WEAVING SOFTWARE AND FINDING ERRORS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Weaving software is wonderful for spotting errors. I enter the threading and treadling and the drawdown magically appears.

One kind of error that the software shows up on its own is a check for floats. When I click on the check-for-floats menu, the software not only will show me the number of floats that are more than I want (say no greater than 3), but it will also highlight exactly where those floats are. It will do this for both warp threads and weft threads.

But for most of the errors I have to rely on my own eyes. And sometimes my eyes do not see. This was the case with a current drawdown I have been working with, a drawdown intended to be the beginnings of the final design for my next crackle project. Here it is.

I have labeled the threading blocks at the top of the draft.

As I was in the process of labeling them, an interesting thing happened. I got to block H and saw that there were two more threading blocks. Wait a minute, I thought, isn’t H the same as block 8? Being arithmetic challenged, I had to work this out on my fingers. Yes, block H is the 8th block.

I knew the last block was supposed to be an A block. I wanted to make sure that I had the join right at the repeat. But what about this extra block between H and A?

I scrutinized the drawdown. There I found that the drawdown of threading block D was the same as the mysterious second-to-last threading block. Not absolutely precise because the threading is oh-so-slightly different. But the same, none the less. So for purposes of easy recognition I labeled it D-1 and saved it.

Yes, I saved the darn thing. I did not want to forget. Precisely, I did not want to forgot that I am made in such a way that to find problems I have to do something more active than just looking. I have to do something that will force me to see. Getting the drawdown into another form which allowed me to label blocks was the thing I needed to do.

Then I went back to the software and redid the drawdown. I had to redo it three times before I got it right. Why? Because I got confused as to which way the threading went as I deleted warp threads, left or right. I learned that the easiest way to start again is just to do a close without saving, then bring it up again. Finally I got it right.

Well, not totally right. The join between threading block H and threading block A needs some attention….

I wonder if others have this problem of seeing, of really seeing.

Related Post:
Crackle with Floats of Four (or More)
I Need a Proofreader

“Weaving Software and Finding Errors” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on July 17, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.