Fiber Monday - threading a new warp

I don't have much to show for this past week. I was correct that one of the three fleeces I washed last week still has a lot of lanolin, so I hope to get that rewashed this week. I did a tiny bit of spinning. I did a tiny bit of knitting. But really, I spent most of my time working on getting the loom ready for my next project. 

The reed is all sleyed, so it was time to put it on the loom and start threading the heddles. I love how it is looking.


Threading the heddles is by far the most time consuming part of the whole process. The heddles are what each individual thread needs to be threaded through... one thread through one heddle in one of four shafts in a certain pattern. Here is what the other side, where I'm threading, looked like after I had just started.


That photo shows about twenty heddles threaded. I have 460 ends in this warp which means there are 460 heddles which need to be threaded. Below is a photo of all of the heddles which will be needed for this project. Remember you are seeing just one shaft in this picture; there are three more behind it.


As of yesterday I had threaded 160/460 heddles, which puts me a little over a third of the way through. I do get faster as I go because I have figured out where I need to put everything to make it easier. It is still not a fast process. After this, I will tie all those ends I threaded on the back beam and start to roll the warp (all six a half yards of it) on to it. This is the part that makes me most nervous because while I think I have chained my warp in the correct way so as to eliminate tangles, I'm not 100% that I have. I haven't done this step enough yet to really trust the process. Once that part is finished, I will be very close to actually be able to start weaving. I'm hoping that by next Monday I will be able to show you some actual weaving. 

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