Penny came over last night and looked at my setup. It turns out that my warping-wheel technique is actually more-or-less fine, the problem has to do with my loom setup. A couple of factors involved:
- the groove in my sectional warp beam is very small, so the knots just don’t fit into them, even when the section size is reduced to 1″ (which we did). I’m told that AVL has some sort of sectional separator pegs that can cover up the knots, but I wonder whether that would just create new headaches by making the diameters of each section very slightly different. I’ll have to try it to see.
(I think the reason why the previous owner didn’t have trouble is that she mostly wove fine warps, and wasn’t trying to do doubleweave, and I’m told she also doesn’t really weave that much, so she may not have gotten to the point of having problems.)
- the cords holding the warp onto the sectional beam are too thick, which results in some buildup on the beam and will be a problem with fine warps. I think I’m going to replace them with a thin (but strong) acrylic yarn or string or something – haven’t thought of what. I may email Sandra Rude and ask her what she uses, as she typically weaves with fine threads. I also need to replace the single cords with loops so I can use the lark’s-head knot method and guarantee the same length across the beam.
- sectional guides (little U-shaped things of rubber that fit over the adjacent sections to keep the threads from falling into adjacent sections) are really useful. I cut a bunch out of a dead bicycle tube and it made winding on MUCH easier.
We still didn’t manage to get a resolution, but we got a lot closer.
Meanwhile, I have spent the last day and a half agonizing over an offer that is just a little lower than what I want to take. (If you haven’t heard from me, it’s because all my cycles have been taking up thinking of what to do.) I am now leaning towards taking it – it’s an interesting position – but not quite to a final decision yet. The neat part about it is that it would be entirely telecommuting – meaning I could (a) save time and money on commuting, parking, etc. (no small thing in San Francisco, where parking can run up to $20/day) and (b) have (within reason) flexible working hours, which is also attractive.
So I am thinking about it, but will probably say yes.
Have started reading through a book on Drupal (a content management system I’d be using to build out the weaver’s social network). I think it will be an interesting project.
