Thursday, August 30, 2007

Temples

Amount woven yesterday: 10.0"
Amount woven to date: 37" (otherwise known as 1 yard+1")

Sometimes when I come back to weaving the yardage, after having taken a break, I forget to put the temple on. And then I get this whishing sound. This is the sound of the reed rubbing against the warp ends on the edge of the warp. These warp ends are not going through the center of the reed's openings. This is not good because it results in broken selvedges threads. Putting on the temple pulls out the warp back to its width at the reed and so straightens those ends. No more rubbing.

In the photo at the left, you can see how the temple stretches out the warp at the point of weaving so that the warp ends run parallel and do not bend inward. The red yarns you see will be removed. I put a short piece of red sewing thread in to indicate the end of one repeat and the beginning of the next. This way should I totally lose my mind and have no idea where I am, I can use the red thread to figure it all out.

Yesterday I noticed that, while the first half of the left side of the warp is nice and tight, the same as most of the rest of the warp, the next inch is decidedly looser than the rest of the warp. I checked it because I noticed an occasional warp end there that didn't always like to go down when it was supposed to. The interesting thing, however, is that putting on the temple and so stretching out the warp to its full width results in that inch being really very close in tension to the rest of the warp. This is even truer when the sheds are open.

Temples can definitely be a good thing!

Related Posts: Selvedges and Temples
Baby Blanket

1 comment:

Dorothy said...

I'm very interested to learn this about using a temple to protect the warp from wear and tear.

This cloth you are so patiently weaving looks lovely on the loom, I will be really interested to see how it changes when off the loom and washed.

When the weaving requires so much patience, do you listen to music / radio to help time pass? Or is your time at the loom a time for meditation?