using some things as spacers.
A spare tablet and a pen. These are essential tablet weaving accessories that everyone should invest in, the proper tools for keeping your threads neat. When you awkwardly remove the warp from the board, trying to hold these spacers in place, and put them flat on the couch, you can pull each thread off in the order it went on, and it's all very neat and the string behaves and stuff. It's AMAZING. I had an epic argument with my skein of green silk, so what I ended up doing was warping up the correct number of black threads and laying them out with the spacers between the crossy over bit. Then I used the warping board to measure off two or three lengths of the green silk. I kept having to pull the end of the skein back through knots that had spontaneously occurred, so I wasn't able to just keep wrapping the thread around the board. Anyway, I'd have however many green threads I needed for the next tablet, and I'd pull off the correct amount of black ones from my nice neat row. It worked in the end. That whole process was a little tedious, but when I had finished warping the threaded-in part of the pattern, I had 18 tablets of alternate S and Z threaded to warp. This bit was super easy and quick. I measured off the correct amount of black threads, laid them down with the spacers, and just sat there threading the cards one by one.
I threw a few tantrums during the process, but that's not my fault, my skeins threw their tantrums first. I had epic knots in the green one, then right near the end the black skein decided that it had been behaving waaaay too well, and it spontaneously tangled up. So the process happened over a few days. I was able to literally just get up and walk away from it, because the cat is a very strange cat, and he hasn't yet been interesting in stationary string. He was dead to the world asleep on my bed when I quietly pulled my basket of silk down off the shelf to start warping. I turned around to find him alert and awake and watching me very closely. If I'm making the string move, he wants to play with it, but if it's just sitting there it doesn't interest him at all. What does interest him is little bits of round wood. I've caught him chewing on the pegs of my warping board, and he's almost totally destroyed a pencil I used to hold the end of my warp on my little loom, it's all splintered and covered in little teeth marks. Anyway, I finished warping last night, tensioned my loom and started weaving.
Remember it's supposed to be a black belt edged with leaves? Guess who got her Z and S threading backwards? Yeah. *hangs head*. I bloody hate stupid S and Z threading, it makes no sense to me. I spent ages figuring out which way to thread the cards and I got it backwards. So the first bit is all munted. Then I started troubleshooting, and flipped the cards over. Then the left side started looking closer to leaves, but the right side was different. Different? How can this be? So I compared the two sets and somehow I'd managed to thread two tablets wrong. Luckily they both just needed a half turn, so I did that and kept going. The last two blobby bits it what I got after all that. I dunno. Something is still wrong. The cards are all threaded the correct way, I double checked how Guntram labels his holes and I got it right, and the pattern is not on the bottom. The cards now face the right instead of the left, so maybe the home position needs to change. I'll try that next. Right now I have some study to do before I can go play at Nathan and Catherine's house. I'll bring my loom and work on it there.
