Visited my friend this past Sunday. We get
together once a month to drink coffee, eat banana bread and knit. She wanted to
learn rigid heddle weaving, so I let her borrow my RH loom last month and said
if she needed any help, I'd work with her. Well, she did need help. When I got
there, she had put the warp on the loom backwards (front of work tied to back apron and vice versa). She was sort of almost in tears. I said no worries, we'd
fix it. We took the warp off the loom and turned the loom around. So... in answer to
a question on Facebook, on the rigid heddle page, this is how I tie little
bundles to the back beam bar. We took small bundles of the warp, being careful to
keep them the same length, tied them together, then lashed them to the back
beam. These are thicker bundles than I would do, but that was her preference. Now, you
can also tie them directly to the bars themselves, but I don't like the Ashford
bars. They are rectangular, flat pieces of wood instead of dowel shape. I
don't like this design at all, thus the bundles. Then of course she will sley the warp, and tie the ends to the front apron bar directly.
This is an odd sort of way to warp I suppose, but I am used to
warping an 8 shaft, 10 treadle monster of a Kessenich, so warping a RH is no
where near as time consuming and tedious. Therefore, I don't mind taking extra
time doing it.
Another odd thing she did was this... instead of using brown wrapping paper or butcher paper, she used a bunch of cut up little cardboards. See how uneven this can be? You can use flat, narrow, even sticks, but these are totally uneven and cardboard has too much give. So we got rid of that hot mess too and luckily she had some brown paper on hand so we rolled the warp onto the back beam, tucking the brown paper in and around as we went. Hopefully, she will call me if she gets in a bind next time.
And now... Happy Holidays from the kids of Messy Art!
