THREADING ERROR: THE FIX

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

The problem was a threading error, but an easily fixed threading error.  There was only warp end that was a problem and the problem was that it had been threaded on the wrong shaft.  It  had been threaded on a heddle on shaft 3 instead of a heddle on shaft 1.

The warp ends to the right were all correctly threaded.  The warp ends to the left were all correctly threaded. All I needed to do was to get out a repair heddle and put it on shaft 1 in the same place the offending warp end was.  . 

REPLACEMENT WARP END

I made a long replacement warp, winding the excess onto a knitting bobbin, and threaded that into the replacement heddle on shaft one.  I looped that around a T-pin inserted into the cloth. That is the first T-pin in the above photo, the one inserted into the original weaving at the bottom of the photo.

After I weighted the replacement warp in the back, I did a lot of weaving with waste yarn.  Sometimes I used 20/2 pearl cotton in a dark orange, sometimes heavy rug yarn in a cream color.  Then I changed to a bright white cotton. 

No variegated weft yarn anywhere!

At this point I could see that doing this  had corrected the problem.  There was no longer a 4-end weft float.

ORIGINAL WARP END RE-ATTACHED

But before I put in the first of the bright white yarn, I went to the back of the loom and found the original warp yarn.  I threaded that through the heddle on shaft 1 that the replacement warp was threaded through.  I sleyed it through the reed and then wrapped it a round a second T-pin, the T-pin near the top of the weaving.

I did not remove the repair end. I wanted to weave in the repair end for a bit just to make sure nothing crazy happened.

Then I began weaving with the bright white, the heavy rug weft, and again the bright white.  I had intended the white to make it easy to see where to insert the needle when I did the hemstitching.  But I have never liked hemstitching in 60/2 silk, so I decided against it.  Instead, I will make overhand knots.

Then I cut off the repair end.  I was ready to go.  Once again……

TWO TROUBLESOME THINGS 

1. I always have a lot of trouble getting the repair heddle twisted onto the shafts.  A pliers helps, but I still have to use my fingers.  Since the wrapping ends of the heddles are a bit sharp, that does hurt some!
2. I also had a lot of trouble seeing the dent in that 18-dent reed! With my auto-denter I don’t have to look at what I’m doing.  But trying to figure out the right dent in an already sleyed reed is a different matter. After all this was done, I realized that I have my Knit-Light from Nancy’s Knit Knacks.  I use this in the car to see at night to knit (I’m not driving,  you understand!).  All I would have had to do was to lay it along the weaving to point to the right place on the reed.  What I did discover is that I must not have turned it off the last night I was done using it, so the batteries are burned out.  Those go on my shopping list for today!

The complexity of any work of art however simple far outstrips the powers of conscious attention, which, with its pinpoint focus, can attend to only one thing at a time.   
                              Anton, Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Order of Art,  p. 21

Related Post:   Threading Error: The Discovery

“Threading Error: The Fix” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on May 12, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina