Out of warp!

Today was a relatively quiet day, with much less time at work than I had anticipated (thank goodness).  I even got 10 hours of sleep, which wasn’t quite enough to catch up on a week of sleep deprivation, but which did make life a lot more bearable.

Anyway, after work I was happily cranking away on the warp, weaving yard #6, when a warp thread tangled behind the lease sticks.  So I got up to disentangle it, then (while I was there) looked at the back beam and AAAAAAAAAAA!!  noticed I was nearly out of warp.

I hastily laid out the pattern pieces again and calculated the exact length of fabric I would need in order to cut and sew the body of the coat.  6.5 yards.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  That much I had.  Now how much would I need in order to make the collar and lapels?  About 30 inches.  Grump.  Not enough.

So I managed to weave up 6.5 yards of the Celtic braid fabric I needed, plus 15″ of a 3/1 twill for the lapels and collar.  This unfortunately means I do need to warp up again, but fortunately I have enough leftover yarn that I will likely have enough.  I also don’t need quite as wide a warp, so I think I will put on six and a half yards of warp (two turns around my warping wheel), and wind on warp on alternating sides, starting in the center, until I run out of warp yarn.  This should use up all the warp yarn, which will be nice since I hate having leftover bits and pieces – and should give me plenty of warp for the remaining 18″ of twill, one shawl, and some spare fabric in case I mess up cutting something.

I am, of course, miffed that I now have to warp on again for a mere 18″ of fabric, but that’s what I get for not measuring my sample for takeup.  I managed to get only 16.5 yards of weaving out of a 22-yard warp – that’s about 20% loss between loom waste and takeup!  Way more than I was expecting (10-15%).  Live and learn.  Next warp I assume about 15% takeup, plus loom waste.

So the 7.5 yards of fabric has been through the washer and is now in the dryer.  I have bought a small steam press (like a little version of the press they use at the dry cleaners)  and will use it to give the yardage a hard press.  The nice part about this press (a Singer CSP1) is that it puts 100 lbs of pressure on the fabric just by pressing down the handle, which I think is better than I could do with an iron (not to mention easier on the body!)

Oh, and we heard about the duplex; they decided to rent it to someone else.  *sigh*  But we saw a very nice three bedroom house in Sunnyvale over the weekend, and are going to put a rental application in for that one tomorrow. With luck we’ll snag this one, if not we’ll go hunting again next weekend.