You can't easily know how happy this picture makes me.
So I'll try to explain.
First off, what's happening? Well, when I tied the new warp on to this loom the other month, the knotting machine found a few instances where the ends in the crosses for the old and new beam didn't match up. So, doing what I've seen done before, I broke them out, knowing I could always run some new ends in from cones.
Now though, I've managed to completely sort out the warp and managed to put every end in it's place. I checked each row of hooks individually and tied new warp ends in. Where possible, from threads hanging off the back, of which there were a few on the left hand side there. Also, on the right where the threads go up, I ran 4 cones up, around the beam and into the heddles and reed.
When I finally finished, I realised I had 4 free ends on the left hand side, in exactly the right colours, so I took a stick with a hook on either end, ran them down, along, and back up onto the loom.
For context, you should know that I've been trying to get all threads accounted for on this loom for over a year without success.
When I came to this loom, the selvedge drums were unloaded. They instead had rough cotton selvedge warps sitting on the floor underneath the loom and running up and around the unloaded drums. Naturally, consistent tension on the false selvedges (this is a rapier loom) was something that was impossible to maintain. Plus the selvedge cones gathered stoor and get really dirty, and made it very difficult to clean up around the bottom of the loom.
Also, for so long, I had loads of ends hanging off the back on the left hand side and other ends in the middle whose place I couldn't find. All this was exacerbated by a warp of viscose that refused to weave as much as a metre without bursting out at least 5 ends. I spent more time repairing ends than the loom spent weaving, it was truly infuriating. The warp has now been changed to 2/20's cotton, basically the same weight of yarn, but cotton is a much more agreeable yarn than the viscose we have in stock here. Now, the Viscose is fine for handweaving and knitting, but when you put it in a power loom and run it through a cross, it's just a nightmare, as it's so brittle and inflexible in comparison to cotton that it just breaks all the time. Also, it really kicks off a lot of stoor, so much so that last year I was weaving with a dust mask. I don't have that problem anymore. Used to be there'd be an inch of stoor sitting on the loom at the end of half a day's weaving, now I barely need to worry about that at all. Which is nice, as the springs underneath the heddle frame have to be cleaned of stoor when they get clogged up, and that's a real pain.
So now, I have new selvedge drums (the selvedge was also breaking a lot, but that was due to a slight misadjustment on the right hand selvedge picker, rather than anything to do with the yarn), I have a nice new warp yarn and there isn't a single yarn that isn't going somewhere useful. There's no cones on the floor, or trailing ends. Every heddle that should, has an end in it and I'm pretty damn sure there's nothing wrong with the sley, but I'd have to check to be sure. It's really difficult to tell from a cursory inspection.
Anyhow, got my last metre of the year to weave on this thing today, so I'm gonna do that and then wind the cones for the next warp. We get our warp made outside and they require 50 cones of each colour to make the warp with. So I'd best get to it.
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