winding on the new warp

Ok, so now you've tied your new warp on to the remains of the old warp. Now, you need to coax the knots gently to the back of the loom.

First, ease them through the reed. If you pull gently from the warp beam side, and wiggle them up and down from the cloth beam side, you will find they are happy to slide through. If you are doing this with mohair or something similarly difficult, you may nee to do this one knot at a time. It's your own fault for doing a mohair warp in the first place.

Then ease the knots through your heddles.

When you get all the knots back to the warp beam, cut off the remains of your existing warp, throw it away, and fasten on the new warp.
I chain my new warp as I tie on the colors, so pull out a chain of the new warp, and begin winding onto the warp beam. I have a nice piece of corrugated cardboard to lay in between the first few revolutions of the warp, then, if the warp is narrow enough, I have a roll of wallpaper that works a treat. You keep a layer of paper between the turns of the warp because you don't want the threads to wind on unevenly, some burrowing down between previous wraps, and others piling up. Your object is to keep all the threads the same tension as they wind on. Some theories want you to keep fierce tension on them, usually by getting an accomplice to haul back on the cloth beam end of the warp, while you crank like a millwright turning the beam. I find that if I keep the tension evenly loose, it works just as well.

As I go along, I comb the warp on the cloth beam side of the loom to help it slide easily through the reed and heddles. You can use a wide=tooth comb, or if you don't have one handy, a fork works just as well.


Remove the woven fabrics from the cloth beam, and tie on your new warp, adjusting the tension till each thread is equally taunt. You are now ready to weave.


I had a long white wool warp, so I did a nice ice-green wool fill to use it up. This is from a dye experiment that wasn't satisfactory. I left the yarn wound on the cone, and soaked one side in the dyebath. Insufficient penetration of dye into the tightly wound cone. I got better results by using a horse syringe (got it from the feed store. Where do you get YOUR dye syringes?) and injecting color into the cone, but then it took too freaking long to dry, even in 90degree heat and 0% humidity. Anyhow, I now have 2.5 yds of 10inch wide wool - a bit too rough to be a scarf, but maybe a vest front or . . . .?


And there was a trace of yellow and black linen warp that called out for some soft yarn. . . and there was the camo colored merino that I had spun up from fiber from Samurai Knitter . . . This will be a tea cozy I do believe.