Star Warps

Well, it's done. It's not done perfectly, but it is done. The apron strings on the warp beam have been replaced. The length of the apron strings used about 36" and now they're closer to 26". I'm hoping that won't cuase an issue lter. The back apron rod can still meet the castle in case that would be the issue. It took me a bit to realize what I had to do. I started by hammering in the staples with knots in and actually just about broke an apron string at the staple location by doing so. I tried to fix it by doubling up the waxed yarn at that staple, then I started knotting the waxed yarn after the staple was all the way in (which was honestly a lot quicker). The next step here is to replace the front apron strings, but I need to find more staples. Stan found some for a staple gun, but the ones that Macomber sent me were substantially thicker, which I think helped me use similar holes from the ones that were used originally, seemingly regular staples ...

DO YOU WANT TO SEE A TOTAL WARPING FAILURE? If you said "Warp, yeah!" read on! To continue learning about weaving I decided to make a scarf on a table loom at my parents'. I measured out an 8 yard warp of 140 ends figuring a sett of 10 epi with this unknown dusty pink wool from Grandma's stash. Things were going well. Then I took the warp off the warping board, adn things started to go not well. While I had tied knots around every 10 warps, the ties seemed a little too far away from the end of the warp to keep them together. I also realized, once I put the warp on an apron rod, that I had no idea which warp ends were the edge of the warp. I did my best, and then thought I'd try to beam teh warp (this process of warping is new to me. The last time I warped front to back, not back to front, so I didn't realize that I had to keep all the ends in sequential order at the end of the warp as well as on the cross). When I started beaming, I realized that t...

There seem to be a few things specific to my loom that Learning to Weave doesn't cover. This is likely going to lead to another, probably more helpful post on the anatomy of my Macomber B5. More to the point, I think it might be more searchable for folks like me looking for an explanation of what tehse parts are without knowing what they're called. But here are the things I leraned this week: 1. My warp beam wasn't turning. I found a handle for it so I could try to turn it, which helped a bit, but what really helped was the Ravlery Macomber Looms group. I learned that the loom has a friction brake (I have really only known of ratchet brakes, so this was new to me!). Here's what that looks like: When the friction brake is on, it's difficult to turn the warp beam. I can press on teh brake while weaving from the front of the loom, but while warping that's difficult since I'll be at the back of the loom. This lead me to lesson nubmer 2... 2. A step block ...