The Demise Of A Warp

I was excited about using this fine linen to warp and weave with. But frankly, as I wound the warp I noted that it was pretty fuzzy and the threads had a tendency to want to stick together. Still, I wound, 600 ends worth at 7 yards in length. I threaded the warp over the last three days, a little bit at a time, then tied it on the back beam this morning and started to wind it on.

Sure enough, after just a few inches, warp ends sticking together created little balls that got caught on the heddles. I had this same experience early in the year, with the Silk Warp From Hell, and decided now to end this madness before I spent the rest of the week winding on this fine singles linen warp through my steel heddles. Which is not a good mix. (An aside here, I did look into purchasing TexSolv heddles, because I've been thinking about it anyway -- but at $16 per 100 heddles, it would cost me nearly $200 to replace my steel ones, and that isn't something I can or really need to do right now -- or maybe ever.)

I had already decided that I would tie a new warp onto this one when I was done weaving it, so I wouldn't have to rethread 600 heddles. Well, I decided to do that now. In other words, I cut off the linen warp in front of the threaded heddles, and I'll tie on a new warp that I've yet to wind. It'll take me far less time to make a new 600 end warp than it would to mess with the linen warp trying to get it beamed onto the loom.

Oh well. I just saved myself an enormous headache, a raft of incipient anger, and a boatload of stress! Note to myself, though -- be really careful when you buy other artists' "stash reduction" supplies. The fact is, this wasn't the first time I had problems with old stuff that I bought, at a huge discount, from someone who didn't want it any longer and/or was never going to use it. Obviously there's a reason stuff doesn't get used. I've done it myself -- bought stuff and decided it was too problematic to use, it couldn't be returned, and so I passed it on, for money or not.

So, I'm off to wind a new warp, and hurray! I won't have to thread 600 heddles again!