altivo

Made up the warp for the workshop sample, beamed it onto the loom, and started threading. Once again reminded how I hate perle cotton. It's shiny, it's gaudy, and it snarls like an angry wolf (or a whole pack, for that matter.) This is 10/2 gauge, which is fine enough to wrap 40 times without overlapping in a one inch space on a dowel or gauge. Even in daylight it's hard to see unless you put a white sheet of paper under it. Add to that the fact that the instructor specified no less than seven different colors in the warp, and one of them is black, the hardest of all colors to see individual threads in. There are 304 threads in the warp, each of which must be pulled through the correct eye in a heddle, in the right sequence. I started the actual threading after supper tonight, and so far have only 82 in place. Of course, that's partly because I made a mistake early on and had to redo almost half of those. After threading, each strand must also be pulled through a dent in the reed. All this must be done before Thursday morning, and I'm working tomorrow and Wednesday. Obviously I won't be doing much else other than threading the loom for the next two days.

In the midst of all this, Jeff called to say he had hay for us. We need two more loads, so we had him bring it over right away. A full load, 170 bales, is now sitting in the big arena waiting to be unloaded and stacked. Fortunately he doesn't need his wagon back for a week, because there's no way I can do much hay in the next few days.